The Theatre of Marriage

When things go wrong in our relationships, we often blame external factors such as other people, long working hours, or, more recently, the challenges of a global pandemic. However, a more significant reason why relationships suffer is that most of us have unresolved inner conflicts that interfere with our ability to trust and love. These conflicts occur between different and often competing 'parts' of our self, and also between parts of our self and parts of our partner's self.

This complex communication dynamic is easier to understand and work with if we imagine that we are each made up of many different selves, and the ones who get the least attention, love, and expression are those most likely to cause problems in our life. Understanding and learning to accept our 'characters' brings inner content and peace and frees us to focus on and nurture our relationships.

We are never 'out of character'

Most of us have acted or spoken in ways that feel ‘out of character’ and often these experiences leave us feeling confused, embarrassed, regretful, or ashamed. For example, angry outbursts, Freudian slips, an unexpected affair, a desire to drastically change our image, or sudden disinterest in a person or activity we have previously loved. In each case, we can feel as if we are 'not our self.' Our feelings, thoughts, and behaviours are experienced as strange, unwelcome as if they don’t belong to us and are beyond our control. Often we explain away these experiences as ‘hormones,’ a ‘bad day,’ or a mid-life crisis, and we usually try to ignore and forget about them.

Describing certain feelings and actions as ‘out of character’ uses an expression that disowns, refuses to recognise, or accept parts of our self. Yet if anything were truly out of character, what would its source be? What stands behind our impulse? From where do our odd thoughts arise? From where comes the urge, the unexpected desire, the unusual outburst? Every experience of self emerges from and defines our character.

The multiplicity of character

Most of our ‘selves’ emerge in childhood as adaptive responses to help us cope with specific problems or challenges. So, for example, my ‘people pleasing’ self might have developed as the best response to dealing with peer-group challenges and my 'rebellious self' might have developed to help me get attention at home. We all have ‘parts’ of our self that make appearances in different situations and whose moods and behaviours we are familiar with and incorporate as part of ‘me’ (the ego-self).

We also have parts of ourselves that we are less familiar with or less willing to accept as part of ‘me.’ These shadow selves represent aspects of our self and experience that we do not wish to remember, acknowledge or accept. In extreme cases, this dis-ownership can manifest as a dissociative personality disorder (DPD), in which our selves appear as distinct personalities that do not communicate or cooperate. A well-known case is that of the fictional character Dr. Jekyll and his ‘alter’ self, Mr. Hyde. The terrible consequences of Jekyll’s inability to experience Hyde’s personality and behaviour as belonging to him are well known. However, whilst DPD is more recognized today, it is still a rare disorder and should not be confused with the ordinary experience of multiple selves that affect us all.

A psychology of character

It was Sigmund Freud who set the stage for an everyday psychology of character. In his drama the id, representing our animalistic, pleasure-seeking self battles for supremacy with the superego, our moralistic, critical, and conscientious self. Our ego, the ‘diplomat,’ attempts to mediate between the two in order to adapt to the demands of living and achieving in a civilised society. However, it was Freud’s estranged colleague, CG Jung, who significantly advanced the idea of multiple selves, which he called ‘complexes’ and which, "interfere with the intentions of the will … produce disturbances of memory..appear and disappear according to their own laws [and] can temporarily obsess consciousness or influence speech and action in an unconscious way.”

Complexes, said Jung, behave like independent beings yet they do not always or even usually suggest pathology. We all possess complexes, also described as subpersonalities, ego states, parts or ‘selves’ and together they form our character which influences but is much more than our personality—which is the face we show the world. Character is, in James Hillman’s words,“the partial personalities who stir your impulses and enter your dreams, figures who would dare what you would not, who push and pull you off the beaten track, whose truth breaks through after a carafe of wine in a strange town. Character is characters, our nature is plural complexity.”

Thus there are many selves (mine and yours) involved in a relationship and all of them communicate and influence our feelings, choices, and behaviours. If we want to experience maturity and wisdom in our relationships we must make room for all the characters who ‘live’ within us—the place family therapist, Virginia Satir, described as the Theatre of the Inside. Yet too often we deny, hide, reject or dismiss these other selves—within us and within our partners. Including them in our life is, as described in Jungian or depth psychology, the work of integration—the meeting of our shadow selves and the waking up to the full cast of characters that live and influence our being.

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Meeting our selves

To meet some of our more influential selves—those who ‘interfere with the intentions of the will’—we need to develop tolerant compassion, meaning we become open, curious, and accepting of the strange, the ugly, the contradictory, conflicted, and paradoxical in us—and in others. Tolerance abates the war within so that some sort of dialogue and negotiation can take place. At first, nothing more than forgiveness and understanding is required. The ego ('me') forgives, for example, a shadow self for its destructive and disruptive influence and the shadow forgives the ego-self for its rejection and denial.

It takes time for the conflict between the selves to ease and for integration to occur. Your shadow selves are feral, mistrustful, and independent. They have been split off from the ‘me’ and used to fending for themselves. British author Jeanette Winterson describes how she has learned to 'take a walk’ with her ‘savage lunatic’ once a day. This lunatic is one of her selves, her inner critic, who denigrated and bullied her for years. By giving it voice for just an hour a day, her critic has softened and Winterson has been able to develop more trust and openness in her relationships.

Our selves will have much to say about our relationships and the more they are ignored or denied the more they interfere and sabotage. Perhaps, like Winterson, we should spend some time with our selves and also with different parts of each other's selves. Perhaps instead of only ego-to-ego conversations, we could try identifying and conversing with our 'extras' who are waiting in the wings for their turn.

Talking to our selves is not ‘mad.' It is an indication that we are developing a deep sensitivity to the complexity, intelligence, and mystery of the human psyche.