Be my Valentine - by Claudia Davidson

For many, Valentine’s Day – like Christmas Day – is not a day full of joy, flowers, love and laughter. Instead of surprises and delights, there is only a painful reminder of what is missing, what is unresolved and what is unhealed within. It is a day that marks the fact that our Other Half – the partner we hoped would make us whole - is not there or is not making us whole as we thought.

Much of our life is taken up with finding this Other Half. It is deeply imbedded in our culture and in our psyche.  We only have to think of all the many popular myths and fairy tales which have as their main theme the finding of the destined partner. We follow the story with bated breath, as our Hero/Heroine faces daunting challenges, completes intimidating tasks, and overcomes frightening obstacles – all to find the one who is the mirror of their soul so they can live “ happily ever after”.

These myths and fairy tales hold such an attraction because they are also the stories of our own journey - our quest to fulfil a longing that lies deep within.

Carl Jung was the first psychologist to link these myths and fairy tales to our own ongoing search for inner completeness. Their power, he said, lay in the way they gave expression to the tasks and challenges that faced us on our personal journey to inner integration. However, he took this a step further – not only do we identify with the stories themselves, but, he said, all the characters that people these stories actually lie within us.

According to Jungian psychology, our lifetime task is to become reconciled with all these aspects of ourselves – by acknowledging them, learning from them and celebrating the strengths, insights and gifts they bring. Until we do, we will always feel incomplete. More importantly, we will keep seeking outside of us that which in reality lies within us. Women will keep looking for Prince Charming in the men around them - often coming away disappointed and disillusioned, sometimes hurt and shattered.  In the same way men keep searching for their Princess in the women they encounter. They too often face the crushing reality that their partner is not the Princess that makes them feel whole and no matter how hard they try, she will just not be all sweetness and light.

How do we break out of this cycle of unrealistic expectations, unfulfilled longing and unresolved conflicts?

The answer is quite simple – we find the Prince or Princes within us. Sounds easy but the process is a challenging one.  That’s the real message contained in the myths and fairy tales – this is an arduous, sometimes daunting task. No Prince or Princess is won without overcoming challenges, completing tasks and defeating dragons. But the rewards are great – at the end of our journey we do find that wholeness, that completeness, that sense of inner fulfilment that makes life meaningful and worthwhile.  We are also more likely to find rich, satisfying and rewarding long term relationships.

So how do we go about finding the Prince or Princess within?

As with any journey, we first need to know where we are at.  In practical terms this means taking a good hard look at all the relationships we have experienced with the opposite sex in our lives so far, beginning with Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad are important because they are our first pictures of what the King and Queen look like (which is what all Princes and Princesses are growing up to be!).  This doesn’t have to involve years of psychotherapy (although some counselling may be helpful as we come to terms with past experiences) – we begin by simply acknowledging – honestly – what these relationships were like for us. How did Mom and Dad nurture or hurt me? How did they nurture and/or hurt each other? What about Mom and Dad made me feel loved, valued and cared for? What made me feel little, overwhelmed and powerless?

As we think through these issues it is important to remember that parents are people, not mythical Kings and Queens who are either completely good or wholly evil.  People are a mixture of both – so while there may be aspects of Mom that hurt us, there will also be aspects of Mom that nurtured and helped us. Same with Dad – he may have done things that left us feeling rejected,  hurt and overwhelmed, but there will also have be things that made us feel empowered, competent, valued and able.

The reason for including both Mom and Dad is because they both shape our early ideas of what our Ideal Prince or Princess should look like. Until we explore all that both our parents contributed to our inner world, we will find – often to our horror or despair – that our current relationships are merely reflecting past patterns. To break that cycle we need to be honest about the way things really were – the good and the not so good.

What’s important here is to simply draw our own personal map of the way things really were – the highs and the lows. This task is called acknowledging and it’s perhaps the most challenging of all the tasks we face. In myths and fairy tales this is often expressed as the hero/heroine being given a “sorting” task. Yes, it does feel scary and overwhelming and impossible but, as the stories remind us – once we commit to this task, helpers will come.  They come in the form of caring counsellors, books, insights in the shower, conversations with trusted friends and/or personal journal writing.

Now that we have a clearer idea of where we are– we can extend our map to include the relationships with all those who have both attracted and repelled us. Each relationship will reflect back to us what we were not seeing or not yet ready to see at the time – what we were choosing to acknowledge and not acknowledge about ourselves and the relationship at that point in our journey. Once again the purpose here is simply to acknowledge what is on our personal map and we do this again by sorting – mapping out what worked for us, and what didn’t; where we felt nurtured and where we felt hurt; where we felt supported and where we felt abandoned and rejected – where we felt honoured and celebrated and where we felt diminished, shamed and less than.

However, we add one more layer to our processing – in addition to sifting and sorting, we now also look for patterns of similarities and differences.  We look for all the ways our close relationships mirror the one we saw between our parents and we connect the dots between them.

 We will often find that we have been drawn to and chosen partners that help us set up the kind of dynamic we grew up with. For example,  a person coming  from a home dominated by alcohol abuse will, for reasons they don’t fully understand, be drawn into relationships marked by addiction time and time again. We’re simply becoming the kind King and Queen we grew up with because that’s the only model we know.

However, as myths and fairy tales also tell us, all is not lost. There is hope – and that hope lies in transformation.  The frog becomes the Handsome Prince, the ugly crone changes into the Beautiful Princess and the foolish child becomes wise.

While we cling to the idea that all this happens by the magical waving of a wand – if we read the stories more carefully, the moment of transformation comes after a process of “sifting and sorting”, a journey of some kind or the overcoming of a challenge. What we miss when we overlook these parts of the story is that it is in the very process of cleaning the hearth, wandering through the forest and spinning straw into gold that we ourselves are changed – we find new ways of being and so able to make different kinds of choices – the kinds of choices that see us connecting with people who nurture us and celebrate all we were destined to be.

Our process of transformation begins with the task of acknowledging – honestly – all that has happened to us and how it has shaped our thinking and behaviour – both the good stuff and the not so good stuff. The next part of the transformation process is to find the gifts in the not so good stuff. Because there are gifts – every witch has a magic potion she will hand over, every dragon guards a treasure beneath his tail, every monster stands in front of the pathway that leads to the prize we are seeking.

Everyone we are closely connected to brings a gift. It is easy to spot the gifts brought by those who nurture and celebrate us, but the gifts brought by those who have hurt and diminished us are less visible to our eyes.  We don’t see them at the time, but they are there carefully tucked away beneath smelly clothes, under scaly tails and behind grotesque masks.

Our task is to find them. We do this by making peace with those aspects in ourselves that have been so fearful, frightening and unwelcome. We simply acknowledge they are there. “I see you,” is the moment things begin to change. And then we sit with them until we find the gift they hold.   It is sometimes really helpful to have a companion for this task – which is all a counsellor really is – someone who will sit with you when you meet your dragons and monsters until you find the gifts they carry.

So perhaps the real challenge of this Valentine’s Day is – to be our own Valentine - to love ourselves enough to embark on our own journey of transformation.

Written by Claudia Davidson