Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, talked about the Inner Marriage as a way of individuating, or becoming your own, full, whole self. Individuating refers to becoming an individual separate from entities like your parents and the collective culture, our society, i.e. really owning your own beliefs, rather than following the masses, and things like this. Individuation refers to becoming fully you, authentically and genuinely you!
So, translating some of Jungian terms to the “modern” coaching world.
Individuation=becoming authentically you!
So one of the things that this concept brings up is: how do you marry your masculine and your feminine (as talked about here, regarding the “Masculine & Feminine Power” or here about “Feminine & Masculine”)?
The thing is it is NOT about ONE OR the other….rather, about BOTH AND…It’s not just about being receptive and inspired. It’s also about putting that inspiration into action.
So–how do we marry the feminine & the masculine? How do marry the receptive and the active?
You may or may not be married in “real” life, but if you think about any kind of partner and you think about what it’s like to figure out what it’s like to live together, you know that it takes something. It takes adapting, adjusting, to one another’s styles, flairs, stages, processes. One person might be really neat and tidy, but not clean, and the other vice-versa. One person might be very detail-oriented, while the other is really great at seeing the big picture.
As you can see, it’s not about gender at all. We all have more active parts and more passive parts. And the Inner Marriage is about how do these more active & more passive parts work well or better together–inside of us??! Not even just about in our partnerships, but about within our own selves. The tendency is that the more we work on our OWN Inner Marriage the more we find the right partner for ourselves on the outside, the more we find right relationship with the external world around us.
I know that happened to me. When I finally started looking at the kinds of partners I was attracting, I really committed to transforming the negative qualities–that I kept finding and projecting onto the external in the partners I was attracting–within MYSELF, and then I started attracting a whole different kind of partner.
I have heard, for example, like in the Lady Boss LoungeFB Group with Britny West, I saw someone post about “Would you hire yourself?” It’s the same principle: are you being the change you wish to see in the world?
So I leave you that. Inner Marriage is: Are you being authentically you??
If you are interested in finding out more about the Feminine & Masculine, I invite you to check out these other Blog Articles I wrote about:
The Feminine & Masculine
The Distinction between Feminine & Masculine Power
Action from the Feminine
The Importance of the Masculine Principle
