← Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Why We Fall in Love with the "Wrong" Person (Jung's insight)
00:42:25
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- [00:01]
Deborah Maldonado
This is Yang On Purpose with Deborah and Dr.
- [00:04]
Rob Maldonado
Rob Maldonado of CreativeMind.
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Deborah Maldonado
Join us each week for a deep approach to personal growth through our neuromindra coaching method. Grounded in Jungian psychology, Eastern spirituality, and current neuroscience.
- [00:18]
Rob Maldonado
Be empowered to escape the trap of
- [00:20]
Deborah Maldonado
fixing yourself and step into your purpose to live a more conscious life. Let's begin. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Young On Purpose. I am Debra Maldonado.
- [00:32]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
I'm doctor To Rob. Welcome to the program.
- [00:34]
Deborah Maldonado
We're so glad you're here for another episode. We're continuing our series on non duality and we always want to make it practical. So last week we talked about non duality, how it applies to success and money and how we look at that in the world. And now today we're talking about our favorite topic, relationships, romantic relationships, to be specific, and how non duality works in a very practical way. Relationships in our life, and the ups and downs of romantic love. So before we begin, I do want to ask a favor from Rob and I. Please subscribe to our channel if you're watching us on YouTube and if you are listening to us on one of the podcast services, you can subscribe there and make comments, tell us how you feel, share what topics you'd like us to talk about and. And don't forget to Visit our website, creativemindlife.com to find out more about us. All right, Rob, let's talk about love, baby. Talk about you and me. I'm dating myself here.
- [01:29]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
You know, if you think about how much happiness and, and unhappiness relationships bring into our lives, hmm. It should be the main psychology, the main focus of study, but unfortunately it's not even emotions there. Just recently people have started to take it seriously, isn't it? But I'm. What I mean by recent is in the last 20 years or so before that they were considered, you know, you can't measure emotion, therefore why include it in a psychology?
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Deborah Maldonado
And so how do they measure emotion?
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
Self report, they'll ask people, how do you.
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Deborah Maldonado
The 0 went to 10. The intensity type of thing and then the valence. What, what, what, what does it mean to you? Yeah, yeah.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
See, there's ways to study. It's simply that people psychology suffers from a kind of an inferiority complex in that it wants to be a bona fide science and therefore gravitates more towards neuroscience than the actual kind of soulful work that we see in Jung and humanistic psychology, existential psychology. But those are so important again, because they get at really what makes us happy, what makes Us creative as human beings, what makes us light up instead of just how, how functional are we? Can we figure out math problems and word problems? Yeah, the, those are IQ tests. Essentially they, they measure your academic proficiency, visual, spatial and motor things too, but they're primarily focused on can you read and write?
- [03:10]
Deborah Maldonado
Yeah. And you know, Warren Buffett, the famous billionaire, said the most important decision you'll make in your life is who you choose to marry. And I do feel that because you need a partner. You have dreams, whether you want to create or you want to create an empire. You want to have that lifelong partner that will stay with you and, and grow with you and, and be on your side. And it, it just like anything in life, you can't do it alone. You need, you need help, you know, with other people. You need companionship. It's part of being human and to have that right partner. I know for me, I feel so fortunate to have someone that wants to be an entrepreneur with me and, and share psychology and share those ideas and, and I think everyone wants something like that. Like, wants that partner that fulfills like, you know, these, these kind of big dreams they have and a partner that can go the distance. But I feel like, I know for me it was like a doubt that that person was even out there. And so today we'll talk about, well, how do we find that person without like being on every dating site? But really talk about the psychological reason why we're attracted and the non, dual aspect of that because we're really not looking for the one out there, we're looking for the one in here first.
- [04:24]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, and we should say, just to be fair, it is a choice. I mean some people choose to be alone and that's fine when it's, when it's a real choice. In other words, they're not alone because they can't find a partner or they can't make it work, that they've chosen to be alone. Yeah, that's fine too. You can be a healthy, well rounded human being without having a partner.
- [04:49]
Deborah Maldonado
Yeah, but I've known so many people over the. I mean I'm doing love coaching for 20 years and I've known some people that were adamant about being, they're consciously saying they wanted to be alone and then they finally met that person and they're like, if relationships could be like this, then I don't. So sometimes it's not conscious, sometimes it's, you know, you know, a fear or whatever. But we do invite you to explore it and explore why about that. But so what makes us fall in love anyway, Rob? Like, what it makes. Like, how do you know? I could get this from my clients many times over the years is how do I know if this person's the one? Am I really feeling love? Is it something else? So let's talk about, you know, what Jung thought about love and relationships.
- [05:29]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. And here you're spot on in talking about Jung because there's no other psychology that really gets at the depth of human emotion and love as Young's model. Right. If we take a. A cognitive behavioral approach, let's say we'd. We'd say that people are compatible and therefore they, you know, there's opportunity for them to share these goals and that these goals bond them in specific ways. It all makes sense, of course, but that's not really love. It's not explaining what is really going on in the inner life of a person when they fall in love and they meet this amazing person that changes their lives. So young. Young's model gets at that. So. And keep in mind that we're talking depth psychology here. We're not necessarily just kind of talking philosophy. Jung studied these questions deeply and he worked with people directly so that there is a way to verify it for ourselves. Just like we're saying maybe we cannot measure love with an EEG machine, an electroencephalographic machine, but we can certainly experience it ourselves and therefore verify it. So what's going on in love? Jung would say it's a major projection that's happening now. This doesn't mean it's not.
- [06:59]
Deborah Maldonado
No one wants to hear that. Right. They think that other person has this magic.
- [07:03]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. It doesn't mean it's not real. It simply means that that's the way nature designed us so that we could bond with a stranger, you know, a few minutes ago or a few weeks ago, depending how long they've been dating? This person was a complete stranger. They knew nothing of them. And now as you fall in love, you're. You're willing to die for this person. You're willing to, you know, move across the country, you're willing to leave your family, your friends, your. Your home to be with this stranger. That is an awesome proposition. How does nature do it? How does the psyche do it in order to overcome all these barriers and let our guard down and be able then meet a person heart to heart? So.
- [07:50]
Deborah Maldonado
Well, I think that's a. Well, there's a lot there, right, because you talk about like falling, that falling phase, infatuation, and then you say, then we have to Let our guard down. And so I always talk about the ABCs, which is the three stages of attraction, of, of a relationship. And there's the attraction phase, which is that this person can do no wrong. And they're so beautiful and their hair is sparkling and they're skin is glowing and their body's so sexy and I just can't stop thinking of them. And then the B is the bonding where they start to gel and, and that's where the guard comes down. That's where we kind of fall, you know, get to know each other and have these. Sharing our, our childhood stories or what we've done in our life or our dreams. And we're starting to really bond. It's not just a physical attraction anymore. And then C is commitment. And so each stage has a threshold for that attraction. And the thing that stops us from staying in that euphoric stage is our inner work, you know, and so we'll talk about that. So, so when we're in that intoxication phase, I would call that the attraction phase. And, and some people, like, over the years, like I said, I've worked with thousands of people. There are clients I've had that just go from one infatuation to another infatuation to another infatuation. And they're always getting their heart broken. They're always going for the unavailable person. I think I was lucky that too. And never got to that bonding stage. So they kind of feel like. They feel like they're in love. But you're really not truly, until you get to see you're really not truly. Like in that deep psychological and spiritual love and soulful love that you get to. So the projection. What causes this projection, Rob? Like, according to Jung, we feel like this person can be the answer to all our prayers. And they finally came in, you know, like it has so much power.
- [09:38]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Well, it has to do with what we're projecting. So we're projecting more than an idealized image of a lover, let's say, because that kind of would make sense that, okay, we have this idealized image. People have the list of the things that they want in a partner and that we're projecting this idealized version of what a great partner would be onto an individual. But that's not really what's happening. Jung says there's a deeper element in the psyche called the anima or animus, which is kind of the soul image in, in the individual. The soul image is. We can think of it as the divine element in us. Not divine in a religious sense. But in the sense that pure, almost like it's pure. It transcends human nature, but it's very much us. In other words, it's an aspect of the individual, not a list of credits that are projected onto another human being. That soul image is what is projected onto this other human being. That's why we experience love as transcendent. Like, you know, you need poetry to explain it. You need Rumi, you need Rilka, you need some great poets to gore. Yeah. Dickens, Dickinson, all these people that have the, the words to transcend. Kind of the typical I like you or I love you. And to explain that deeper connection that happens, this, this, this sense of I'm in touch with something that's much bigger than me, than my life, and I seem to have burst the bounds of my, the, my limitations and be connected intimately with this other human being at the soul level.
- [11:34]
Deborah Maldonado
So I have a question. So if the soul, we're seeing our soul in the other person, would it be fair to say that if we don't know our own soul, we, we tend to look, we're looking for it, right? We're seeking spirit like this spiritual transcendence in life. I mean, that's kind of. We're here to survive, but then we're also seeking that, that in us, you know, and, and, and we don' ourselves and we're looking and projecting that onto the world. So the more you know your own soul, the less you'll fall. For every Tom, Dick and Harry or Jane, Mary and, and Susie that goes by, you're. You're going to kind of be more grounded when you look for love. Would you say that is true or is that just hopeful wishful thinking, like you're less like needy and attached and lose yourself?
- [12:20]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
I would say it helps, it helps to be aware of what is the psychology of projection and love. But because it happens to us, in other words, it's not something we consciously do. You can't create love. In other words, you can't say, I'm going to fall in love with that person. If it's there, it's, it's there. If it's not there, you can't make it, you know, you can't generate it.
- [12:46]
Deborah Maldonado
I think though, that there are, there are, I have to counter that. I think there are people that can manufacture feelings of love, like convince themselves they're, they're in love with someone. It's not that same level. It's just more like, like a social, social fitting in or, I don't know, something of like for someone who wants to get married and is desperate to get married, like I was before I met you, like kind of wanting to manufacture it in a way, like wanting to fit it, to make it work just so they can get their things.
- [13:17]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. I mean, that's the other things in life.
- [13:19]
Deborah Maldonado
Yeah.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
That's why it wouldn't be love, but
- [13:22]
Deborah Maldonado
it would be like a kind of the romance and trying to like, manufacture a romance and, and be romantic and have our romantic anniversaries and it' not really love. It's just kind of like playing house and playing this role. I mean, I, I've seen that happen. And, and then like you're describing, you're
- [13:40]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
describing the reason why most psychology didn't, didn't attempt to measure these things because you have all these gray areas.
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Deborah Maldonado
Yeah.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
And all these possibilities that, you know, you, they're beyond kind of the, the standard measurement of research.
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Deborah Maldonado
But, but you're talking about when you get like, pulled away, like you're.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah.
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Deborah Maldonado
When you're like floaty or in that. I'm not out here. I'm not grounded. You're in like the clouds kind of thing.
- [14:05]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. For those of us who have been lucky enough or unlucky enough, depending on the outcomes, to have experienced this, it is a transcendent experience that puts you in touch with the Garden of Eden, let's say, or the original source of creation. You feel it. In other words, it's not simply like a, a thought or a list that says, yeah, this, this person is good for me. It's beyond you and it's out of your control. And, and that's, you know, that that's what Jung was talking about. That, that, that emotion, that feeling that that passion that arises within you is arising from deep in the unconscious mind and that it has an image or a soul image that possesses the mind so that the individual is not able to control their thoughts. Their, their. Their thoughts go to this person and they, they imagine this person in this angelic, transcendent aspect. Right. Of we're one. We're one. We're connected.
- [15:15]
Rob Maldonado
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- [16:10]
Deborah Maldonado
Would it be kind of a similar. Just like, when someone gets, like, enamored, like in a culture, with the guru, they would project that same kind of idea onto the teacher that this. You're. You're divine, and I'm gonna, you know, like, hand over all my powers. Again, not consciously, but this, like, seeing it in the guru, not in themselves.
- [16:30]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Well, we know there's a lot of overlap between spiritual, religious experiences and love. If you notice, a lot of the language is very similar. And in. In some traditions, like, there's a beautiful sculpture of Saint Teresa in ecstasy in Rome.
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Deborah Maldonado
Oh, yes, that was beautiful.
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Rob Maldonado
She's.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
She's totally enraptured by the divine. In other words, she's marrying God. She's. She's in love with God, and that's her ecstasy. Not. Not the human affair, but a divine connection with this transcendent power that itself is very similar to what lovers describe. You know, what room he talks about.
- [17:15]
Deborah Maldonado
Like, he says, so this feeling is really the soul. We're seeing the soul image. So we're. So. It's not like an indication that this person is the one, this human being, but we're projecting onto this human being all this stuff. And which is why when someone likes you and you and you don't like them, it feels very uncomfortable because they're like, you're so great, and you're just like, what. Like, what are you seeing? Like, it's almost like you're not on the same track. It has to be kind of that mutual kind of pulling together. And I. I don't think it's fake. I think we need that to get together because if we didn't have that, why would we even waste our time with each other? Right?
- [17:53]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yes. So it gets to the second point. Then we. We talked about what is projected. So we were saying, what is projected is this divine image or the soul image? What is projection, then? Projection is very similar to what we say a projector is. The image is inside the projector. In other words, the individual. But it's projected, meaning it's thrown out there to where we see it in the external world. So in love, we see it in the. The beloved.
- [18:26]
Deborah Maldonado
We see ourselves.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
We see the. That soul image. Soul image, part of us in this other person. That's what's projected or the. And that is what projection is. It's seeing it clearly externalized. So, so you can imagine the power of that. That here is my soul image ext. In this human being. That's why it's so powerful. It forces you to, like we were saying, abandon your old life and give up everything.
- [18:56]
Deborah Maldonado
Leave 30 years of marriage for the fling.
- [19:00]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Right, that too. Yeah, exactly. You know, the, the. One of the best psychologists was. Was William Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream. You kind of see the, the. The absurdity and the kind of. The complications that can arise out of these kind of situations where the God of love is kind of playing matchmaker cupid. And he sends Puck, who's a trickster kind of figure, to deliver the potions to make the. The lovers fall in love with each other. But Puck forgets the instructions and so he mixes them up and he has the wrong. People fall in love with each other. And this often happens in human affairs, of course, that people fall in love.
- [19:45]
Deborah Maldonado
We don't choose it people, we don't choose love. Yeah.
- [19:49]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
It appears to be completely irrational sometimes. I remember when we were in our teens, this very straight laced from a good family girl fell in love with one of the worst amongst us. He was just terrible, a terrible human being in many ways, but she loved him so much. And he loved her too. Totally. Didn't make sense socially, psychologically, in any way. Yet it's like the gods mix the potion up and got it wrong. They made two people that shouldn't be together and fall in love with each
- [20:29]
Deborah Maldonado
other or on paper, on the outside. I've had many clients tell me when they were getting divorced that he looked so good on paper. He had everything I wanted. He even looked like me. Like we had looked alike. We had the same background, the same family, and it was blah. And she said we just made a logical choice. And what you're talking about is this other force. And I think we. Maybe we just wait for that feeling. Like for me, that's what I wanted. I was like, if I have to feel this feeling in order to see if this person is the one for me. And I would always have the feeling for unavailable men. So I was like, okay, how is this working? Why am I, you know, there must be something wrong that they're not choosing me back. And it's like because I was my. My cupid was shooting the arrow, but not in the wrong place, but in another place. Is what we're going to talk about is like what are we. What's the content of that projection besides the soul? Because at first maybe it's that beautiful light from the projector or the camera. And then guess what gets overlaid over that. The film of the movie drama of our life. The patterns and conditioning start filling in. Like, at first it's light, and then it's like, oh, you start to see the psychological aspects of yourself that you don't know, that you've patterned on to this other person.
- [21:44]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, exactly. And now back to this importance of how important the. This relationship with the other is and how little understanding we have of this process. It's really, we should study this intensely and learn as much about it as possible. And so what is going on then? When. When our individual experience with our own family plays into that projection of the divine onto this other person. So Jung says, think about it. Your relationship with your mother for a man. Right? That relationship is going to be important in the woman that you project onto. Right. Because your. The relationship with your mother is kind of giving you a powerful template of what is a good relationship and what is a good woman and how should you feel and how should she make you feel? All those assumptions kind of go instinctually into the makeup of who we become as young adults. So now.
- [22:50]
Deborah Maldonado
And so. So that's what Jung would call the imago. So we have this internal image of the mother or anima, the feminine principle that we put on. And again, if you're. If you're not straight, this applies, not gender. It could be any kind of masculine, feminine. We're talking about more the energy. And so we project that on. And the. And so we're like, if we have, let's say, a guarded relationship with our mother because she was always kind of controlling and the devouring mother. And we. And we decided as a man that I gotta, like, not give her too much because she'll take. And so it was the way you related. You will do the same thing with your wife. If she. Whatever she does, she will. Or relationship. Maybe not a wife yet that threatens that same energy. That's how you react and respond and you don't even realize it most of the time. I would say most of the time, our patterns are not conscious. We know.
- [23:44]
Rob Maldonado
We.
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Deborah Maldonado
We know some of our patterns, but we don't even. But we don't know why and what that drive is. And it's not just, I'll decide to be open now. Like, you can't just decide. You have to really dig into what is that dynamic. Right. What's the fear?
- [23:59]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can think of this. Then the soul image that we all have Is conditioned by our relationship with our individual parents, both our, our mother and our father. And in general, we can say the relationship that we saw between our mother and our father or our parents in general is imprinted and overlaid over our imago. Over our. Our soul image that would then is projected outward. Right. So like you say, most of it is unconsciously again. Yeah, yeah. And most of it is unconscious. We simply learn by observation through feeling. You know, when we're kids, we. We don't reason out stuff, we simply feel it. And we. We're very good at sensing when something's off. And so all that is imprinted in our individual experience and then projected outwardly as well through this soul image.
- [24:54]
Deborah Maldonado
So another example, let's say the boy isn't pulling back, but the mother's very like, helpless or needy or like always unhappy. And the boy decided his job is to make her happy. So he's always, you know, he's being the one who's to that to the mother, like taking care of her, nurturing her. And then as he grows up and he has a relationship with a woman and she's like, not feeling good, and then he ends up being extra needy to fix her. And it's like that pattern just plays out. And they may or not be. Be conscious of it could. Many times these patterns are so subtle, we don't even realize we're doing it. We think they're rational thing. Oh, yeah, I should make sure she's okay. But it's like, oh, it's coming from that deeper need to connect, like the way you can have a relationship or how you relate to that image. And so the woman. For women, it's men, typically the father, and it's the animus, that eternal image of the father and how that relates to.
- [25:51]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, and. And this is where complexes come in. So Jung says we develop all these complexes around our. Our actual relationship with our parents that then are internalized. So we don't even know.
- [26:04]
Deborah Maldonado
So can you describe what a complex is?
- [26:06]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. So a complex is a constellation or a collection of experiences, emotions, regrets, thoughts, associations that we have regarding our mother, for example. So if I say someone has a mother complex, what I mean is they are. They are unconscious of the true feelings that they have and had with their mother. And it's still. It's still in them unconsciously.
- [26:34]
Deborah Maldonado
Would you say everyone has a mother complex and a father complex? I mean, it's not a negative thing. It's like we all have these ideas that it's not pathological, it's It's a normal.
- [26:44]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
It's just your. Your sense of who your mother was and what your. Your overall experience with her communicated to you.
- [26:53]
Deborah Maldonado
And so when we're younger, as a child, we're looking for those templates to kind of how we navigate the world. So the mother's a template, the father's a template. They're the. The spirit and the heart and the will. And all these things we learn from our parents, love and power and. And then that prepares us for, you know, being in the world. And so we all always want to look at this as not bad or wrong. If you have a mother complex, we all do. It's just figuring out what that is. So we just reacting and. Or even choosing to be. Stay in relationships that aren't working or even how to be in a relationship with another person to understand your drives and what you're projecting onto that person.
- [27:30]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. So in relationships and what comes up is not really like our friend Hollis says, the thing is not the thing. The problem in the relationship is typically not the money or the affair or whatever happened externally. Again, it has to do with those internal complexes that now are playing out and interfering in the connection, in the projection, if you will, between these two people. And it's surfacing. So the unconscious begins to surface in deep relationships because there's a lot of emotion involved. There's a psychological connection here. And therefore you can't expect the. The unconscious to remain unheard in this situation. It's going to play out.
- [28:17]
Deborah Maldonado
And so what we're really seeing, we have to learn that what, like, drives us crazy about our partner, that upsets us or what we think they're doing to us. It's not that they're innocent. Like, when we talk about, like, harsh abuse or anything like that, we're talking about, well, why. Why are we together? Like, why is this person in our life? And you said that Jung had a term called compliments, charity, complementarity. And it's unconscious. And what I call it is they. We fit together like puzzle pieces. So we're always going to. So if, if you're. If you're used to a mother being distant, you will probably be attracted to people that are like that because it fits. You know, it fits the dynamic. Unless you change your piece, it fits together. And if we don't do any work on ourselves, and we don't. I don't work ourselves, but we're inner exploration and understand our motivations and our patterns, and we end up just repeating them over and over and so let's talk about that a little bit. What is that part of the. The puzzle piece? How does that work?
- [29:18]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Unconscious complementarity. So it's like this. The complexes in each one of the partners is going to begin to surface so that now not only the beautiful projection of love is holding the couple together, but the complexes now are starting to surface between them. In other words, they're starting to see through the illusion or through the, the projection and starting to see the, the person as they truly are. Complete with complex.
- [29:48]
Deborah Maldonado
The divine falls away and it's like, oh, you're just a human. It's like. It's like Superman when he puts on his glasses and he's a normal person and they can't tell the difference. He takes his glasses off and he's divine. I never understood that one. The good disguise. But it is that funny, funny idea that we, we take, you know, we, we put the glasses on and now we're this perfect person, right? And we, I think truly maybe it's the. I wonder if it's the ego wanting to be perfect and wanting to not look at its flaws. And so it projects it on to the other person. And it's like not accepting parts of themselves. The ego's like rejecting those parts. And then it annoys you, annoys them. The ego, when it sees it in other people, we want to give it to let that other person be the carrier of that, that neuroses or that annoyance or the anger. So if we suppress our anger, it'll show up in that partner?
- [30:43]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yes, it could. So you start to see the subtleties like you say, and also that there is no one way of being, let's say, you know, two people have a. A critical mother. They might react completely different to that. One might create a defense mechanism against it and not care what other people say about them. And that's kind of a defensive stance and it works for them. That's fine. And. And another one might be overly sensitive to any criticism to where they can't, you know, they're thin too thin skin, where they can't handle anybody criticizing them. So two different situation or two different response is, let's say to the same situation. That's why you have to do. Work with every, everyone individually to help them untangle this.
- [31:33]
Deborah Maldonado
This isn't something you can read a book on and say, okay, I know my type. And like the archetype role, archetypal roles, that. That's something that, like a blanketly just one thing that's gonna, It's. It's a, it's a discovery. And you don't want it to be easy because the more you peel away of these parts of yourself, you start to become more conscious each time. So you don't want to just be, let me turn on a switch. And I used to have a program called the Love switch where you turn it on. And my coach was like, you got to make it easy. But it was very misleading and I don't use that anymore. Never used it for a long time because I felt like it's not fair to tell people, oh yeah, it's going to be easy. And then you attract people as a coach, those are your coaches and you know, want to help others in relationships make it too easy. You're going to attract people that want it like in 30 days, you know, everything changing and they're really not wanting to work on themselves. They just want the result. And again, when I say work on ourselves, it's like I think of it as being in a shop, like a sculpture studio or art studio. You're working on your art project. It's like you're, you're, you're giving it attention. It's not like I gotta fix it, but more like I'm working it. I'm opening myself up to see parts of myself.
- [32:44]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. And it's not as difficult as it might appear on the surface because the mind is, is designed to observe itself. It has all the mechanisms needed to observe itself and to understand itself. So this is a unique aspect of human psychology that we have this self reflective witness mind that is able to observe our own thoughts, emotions, behaviors and, and kind of think through things in, in a rational way and say, maybe there's a better and more creative way of, of responding to this situation. Instead of the typical condition reaction that saves us right there and that allows us to grow. And relationships, I have to say, are probably the best medium for human development. It allows us to grow in very powerful ways. If we're willing to accept some, some of these constructs that we're talking about primarily that we tend to project both our good and our bad onto the other person first the good. We begin and then, yeah, and always fighting and always saying it's your fault. That we start to ask, well what part am I playing in this situation and this problem that's coming up or arising in the relationship? What can I do to shift that, to change that?
- [34:09]
Deborah Maldonado
It's really comes down to the word responsibility that we have to take responsibility for the people that come into our life. Life that we're seeing our own mind, the things that trigger us, the things we tolerate. And then the reason why we're attracted to them in the first place, if they're not right, is because that's where we're. Our default is set up. Our patterns are set up to be in a relationship like that because of our early life dynamics. And so until we examine that and open it up and understand that, you know, when we were under 10 years old, we didn't, like you said, didn't have the rational, like, oh, I think I should behave this way or I need to, you know, be more standoffish here or I need to be more aggressive here or sweet here. We emotionally, intuitively, instinctively create and shape our behavior around and we, I think early on we try different things and then something works and we're like, oh, we're going to keep doing that again and, and then we, it becomes part of our, our life and then, and then we, we end up repeating it and it's so subtle that we can't even know that we do that. And, and I think one of the best things about having a conscious relationship is that your partner must be willing to tell you. You too. You notice you'd keep, like, you're very good at that. Like, have you noticed you do this sometimes and not. And then I'm okay with getting that feedback where if you're in a relationship where it's very guarded, any type of feedback or perceived criticism would be, you know, rejected. And so we have to have that softness with ourselves. And then also the person that we're with is, is, has their own stuff they're projecting onto you. And it's. Understand that dynamic so we can have a healthier relationship versus I just need to keep my boundaries with this person and communicate better. Yeah.
- [35:49]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
And it used to be that because this kind of work was only done in a type of analysis, either psychoanalysis or analytical psychology, as in the, the Jungian form, that it was considered kind of a path pathology or the approach was essentially, there's something amiss with the psyche of these individuals or the relationship. In Young end coach, though, we drop the pathology. There's no need for that. All we're talking about is growing our awareness of these complexes and like you said, accepting responsibility for them. Right. We're not letting the other person off the hook. We can call them out on whatever we need to, but we also understand that most of it is coming from us, that we have a big part to play in the way our life, our relationships, our Work evolves and plays out.
- [36:41]
Deborah Maldonado
So when a non dual philosophy wouldn't it be everything is coming from us in a way.
- [36:46]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Well, depends what you define as us.
- [36:49]
Deborah Maldonado
I knew you were going to say that. Yeah.
- [36:51]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Who, who is the you?
- [36:54]
Deborah Maldonado
Yeah. So when we say. Yeah, so on a deep, deep level, we're all connected and we're seeing, you know, the wholeness within that person. It might not be a personal, individual aspect of our psyche, but it could be a collective aspect of our psyche that we're seeing in that person. You know, so not feeling that everything is you. But also, you know, one thing I want to say before we go. What you said was really important about not being a pathology. Like even the term complex, I always think of it as, ooh, that's something needs to be fixed. Like an inferiority complex, you know, a hero complex. And like something's wrong, it's, it's not atypical. And so early in my career or before I became a coach and did this work, I was just in the corporate world reading self help books and I kept thinking there's something wrong with me and I have to fix it in order to find that love, you know, and find that partner. And over the years I work with, well, I haven't worked very much recently, but with private, I take very few private clients now. But when I do work with private clients over the years, the biggest question the client would tell me is, am I well enough or healed enough to find a relationship now or is it like safe for me to go out again? Or if they have a bad relationship or something doesn't work out, they feel like I still have more work to do, you know, and I have to fit. Like it's almost like I'm not there yet. That, you know, kind of feeling. And I used to feel that way too. I used to feel like, oh, this guy broke my heart. I must be something still wrong, I gotta go fix it. And saw that over the years and I, I wanna say that we're never done evolving. And so when we think about personal growth, instead of thinking is fixing yourself, what if the. It's becoming more aware of yourself. Maybe that's all you're doing is like making the unconscious conscious, as Jung would say. And that process is going to be a lifetime. So there's no like line in the sand where you cross or this threshold where you finally have all the answers and you're gonna make all the right decisions and everything's going to be smooth in your life forever. There's not gonna be any more problems because you've crossed that line. It's like an invisible imaginary line that we never cross because we're always growing. And I just, I wanna just say that to people that feel sometimes exhausted and thinking, oh, I got more to work to do. Think of it more of I have more to discover about myself. I have more to explore and how more rich and meaningful my life becomes, the more I know who and know my soul. And I live a more soulful life. And it's not about a finish line that we're getting to. And no matter how awake we are and how conscious we are, we're going to make mistakes. We're going to pick the wrong people or what we think are the wrong people. We're going to, you know, make, you know, errors in hurting people's feelings. And it's like there's no perfection to this model, to this idea of finding that partner and making love last. There's no absolute perfection. It's like unattainable. And so does it. Stop beating yourself up. If you make a mistake or make a wrong choice or act, react in a situation that you wish you would react to and maybe blow up a relationship that you didn't mean to. And then you're beating yourself up. I must be still broken inside. I have to fix that. No, just this. Keep going and let's see what this, this whatever shows up as an opportunity to me to know myself more. And you don't know if that blow up or that thing that happened is actually the thing that takes you to find love. You don't know to find closer to what you truly want.
- [40:15]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, and Jungian approach gives us this sense that when we find meaning within ourselves instead of kind of handing it over to the other person, like it's your responsibility to make my life meaningful and rich and full.
- [40:31]
Deborah Maldonado
I'm sorry,
- [40:34]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
but that's totally unfair to the other person. You know that, that that's your responsibility. You're supposed to make your life meaningful and fine, find that peace within yourself. And so it always points to what can I do and how do I do that? And, and, and there are these wonderful tools for us to develop and cultivate our self awareness to the point where then we can share it with others. And that is the basis of a beautiful harmonious relationship. Not perfect. Like you said, there's no perfection, but there's a, there's a way to grow in relationships that is unmatched. I would say that even monks that spend all their life studying these spiritual principles, they don't have an edge over someone who's awake and alert in their relationship because it's the most powerful way for us human beings to grow.
- [41:26]
Deborah Maldonado
It is. Well, great. Well, we'll see you next week on another episode of Jung On Purpose. And I do want to say thank you for joining us and yeah, stay tuned. We have a new, new program coming up this fall that we are going to offer that's not about coach training. It's a, a place for you to experience the work yourself. A little teaser. If you're curious about it, send us an email and we'll give you some little preview of it. But we'll be making an announcement later this summer. And yeah, we're really excited about taking you to a new level of relationship and find love and live your life with purpose. That's what this is all about. Have a great rest of your week and we'll see you next time.
- [42:06]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
See you soon.
- [42:07]
Deborah Maldonado
Bye bye. Thank you for joining us for Young on Purpose this week. Don't forget to subscribe and if you want more information on our work, go to creativemindlife.com we'll see you next week. Take care.