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Ed Schmookler:
This is just awesome what you have done here.
I agree wholeheartedly with the things you say and how you say it.
I will look forward to how you go from brokenness to sacred space. How will you go from opportunism to sacred lovers?
How, for example, do men and women work to build a sacred space amidst their different orientations toward fidelity? Similarly, the broken aspects of family life, with abusive men and women replicating the larger authority structure and their own broken pasts-- these create huge obstacles toward loving intimacy. What are the steps toward moving nonetheless toward wholeness into the sacred space of lovers.
Andy Schmookler:
Thanks so much, Ed, for that "awesome" comment. That coming from you made my day.
You broach several points. About "the broken aspects of family life," you might note that Philip has shared, above, how his own injurious experiences created "obstacles toward loving intimacy."
As for the steps to nonetheless moving toward wholeness, you are likely to have more worthwhile to say about that than I--being, as you are, as a psychotherapist, and one, moreover, who has done a lot of work with couples. Perhaps as I get to discuss with more couples how they have succeeded in building a more sacred space, I will be able to say more. (Again, any such couples are invited to email me at andybard|AT|shentel.netEmail address)
I imagine that everyone enters adulthood with work to do to become more whole. Later in this series, I will go into the ways in which Wholeness is something that is made and not just born. Not just regarding building "the sacred space of lovers," but in the human world generally.
In other words, not all that is not whole is because of injury. (We say "from the mouths of babes," for example, but actually wisdom is something of an achievement.)
But clearly, much of the work of becoming more whole involves healing.
(I know that has been true for me. And just to suggest some of the ways that healing can take place, I can say that part of what made it possible for me to move more deeply into "the sacred space of lovers" is that I've spent the past 33 years with a woman who is unfailingly kind, and who is honest and never punishes my honesty. Years of loving engagement in which those aspects of wholeness are being practiced can allow a lot of areas that once were wounded to grow more whole.)
Finally, you ask about the differences between the sexes regarding fidelity.
First, I believe -- without much more than my intuition to go on -- that men vary in their inherent orientation toward one or the other path toward genetically endowing the future; i.e., some are more naturally inclined to go for the "Casanova strategy" of more sexual engagements and less investment in offspring, and others with more commitment and higher investment in the raising of children.
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