With the pop-psych literature littered with references to the idea that couples need to find ways to agree, to communicate better, and to be validating of each other, it’s no wonder that marriage is in the state it is in today. We have not only lost what was once a good honest friend to us for the sake of being nice to each other, we have lost a worthy opponent.

It is a matter of balance. We have swung too far in the direction of niceness at the expense of our own authenticity – the result of the mythology of romance. We see it in movies, read it in books, and sing along to it on the radio. Every where we turn we get this romantic idea that we are supposed to be nice to our partners – to promise them that we will never hurt them. Nothing could be more harmful to the realities of mature love and passion. The hard truth is that for a mature, passionate love to emerge and grow, we have to stop being so darn nice and start being honest. A worthy opponent is always an authentic one.

The mythology of romance is what causes affairs in the first place. To be exact, the definition of romantic as it reads in the dictionary is “fanciful; impractical; unrealistic”. Yet we base so much of our very ideas of what love and marriage is supposed to be on romance.We lament the fact that romance has gone out of our marriages and we actually use this as a reason for cheating or separation or divorce. But in order for something authentic to emerge in our relationships, that which is fanciful and unrealistic and – romantic – must go! We think an affair is real – real love, real eroticism, etc. because it feels so real. Yet by definition, when there’s been an affair, “real” is exactly what is thrown out the window. Our emotions betray us. Affairs are romantic fantasy.

So what does it mean to be authentic in a mature relationship? Authenticity has everything to do with emotional honesty. We can’t be emotionally honest if we are either walking on egg shells or constantly criticizing – these two being the most common ways that we try to get our partners to change. We walk on eggshells because we hope to change them – to keep them from blowing up or falling apart. We criticize because we want to change them – to stop whatever it is they’re doing or to get them to understand us more or to get them to take out the dang garbage. It is impossible to be emotionally honest if we are focused on getting our partners to change.  Why? Because all of us know that we cannot change another person so to persist in something we know to be not possible is dishonest or inauthentic.

The surest route to emotional honesty – to authenticity – is being willing to take ourselves on rather than our partners – to expect more of ourselves than we do of them. Think about the Kung Fu metaphor in an earlier post called “Get Your Kung Fu On”. A practitioner of Kung Fu must be internally focused in the midst of a contest. She has to constantly keep her focus on her balance, her inner calm, and on her objective. If she loses focus on herself – and starts focusing intently on her opponent’s flailing about – she will get upset, off center, and confused. When we are grounded in what we want vs. what we want right now, we become the worthy opponent our partner can depend on in a good fight. Becoming a worthy opponent by reflecting on one’s own actions, by the way, is exactly what challenges our partners to grow too.