Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

54 Relationship Problems in a Nutshell
what you deserve.
The endless blather that takes place between two complexed
people solves nothing. It is a waste of time and energy and as often
as not actually makes the situation worse.
Of course, as Jung points out in the passage that heads this chapter,
the meeting between anima and animus is not always negative.
In the beginning the two are just as likely to be starry-eyed lovers.
Later, when the bloom is off the rose, they may even become fast
friends. But the major battles in close relationships occur because
the man has not withdrawn his anima projection on the woman,
and/or the woman still projects her animus onto the man.
We may understand this intellectually, but when our loved one
does not behave according to the image we have of him or her, we
are instantly complexed. Our emotions override what is in our
minds. Our reactions run the gamut from violence to anger to
grieved silence, and it is bound to happen again, with this one or the
next, unless we reflect on what is behind it: our own psychology.
Finally, the reality must be faced that no one relationship can
fulfill all our needs, as individuals, all of the time. One partner or
other may in time, for reasons of their own, feel drawn to intimacy
with another.
Such situations are of course fraught with conflict, both inner
and outer, but need not split the two asunder. The feeling function
must rule the day: What is my long-standing relationship worth to
me? If it is important enough to both, and where love is not wanting,
it will survive the turmoil, becoming all the richer for the
struggle, and the partners more conscious of who they are. 37
The pre-requisite for a good marriage, it seems to me,
is the licence to be unfaithful. 38
37 For more on this theme, see Jung’s comments on “the container and the contained”
in “Marriage As a Psychological Relationship,” The Development of Personality,
CW 17, pars. 331ff.; also Sharp, Getting To Know You: The Inside Out of
Relationship, pp. 107ff.
38 Jung, in William McGuire, ed. The Freud/Jung Letters, p. 175..