The Space Between...

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     "The Space Between/The tears
we cry/Is the laughter keeps us coming back for more/The Space Between/The
wicked lies we tell/And hope to keep safe from the pain"  the Dave Matthews Band
     I finished reading Mating In
Captivity:  Unlocking Erotic
Intelligence, by Esther Perel, this past week while on vacation.  It was very good, offering a number of
different insights into the psychology of relationships.
     The connecting point between her
work and mine can be summed up as “the space between”.  She takes a therapist’s approach, while I
take a coach’s and a mystic’s approach. 
But we come together in “the space between”. 
     She returns repeatedly to the point
that while committed long term relationships need union, comfort and familiarity,
erotic relationships thrive on differentiation and mystery.   From a Tantric perspective, the erotic in a
relationship thrives on the polarity between the masculine and feminine essence
we each carry within us.
     Sexual attraction requires polarity;
it’s like two magnets where the opposite poles attract. And yet, when most
couples build a long term relationship, it’s built on shared goals, dreams, and
values.  Committed, long term
relationships are built on similarities rather than differences, and as the
relationship is built, the goal is to bring you together, to blur the lines of
demarcation between “me” and “you” and create “we”.  For a time, in the beginning, the committed
relationship and the sexual attraction run on parallel tracks, so that one
might not realize that they are separate entities.