Why should we become addicted to another person?
The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and
universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation
from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that
is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened
state. There is a physical as well as a psychological dimension to this
state.
On the physical level, you are obviously not whole, nor will you ever
be: You are either a man or a woman, which is to say, one-half of the
whole. On this level, the longing for wholeness — the return to
oneness — manifests as male-female attraction, man’s need for a
woman, woman’s need for a man. It is an almost irresistible urge for
union with the opposite energy polarity. The root of this physical urge
is a spiritual one: the longing for an end to duality, a return to the
state of wholeness. Sexual union is the closest you can get to this
state on the physical level. This is why it is the most deeply satisfying
experience the physical realm can offer. But sexual union is no more
than a fleeting glimpse of wholeness, an instant of bliss. As long as it
is unconsciously sought as a means of salvation, you are seeking the
end of duality on the level of form, where it cannot be found. You are
given a tantalizing glimpse of heaven, but you are not allowed to
dwell there, and find yourself again in a separate body.
On the psychological level, the sense of lack and incompleteness is, if
anything, even greater than on the physical level. As long as you are
identified with the mind, you have an externally derived sense of self.
That is to say, you get your sense of who you are from things that
ultimately have nothing to do with who you are: your social role,
possessions, external appearance, successes and failures, belief
systems, and so on. This false, mind-made self, the ego, feels
vulnerable, insecure, and is always seeking new things to identify with
to give it a feeling that it exists. But nothing is ever enough to give it
lasting fulfillment. Its fear remains; its sense of lack and neediness
remains.
But then that special relationship comes along. It seems to be the
answer to all the ego’s problems and to meet all its needs. At least
this is how it appears at first. All the other things that you derived
your sense of self from before now become relatively insignificant.
You now have a single focal point that replaces them all, that gives
meaning to your life, and through which you define your identity: the
person you are “in love” with. You are no longer a disconnected
fragment in an uncaring universe, or so it seems. Your world now has
a center: the loved one. The fact that the center is outside you and
that, therefore, you still have an externally derived sense of self does
not seem to matter at first. What matters is that the underlying
feelings of incompleteness, of fear, lack, and unfulfillment so
characteristic of the egoic state are no longer there — or are they?
Have they dissolved, or do they continue to exist underneath the
happy surface reality?
If in your relationships you experience both “love” and the opposite of
love — attack, emotional violence, and so on — then it is likely that
you are confusing ego attachment and addictive clinging with love.
You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the
next. True love has no opposite. If your “love” has an opposite, then it
is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper
sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets. It is
the ego’s substitute for salvation, and for a short time it almost does
feel like salvation.
But there comes a point when your partner behaves in ways that fail
to meet your needs, or rather those of your ego. The feelings of fear,
pain, and lack that are an intrinsic part of egoic consciousness but had
been covered up by the “love relationship” now resurface. Just as with
every other addiction, you are on a high when the drug is available,
but invariably there comes a time when the drug no longer works for
you. When those painful feelings reappear, you feel them even more
strongly than before, and what is more, you now perceive your
partner as the cause of those feelings. This means that you project
them outward and attack the other with all the savage violence that is
part of your pain. This attack may awaken the partner’s own pain, and
he or she may counter your attack. At this point, the ego is still
unconsciously hoping that its attack or its attempts at manipulation
will be sufficient punishment to induce your partner to change their
behavior, so that it can use them again as a cover-up for your pain.
Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move
through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with
pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to — alcohol, food,
legal or illegal drugs, or a person — you are using something or
somebody to cover up your pain. That is why, after the initial euphoria
has passed, there is so much unhappiness, so much pain in intimate
relationships. They do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring
out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you. Every addiction
does that. Every addiction reaches a point where it does not work for
you anymore, and then you feel the pain more intensely than ever.
This is one reason why most people are always trying to escape from
the present moment and are seeking some kind of salvation in the
future. The first thing that they might encounter if they focused their
attention on the Now is their own pain, and this is what they fear. If
they only knew how easy it is to access in the Now the power of
presence that dissolves the past and its pain, the reality that dissolves
the illusion. If they only knew how close they are to their own reality,
how close to God.
Avoidance of relationships in an attempt to avoid pain is not the
answer either. The pain is there anyway. Three failed relationships in
as many years are more likely to force you into awakening than three
years on a desert island or shut away in your room. But if you could
bring intense presence into your aloneness, that would work for you
too.