The Soul Mate Illusion

By Aron Gersh

This is a psychological non-fiction book teaching some ideas about true love and real intimacy. True love requires both Truth as well as Love, Love as well as Truth. Real love requires both Love and Reality — knowing the real other person, not a fantasy of who we want them to be, or imagine them to be, when we are first falling in love.
The book teaches us to identify some of the illusions about love which we usually fail to see when we are falling in love (or as the author put it, in and as the title of his previous book, Falling For Love). But it has many ideas too relevant to long-term intimate partnerships.
Thus I ask the readers to confront things like:
our own narcissism when falling in (or for) love;
our need for an over-special uniqueness in their partner;
• our need for our connection to be magical (and thus so spontaneous and easy that no conflict should occur, or if it does, that it gets magically resolved);
• our need for all our life’s problems to be healed “by the method” of falling in love
and so on . . .
It is based on psychological ideas derived from both psychoanalytic and humanistic traditions and tries to explain that often there are regressive elements in our falling for love. That is to say, there is some recreation of our early mother-child bonding, that creates either a need to recreate such a perfect blissful bond if we sometimes had one, or to find a new perfect blissful bond which heals an imperfect mother-child bond from a difficult past.
The previous book, Falling for Love, is possibly more suited to people studying psychology, as it is richer in psychological ideas.
I wish you love.
Aron Gersh M.A.
(I have been a psychotherapist in practice in London, and then, as editor, ran the UK’s no.1 alternative psychology magazine, Human Potential, for 7 1⁄2 years. I have had a lifetime in psychology)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aron Gersh
• Release date: Apr 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9780951611746

Aron Gersh

I have been involved in psychology for 45 years now. My studies spanned both South Africa and London (at an American University that functioned there for 10 years, Antioch, Yellow Springs, Ohio — a very creative, and respected, alternative university). Training too as a psychotherapist there, I worked as one for 8 years. I was involved with England's top personal growth centre, Quaesitor, for the last 2 years before its closing in 1978. At Quaesitor I did endless forms of group training . . . in the healing of emotional pains, and towards personal growing as a human being, in all ways. I call myself a Humanistic Psychologist, and that includes some orientation towards the theories, but not the practices, of psychoanalysis. I ran England's top personal growth magazine at that time (1988 -1995) as editor and almost everything else. It was called Human Potential Magazine.In 2001 I was involved in bringing to South Africa The Mankind Project, an organisation dedicated to Men's Issues, to men sharing from their hearts, etc. The first training happened the weekend before the 9/11 Twin Towers disaster, when 40 men went through a challenging weekend about all aspects of "male psychology". This project has grown more than 40 fold since then.The book is based on deep psychological theory of how we relive the past in the present. I live both in South Africa and in London and am a proud dual citizen of both countries. In 1999 I cycled from the west coast to the east coast of America in 26 days but such cycle-ogical information is not really relevant to this book, though, like the art of loving, it required discipline, courage and patience to achieve that. Generally a content person, I carry a belief that there need be no shortages of love in our lives, if we learn to love others as best as we can.

Book preview

THE SOUL MATE ILLUSION

First Edition

by

Aron Gersh

© Copyright 2018 Aron Gersh

Published 2018 by Aron Gersh

Human Potential Press

ISBN NUMBER

978-0-9516117-4-6

License Notes

This eBook may not be re-sold or given away.

If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

Cover Design: Matthew Wallach

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Short Summary of the Book

Three sample extracts from the book

Author’s note

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS

Introduction —The Soul Mate Illusion

Falling in Love —The Pleasurable Over-Reaction

ELEMENTS OF REGRESSION

Elements of Regression — Reliving the Past:

1. Love at First Sight

2&3. Magic of Special Uniqueness

4. Narcissism — You Are My Perfect Need-Fulfiller

5. Dependence — I Am Small and You Are Big

6. Boundaries and Boundarylessness

7. Ambivalence Overcome

OVERCOMING THE ELEMENTS OF REGRESSION

Introduction

Narcissism —The Central Element of Regression to Be Overcome

Overcoming the other elements:

Dependence

No Boundaries

Ambivalence Overcome

Magical Happenings

A Sense of Uniqueness

Love at First Sight

Validating Our Regressiveness

—The Starting Base for the Problem of Regressiveness

BEING A GROWNUP IN LOVE

Adult Love

So What is Real Love? — Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be

True Love, In Conclusion

ADDENDUM

The Famous Richard Bach/Leslie Parrish Soul Mate Relationship

AFTER MATTERS

Footnotes

Book References

Bibliography

About the Author

SOME ENCHANTED EVENING

(A Song from the old musical South Pacific)

Some enchanted evening

You might see a stranger

You might see a stranger

Across a room full of people

And something inside you

Will clearly know

That a bond between you

Will grow and grow.

Who can explain this?

No one can tell you why!

Fools might give you reasons,

But the wise won’t even try

So fly to her/his side

And make your love known

Or for the rest of your life

You might dream all alone

I have taken the liberty to paraphrase some of the words from the song Some Enchanted Evening from the famous 1958 Musical film, SOUTH PACIFIC (It costs a small fortune to quote even one line of a famous song). I guess for me it is one of the best expressions of Soul Mate seeking or incurable romanticism that I know.

There is clearly here a belief in love at first sight, at the instant knowing of one’s future beautiful blissful bond with a person ostensibly a stranger, yet, strangely, already intimately known, and destined to be with you till death parts you two great lovers.

If you are a Soul Mate seeker or incurable romantic who can identify with the feelings expressed here, this book gives you a different perspective on all such deep impulses within you.

What This Book is About

The Soul Mate illusion is about how some of our infantile emotional needs still live on powerfully in adult falling in love. And there they create the illusion of a magical, mystical bond. However, this bond fails to see the full reality of the other person and of the situation. This reality, as we all know, will be seen later, when the romantic period comes to an end.

Generally, falling in love is honoured as a great and wonderful thing, unproblematic in itself, but leading to problems or issues later. All of this is well known.

What distinguishes the present book is this.I am suggesting that the problems of love do not merely come later, but are already present in the romantic period. These are problems which few want to look at. Because, after all, who wants to question feelings of blissful bonding?

The Soul Mate Illusion invites and challenges you to take a look at those problems, to interrogate the early bliss of falling in love. But please note that this book not cynical about love. What it aims to do is simply to suggest that true love must contain both truth and love.

In short, what it suggests is that the misperception and fantasies of incipient romantic love, of Soul-mate-seeking, and of Soul Mate-finding arise from a regressed form of love which is blind to reality.

After all, doesn’t real love imply a real connection with a real other?

People don’t want to hear the truth, because they don’t want their illusions destroyed

Friederich Nietzsche (attributed)

================

RICHARD BACH’S A BRIDGE ACROSS FOREVER

There is also an Addendum at the back of the book giving an analysis of the famous Richard Bach/Leslie Parrish Soul Mate relationship.

Richard Bach is the multi-best selling author of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, A Bridge across Forever and other books.

The couple famously declared their relationship as a great Soul Mate relationship, and A Bridge across Forever was the story about how Richard found his Soul Mate Leslie. They toured America suggesting that there was no question they could not answer about Soul Mates. About 20 years later they were divorced, as good friends.

In a chapter at the end of this book I suggest some counter-points to the ideas they propounded on the nature of Soul Mates, based on the ideas of this book.

THREE EXAMPLE EXTRACTS FROM THIS BOOK

1

I have seen this phenomenon of romantic illusion both in my own youth, and in the lives of many others. Without exception, it goes like this:

When new love is blossoming, in all my dreams and visions my partner shares with me all the things of my life, and becomes part of my community. My partner will come with me to all the sporting events I go to, will enjoy all my friends, will come to all my presentations at my local groups, will allow me to share with her/him my excitement about the stories I hear, or that play out in operas, or in the books I read, etc. etc. Most importantly, my partner will delight in all the sweet, cute things I do, all the unique eccentricities I am.

However, in my dreams and visions, do I do the same for my partner? On the contrary, I seldom imagine myself loving my partner’s eccentricities. I seldom imagine that she/he dreams of how I will be a big part of her life, her friends, and her family. (In truth, her interests, her friends and her family will probably bore me to tears! And when that becomes evident, then my partner’s fantasies about me being his/her perfect partner will be shattered.)

While writing, I have just remembered an even younger vision of how I believed love should look. I think I was in my mid-teens. My inner image of The Girl, The One, The True Love was of some delightful-looking creature in the background of my life, my hobbies, my interests, my homework, or whatever. And there she was doing absolutely nothing herself, except to delight in what I was doing. Her function was simply to give me total attention, love and appreciation for all the things in my life that I was engaged with — very similar, in fact, to when I was a child, with my mum in viewing distance, and ready to be asked for appreciation by me for any mediocre achievement of mine!

In other words, The Girl in that inner image was just like Good Mum. She was merely an appreciation machine, with no tasks of her own, and with no need to seek appreciation for herself. All she needed in order to make me love her was her extreme physical attractiveness and her deep appreciation for me. Apart from that, she had little purpose.

Hmmm. Would she have bored me as I grew to a wise young age! (Well, even when I was young, a few minor parts of me were indeed wise!)

2

Respecting Values Which Are Totally Different From Mine

In this situation, we can truly say we do not have this in common. Here, we do not complement each other. Neither are we the same, in this regard.

For example: I like holding on to objects found or bought which I consider to be sacred objects in my life, perhaps objects I find incredibly beautiful, or incredibly meaningful, or which hold important memories. These things are sacred to me. The past holds a vital background against which my present and future is figure, from which it is projected forward.

My partner is the opposite of me. We have nothing in common on this score. We are not the same, neither do our different ways complement each other. Our different ways clash completely —certainly in the living spaces which we share together. My partner believes in holding onto absolutely nothing. For her, sacredness consists of letting go of all and any such attachments, and moving on, beyond the past, beyond memories. For her, memories are just sentimentality.

In such a situation partners can either totally and continually judge each other as wrong, as stupid or can come to understand the validity of the other point of view, that the other side is as valid and in need of respect as our own viewpoint.

If my partner destroys something of mine because she thinks it is stupid to hold onto things so preciously, she will be disrespecting my values. If I plead with her not to get rid of something that I think is important for her, but she insists, I might be failing to see how the world looks from her side.

Part of learning mature love, which is about going beyond narcissism, involves being able to listen very carefully to how my partner came to have that particular viewpoint, and how I, if I had walked the same path, in the same moccassins, would have come to the same conclusion.

This is a skill that must be learned, practised, developed, in order to be a better lover. It means learning to delight in or at least appreciate a difference which does not enhance one’s own standpoint. And often, by understanding how your partner came to his or her point of view, you might even decide to change your own stance and values. Such good listening ability leads to something called ‘growing and changing’. And we might note how easily and often we meet people with whom we have a lot in common, but we do not feel desire to have intimate love with them. This is to say, just because we have so much in common, this does not mean we will love and delight in each other.

3

A SENSE OF BOUNDARY-LESS-NESS

We are One

Accompanying dependence and narcissism in romantic lovers is a sense of no boundary between thee and me: I don’t know where I end and you begin, where you begin and I end; we are one; we are merged, in bliss.

Similarly, for the early infant, there is no sense of a boundary separating it and mother, and it and the world. In fact, for the baby, mother is the whole world. This begins right in the womb, where we experience a floating, oceanic boundaryless state in which there is no difference between our insides and our outsides.

Once we are born and (with any luck) start breast-feeding, we experience a similar bond with mother. There is no sense of me and mother for the early infant. Like Soul Mates, we are One. It does not even make sense to describe us as Us — there is no Us. My whole young world is simply one quagmire of sensations. I experience no boundary between myself and mother. For all intents and purposes now, mother is the whole world. There is only One. (101)

Of course, when the infant feels good, the real reason is that it has been well nurtured all round. But it is possible for the infant to have painful, inner, growth pains not caused by a lack of nurturing. Whether the infant’s pain or pleasure is generated from itself or from mother, it is all experienced as one. So when I feel displeasure, for whatever cause, (my self, or mother), it is both myself and the world which is in a bad, dis-pleasurable state. There is no world that exists outside of my inner state (which is projected outside of my skin to the world, which is basically mother) and no inner state that does not speak of the state of the world.

When there is happiness, there is happiness all round. When there is pain, all the world, me, and mother are in pain, though the infant does not distinguish between the three things. Because of this, there is no identifying of what causes what — or I should say of who is doing what to whom. Psychoanalysis talks of the baby’s Omnipotent Fantasies —that it thinks it causes its needs to be met simply by having them.

Now, it is probably frustration of need which teaches the baby