Losing All Sense of Separate Interests
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Each one must share one goal with someone else, and in so doing, lose all sense of separate interests. (P-2.II.8:4)
The first couple I ever worked with was also the most volatile. It was over 15 years ago and I was a full-time psychotherapist at a clinic that treated people who were addicted to substances. Through a court system program that viewed addiction to drugs as an illness, rather than a criminal problem, some of my clients had agreed to participate in treatment instead of spending time in prison. One of those clients was a man who had been addicted to drugs for many years and who had been in and out of prison. His partner was a woman who was a good 10 years younger than he was and who had dabbled in drugs, but who had never been involved in the court system. Just before his last criminal conviction, she had become pregnant with their child. He had been in prison when the baby was born, but he was able to enter the treatment program at the clinic where I worked as an equivalent to serving his sentence. He had a probation officer who checked in on him often, and the family was also assigned a case worker with the county child protection agency. Although he was doing well in the treatment program, the question was whether the couple could get along well enough to live together. At stake for him was the risk of relapsing with drugs and returning to prison if he lived with her and the baby, and at stake for the baby was emotional safety at home with both parents.
I met with this couple a handful of times over a period of some months. I can only remember these meetings in flashes. No matter which topic we began with, things quickly went side-ways and the conversation turned into an argument. It is thankfully one of the few times in my work as a couple’s counselor that I have had to insert myself between two people screaming at one another at the top of their lungs. At different points in our work, each of them left the room in anger. I then ended up meeting with the other partner alone. Apart, they were each relatively calm and collected; together, they were simply a hot mess. What stands out for me is this: these two people loved each other, certainly as best as they each knew how. This was obvious in calm moments when they were together, as well as in how they spoke about the other when apart. It was also very clear that they both adored their baby. I saw them with their beautiful boy and both partners glowed with happiness. Sadly, their connectedness dissolved as their emotions heated up. They became enemies, each fighting for their own separate interests. Although I don’t know how their story unfolded in the years after our meetings, I do know that as we brought our work to a close, the probation officer and the case worker concluded that the family could not live together.
Although most couples do not have this kind of intensity in their relationship, I believe that all couple relationships have the same central opposition at their heart. What all couples have to grapple with is the tension between the separate interests of the partners and the shared interests that the love relationship symbolizes. For many people, a romantic relationship is a means to an end, a way to get basic needs met: safety, comfort, companionship, sex, perhaps children, and so on. From this standpoint, interests are shared insofar as each person has similar needs and is able to meet those needs for the other person. Also from this standpoint, each person has their own separate interests, for example, non-overlapping needs and a “give to get” approach to the relationship. But there is so much more that is possible for romantic partners to experience than this sort of arrangement. In my professional work, I talk to the partners about their higher perspective on life and what gives their lives meaning. This is the springboard we use to help them to transcend the bargain they have struck with one another. I also lean into the depth of connection and positive regard that is available through our everyday understanding of love. With willingness on the part of both people and a little luck, the partners leave their sense of separate interests behind. In its place, they forge something far more rewarding, a union in which they experience love foremost, and also feel taken care of by the other.
In this blog, I go beyond even the meaning of love in the everyday sense, embracing the idea both that our Source is Love and that we are ultimately one with everyone. When we see our romantic relationship as symbolic of this vast love and union, the possibilities for connection are truly enormous. A Course in Miracles teaches that the central opposition at work in romantic relationships (and in all relationships) is between love and fear, while also teaching that only love is real:
The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. (T-in.1:8)
Our experience, though, is that there is a lot to fear. In our romantic relationships, we may fear being abandoned, betrayed, or suffocated. Even if these kinds of fears don’t dog us, we may fear being hurt, disappointed, disregarded, or disrespected. When arguments happen in relationships, one or another of these fears is operating, and it leads the partners into a dark dance in which each person believes they have to behave in particular ways to get what they want or to protect themselves. This keen sense of separate interests pushes people apart. The Course calls this aspect of our inner world, “the ego,” saying, “The ego always seeks to divide and separate.” (T-7.IV.5:2). The ego is only interested in its own survival and it is symbolic of the original belief that each of us has separated from Love, that is, from our Source.
Although each couple’s dance of discord is unique, there are some general, inter-related principles that partners can work with to help them change their dance, from an ego-driven one of separate interests, to a love-based one of shared interests. One principle is to give up the idea that one person is right and the other person is wrong. A Course in Miracles teaches:
For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. What if it is not there? Do you prefer that you be right or happy? (T-29.VII.1:7-9)
When we use the part of our mind that holds the ego’s perspective, we may argue for our own point of view and give reasons for why our perspective is right and the other person’s is wrong. Both people may argue for their own perspective, or one person may “make their case,” while the other person is effectively struck mute, feeling angry, sad, afraid, or otherwise overwhelmed. Each partner may also argue with the other person in their mind, which can further lead to bitterness and resentment. Nobody is happy!
Rather than each person“abandoning ship” in an argument and fending for themselves, each partner can endeavor to put their love for one another first. Doing this helps them to access the part of the mind that remembers our Oneness with our Source and with one another. Instead of fighting for their separate interests, each person brings to mind their shared interests as a couple. Often this takes place through really listening to the other person and being open to learning something new about them, even after years together. By returning again and again to the love between them, partners can learn to stay connected, even in times of disagreement.
A second, closely related principle that couples can embrace is the idea from Buddhist philosophy of “no blame.” Blame and criticism in relationships often hurt the other person and push people apart. A Course in Miracles clarifies the ego-logic of blame and attack (of which criticism is a form):
Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you have been attacked, that your attack is justified in return, and that you are in no way responsible for it. (T-6.in.1:3)
All blame, attack, and justification are hallmarks of the ego part of the mind. They oppose love, because the ego does not understand what love is. The ego is never wrong or at fault. Instead, it delights in blaming and attacking the other person. It is an expert at being divisive, evoking fear, and promoting the supremacy of separate interests. This very effectively leads to unhappiness. As an alternative, the principle of no blame endeavors to look past the other person’s behavior. This is love-based thinking, because love does not condemn. Instead, love seeks to understand and to accept. Like the Bible verse so often quoted at weddings says, “love is patient, love is kind” (from 1 Corinthians 13).
The third principle the partners can embrace to help them to lose all sense of separate interests, is active forgiveness, whether of the other person, of oneself, or both. I have described Course-style forgiveness in several other posts in this blog (see for example, “On Needing a Lover who Won’t Drive You Crazy,” published June 9th, 2020). Here I want to mention a different approach to forgiveness, one that does not depend on embracing the metaphysics of A Course in Miracles. I have already mentioned components of this approach above: listening to the other person instead of insisting on being right, working to accept and understand the other person, instead of blaming and attacking them, and endeavoring to look beyond the other person’s behavior, rather than condemning them for it. More generally, active forgiveness means making a conscious, ongoing commitment to giving up ego thinking and ego strategies. It means inviting in love-based thinking, union, and connection with the other person, as well as kindness and compassion for oneself. This commitment does not mean instant success in giving up ego thinking, as that is both unlikely and unreasonable. What matters is the willingness itself:
The desire and the willingness to let it come precede its coming. You prepare your mind for it only to the extent of recognizing that you want it above all else. (T-18.IV.1:3-4)
The “it” here is the choice for love, which the Course calls, “the holy instant,” and describes as being outside of time. Be that as it may, thinking along the lines of love here in time leads to closeness with the other person and improves the relationship.
At the start of most romantic relationships, shared interests come naturally. Two people are usually drawn together because they enjoy one another. There is often a spark between them, along with laughter. They spend time together and gravitate closer and closer. Instinctively, two people join as one. Somewhere along the way, though, many couples experience this sense of joining becoming challenged. Sometimes the challenge is so severe or the challenges are so chronic that the two people part ways. But for those for whom it makes sense to work to transcend the sense of separate interests, I want to share a last quote from A Course in Miracles. It invites back into awareness what for many couples was familiar in their “early days” or years:
… each one learns that giving and receiving are the same. The demarcations they have drawn between their roles, their minds, their bodies, their needs, their interests, and all the differences they thought separated them from one another, fade and grow dim and disappear. (M-2.5:5-6)
A Course in Miracles is published by The Foundation for Inner Peace. All the books comprising the Course, along with the supplemental pamphlets, are now found online:
https://acim.org/acim/en
All quotations of A Course in Miracles in this blog post are drawn from this version of the Course.