Loving someone doesn't mean merging with that person. The myth of Hermaphrodite tried to explain why we human beings are so predisposed to merge with our lovers (not necessarily urging that we should or must do so in order to find true love, or even that merging is a desirable thing to strive for).
In Plato's famous dialogue Symposium, Aristophanes decided to help his friends learn the secret of love's power. He began by recalling the myth that human beings were originally hermaphrodites: each human combined two genders by being a rounded whole, with four legs and four arms, able to walk upright in either direction, or to run by turning over and over in circular fashion. These original dual-sex human beings were so strong, confident, and powerful that they became a major threat to the gods, who debated how best to reduce their power. Zeus decided that they should be bisected and arranged it so that reproduction would take place by means of sexual intercourse (instead of by emission onto the ground, as had occurred previously). The result of this division was profound: Each half-being felt compelled to seek out a partner who would restore its former wholeness. Love, concluded Aristophanes, is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole. Similarly, in the Kabbala, Shekinah is God's feminine half, who hopes to unite with the masculine half.
Throughout the ages, the idea that we attain wholeness and complete ourselves by merging sexually with someone else has been the major inspiration of romantic literature and the stirring climax of countless novels about love, often at the expense of enduring relationships.
We bake a lump of clay,
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water;
And mold again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we will share one coffin.
-Kuan Tao-Sheng
Our prenatal state is one of total fusion with a pregnant female. The mother basically breathes and eats for her growing fetus. The fetus is not differentiated from the uterus, which receives all of its nutrients from its arteries, while its toxic elements are removed through its veins. Naturally, whatever the female is doing for her uterus and its contents, the fetus, she is doing for herself. All is a single entity. But at some point in gestation (approximately three months) the fetus's brain starts to receive information from its own parts. As it matures, it will experience tactile and auditory sensations, as well as differentiate internal from external stimuli.
Until then the fetus lives in a nondifferentiated, merged state of passive calmness. This blissful state is imprinted and remembered in our minds and bodies as the most secure and most peaceful existence, rendering us incarnates of longing. For the remainder of our lives, we long for this soothing state in its innumerable forms and situations, either directly and primitively trying to enter women's inner space or less primitively and indirectly seeking transitional objects. The term transitional objects, in fact, has been adopted to refer to substitute external objects (not part of the body) to soothe the infant, such as blankets or bibs, soft toys (like the classic teddy bear), certain clothing and familiar objects, even people who may function as surrogate soothers to whom babies may connect when anxious.
Our transitional objects are clear agents of continuity, as the sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel explains, constituting bridges between the self and the world. They help the child to feel connected at the same time that it is experiencing its most devastating separation. Dolls and stuffed animals allow the baby to separate from its mother while they are experientially embedded in the immediate environment. As intermediaries between "me" and "not me," they help to establish an ambiguous, transitional zone between the self and the world, permitting the child to feel simultaneously separate and connected. We can easily observe that adults in everyday life can also cling (literally as well as metaphorically) to transitional objects no longer associated with babyhood-mechanical objects like a CD player or cell phone, or even a car-as expressions of a strong emotional need to feel attached to something.
Children don't give up their transitional objects-nor should they be forced or cajoled to do so-until they are developmentally ready, that is, only after they have the capacity to attach to others without fusing with them.
At the opposite end of enmeshment, there exists an equally conflict-creating pattern of non-relating. Some people simply don't relate. I don't mean those with certain neurophysiological handicaps, such as autism or schizoid personality. There are individuals who do not consider relating to another person, never mind making the relationship a priority, important enough to invest their time and psychic energy. Relegating the relation to secondary significance is not limited to spouses. These non-relaters treat everyone (parents, children, friends) similarly. This stance may be to some extent tolerated with very creative people, but even then it is at a high cost to the individuals involved. However different from one another they may be in their personal lives, these creative people share an enormous capacity for original work-often accompanied by a lack of close relationships with other human beings. Some may, in fact, logically argue that, if they have very intimate engagement with families and friends, their singular achievements would be compromised, if not impossible. The heights of creativity demand long periods of solitude and intense concentration, which are difficult to maintain if a person is to engage emotionally with a spouse, children, or others. Creative people usually merge with their work, not with another person, in order to complete their selves. They mirror themselves on a canvas, or on a blank sheet of writing paper, or on a laboratory table. When they marry, their spouses no doubt chronically complain of being lonely, even in their "presence." A less tolerated version of this relegating of relationships to secondary importance is frequently observed with successful businesspeople and professionals.
Adapted from The Art of Serenity
