Reflecting on “The Double Flame” by Octavio Paz

The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism….

Love requires us to become one with the object (our partner) and yet, eroticism requires us to be separate from the object of our love. In healthy, passionate, vivacious partnership, we are dancing between separateness and togetherness, between "you and I" and "we", between objectification and transpersonal. Human growth and development is similar in this way - in utero and infancy we are one with our mother, we are heartbroken as toddlers when we realize our mothers live autonomously outside of us, we explore the togetherness of the family unit as children (this is where divorce is the most heartbreaking), and then return (as if moving up the spiral) to separateness in adolescence as a necessary move into identity development (we are not our family, we are not our parents). In late adolescence and early adulthood (age 18-30), we are once again thrust into togetherness as we navigate love and intimacy and discover, oftentimes painfully, that life is not worth living alone. Developing into a mature adult requires that we integrate the desire for autonomy and freedom and the desire to belong to someone(s) and something. We learn how to move in and out of the transpersonal ("one" with you, "one" with everything) and the objectification ("you" are not me, and that attracts me to you). One important step is identifying which is the more "natural" state for you, which state feels more like home. For me, I was quite settled into the objectification state of being, so eroticism came easily and naturally. Love, which required that I set aside the "I" and that the object ceases to be "you" was uncomfortable for me for most of my young adulthood.

Who am I kidding, it still is.


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