THEhe Agorà column by Selene Calloni Williams returns in fifteen days, on December 23rd
What romantic relationships teach us? In the image of partner or partner let’s project the origin of our fears: ourselves. Therefore there is no intimate relationship that is not dangerous. Fortunately, this is a danger that we face with that enthusiasm and that excitement we call falling in love and that allows us not to annihilate ourselves before the power of our Shadow.
Selene Calloni Williams: «The other acts as a mirror to us»
To understand it, just think that it is a complexity of repressed or repressed energies and psychic aspects, parts of us that we do not recognize in ourselves. If we looked at our Shadow directly we would be instantly petrified, therefore we need the other, the mirror. The emotional relationship is, therefore, an adventure in the universe of our mystery, full of surprises, unexpected events, allies, enemies, challenges, defeats and conquests. The modalities of this extraordinary adventure are described in the myth. By observing the myth we recognize the archetypes, the original forms of our experiences, and, by knowing them, they can be transformed. Let’s see some together, those of Penelope and Circe.
The perfect partner
Simona declares herself very happy with her relationship with Robert after more than thirty years of marriage. At every opportunity she is keen to point out how good she was at hooking up with the right man, letting go of other suitors in her younger years and how Robert is truly, exactly perfect for her. People come up with these statements even when they’re talking about something completely different, so it’s not difficult to understand how his image of “perfect partner” helps him cover a fear.
Simona is a doctor who had undertaken a university career, but left the profession when she got married. He had no children and, in his marriage, she was the perfect companion to the perfect partner who supported in many ways. Robert has become a medical luminary, she has developed a sense of lack of fulfillment, a void that she covers with the image of the perfect relationship.
Simona was afraid of the challenges that her medical and university career presented to her. Robert is for her the mirror of everything she could have done and didn’t do. At any moment she could see her own fear reflected in their relationship of the struggle to emerge, but this would be painful and would force her to make choices, changes, like that Simona focuses her gaze on the goodness of her emotional relationship and moves forward.
Robert is often away for conferences and other important official occasions, Simona is a sort of Penelope who awaits his return by continually weaving and unweaving the web of her life. He has a lot of free time, therefore, he tries to write a book, but when he gets halfway through the work he stops and after a few months he starts again from scratch. She founded a charity, but then found herself alone and closed it, only to create a foundation the following year which would close shortly thereafter. She falls in love with pilates, follows hard training to become an instructor, would like to teach but doesn’t. She has no real need pushing her.
The all-imperfect partner
Opposite of Penelope we have Circethe sorceress who turns men into pigs with her own pharmakahis magic potions. He is the archetype of someone who sees the own partner as someone who always gets everything wrong, inept, weakperhaps a hypochondriac, full of anxieties and incapable of supporting the family, not up to par either as a partner, as a father or mother, or as a man or woman.
What to do? In myth there are the original models of our experiences and there are also solutions. Each of us, in fact, can change any situation, as long as we go back to the first time this situation manifested itself; this is always a mythical time, a time of the gods. The myth tells us how human attitudes and situations first came into being.
Ulysses is the only man that Circe cannot turn into a pig, he, in fact, had drunk a antidote that was given to him by the god Hermes and which makes him immune to Circe’s potion. Circe will fall in love with him, they will have a son, Telegonus, then Ulysses will leave her because his mission, to return to Ithaca, will push him to leave. When Telegonus becomes an adult he will want to go in search of his father but, having arrived in Ithaca, he will meet Ulysses and, not recognizing him, accidentally kills him.
Selene Calloni Williams: «The truth is that the perfect partner does not exist»
Telegonus will then join Penelope, his father’s widow, while Telemachus, son of Penelope and Ulysses, will meet the sorceress Circe, fall in love with her and the two will unite, generating several children. In the end, Circe, who was an immortal goddess, in order to share the mortal fate of her partner and her children, will prepare a potion that will make her mortal. She will be the only goddess in the history of myth to do such a thing.
In the myth, children represent the fruits of all-round creativity, they are also life projects and can be expressions of various creative gifts and talents.
Our Simona-Penelope must welcome into her own Ithacain one’s own world, a stimulus, a new project, which comes from far away, from an unknown land. The meaning of the name Telegono is precisely “son born far away”. If Simona is able to do this, the “novelty” that comes from afar will “kill” in her eyes the image of the perfect partner (Ulysses) and she will no longer be able to resort to this image to cover the need for affirmation that is in his soul. He will finally embrace and bring to fruition one of his projects (Telegono).
You are happy only by evolving
Selene Calloni Williams: «The truth is that the perfect partner does not exist»
In truth, the perfect partner does not exist. However, there is our ability to experience imperfection as beauty and a stimulus to grow. The Japanese even made an art out of it called Wabi Sati (see my book Wabi Sabi, the beauty of imperfect life).
On the other hand, Circe, if she wants true love, will have to drink the potion that will make her as fragile as the men she transformed into pigs. It often happens in couples that if the one who appears stronger has the courage to express their fragility, then the one who appears weaker awakens abilities, gifts and talents that were previously unknown to him and everything proceeds towards that harmony which is never perfection or imperfection. , but fulfillment and realization.
And then?
There are many other myths and many other ways of being in an intimate relationship. We will explore several of them in the next issues of this column. I’m sure you’ll end up finding yours, perhaps recognizing your love adventure in various parts of various myths, as often happens. Myth is a poetic reality of a complex nature. Complexity means the whole in the part and the part in the whole. In fact, each of us, by living, puts a myth on the scene of life and each of us redeems ourselves, it is resolved, it is realized when he “sees” the myth he is staging by living.
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