Embrace the Sacred and Profane in Your Relationships

In the early 20^th century, psychiatrist Carl Gustave Jung developed the notion of archetypes: twelve universal mythic aspects of our human personalities. For example, if you joke a lot, you might have a dominant Jester archetype guiding you. Other examples included the Artist, the Ruler, the Hero, or perhaps the Magician or the Outlaw.

We Are More Than One Thing

The truth is we are all more than one thing. For example, if you work as a supervisor, your Ruler self might dominate, but after work, when you’re with your family or friends, your Jester comes out, and people see a completely different side to you.

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Our Collective Stories

Not only are we all more than just one thing, but we’re also possessed of more than 12 archetypes because human culture over the last 50,000 years has produced countless narratives that tell the stories of our different selves. Our stories, told around campfires and incorporated into the arts, have also been expressed in our various human religions.

Reconnecting With Our Full Selves

If we are to really know ourselves and our partners, these archetypes can be of service in helping us see the different aspects of who we are. To use Jungian terms, we may see in our mate an Outlaw or a Lover—or maybe we see both together.

The Madonna-Whore Complex

All of this brings us to Sigmund Freud’s Madonna-Whore Complex, wherein a nice guy looks for a good woman, finds one, has sex with her, gets married, and (oops) the problems begin. The biggest of those problems is the man’s inability to stay sexually interested in a good woman he’s married to. Obviously, this is a problem for her, too.

One-Sided Vision

Freud said, rightly, I believe, that this problem was a natural result of a man’s seeing women as either sacred (the Madonna) or less than saintly (the whore). For the woman, whether she is the Madonna or the whore, she can have respect or hot sex—but not both. The poor wife or girlfriend, in such cases, not only misses out on sex, but they miss out on love, too.

Developing Sustainable Love

The adult love that exists between a man and a woman is sexual love. If a man’s love for his wife is similar to the respect he has for the Madonna, how on Earth can he have sex with God’s mom? If he feels comfortable having sex with her and she’s enjoying herself enthusiastically—like the whore he holds in his mind—how can he respect and love her? Even if he divorced his wife for the “hooker with a heart of gold,” such a man cannot develop sustainable love for the replacement partner because sexual love is, for him, only profane.

Much More to See

The remedy is to see more: What if he could see both aspects of the Madonna and the whore in his wife? What if he could see, in his sexual partner, an enduring sacred quality that is never absent, even in her most ardent moments? What if he could see in his beloved wife her sexuality’s ardor and fun as another aspect of her being? What if both the Madonna and the whore co-existed within her and represented her at her most magical, her most intimate, and her most vulnerable?

Are You Starting to See?

If a man could see his partner, like all humans, it would be far more than one thing, and that would be pretty great for both of them. People who cannot see this fail to integrate sexuality and spirituality in a functional way. Such men do great harm not only to their mates but also to themselves.

A Future of Loneliness

This harm comes out of the fact that they are failing to see her in the fullness of her humanity, both as sacred (set apart and holy) and profane (full of sexual thoughts and feelings). In such a relationship, where a man sees one or the other (Madonna or whore), we end up never really knowing the other or being known ourselves. We are condemned to a future of loneliness.

Change Is Possible

We can change our belief system and come to understand we’re all more than one thing. As the American poet Walt Whitman put it, we “contain multitudes.” By loving and appreciating all aspects of ourselves and our partners, we can—ultimately, and with much practice—finally see one another.