Relationships
“Are you the hunter or the hunted in your current love relationship? “
“Relationship dynamics, who you are in relation to the other and what games do you play and how do you play them? What role do you play with your primary other? High status or low status, giver or taker, initiator or follower? It is entirely fascinating to see what role we find ourselves playing in these important relationships in our lives.
Often the nature of our relationship can fluctuate over time or within particular areas of life. For example, we may have met our current life partner at a stage of our life where we were in a submissive position, perhaps a student to their teacher or junior colleague to one more senior. We may find ourselves quite content for a period of time to exhibit a passive appreciation of their higher status within the relationship, but then things may evolve and the dynamic may alter.
Men and women often find areas of responsibility based on their gender, with a traditional power base for the woman perhaps being domestic issues and things related to the home and the male may exhibit some perceived level of expertise in relation to a physical or structural adeptness in the world. Of course in the twenty first century many of these gender based assumptions are now obsolete, but whatever the situation, it can be highly rewarding to bring some analysis to the inherent dynamics within your intimate relationships. Understanding that there ultimately needs to be fluidity within these dynamics, is a precursor to the successful maintenance of these relationships in accordance with your growth and evolvement as a conscious human being.
Are you the hunter or the hunted in your current love relationship? Bringing things back to basics, back to their archetypal nature, is often very useful in understanding your relationships. In most cases how a relationship began, who courted who, who was the pursuer and who was the pursued, tells you what the primary dynamic within the relationship is. I know that within my own relationships over the years, this ultimate orientation has affected many aspects within the relationship itself. For example I have always derived much stronger emotional and sexual satisfaction from relationships where I was the pursuer, and probably in accordance with this, these relationships have caused me more intense pain and upset too. Whereas the relationships where I have been the more passive recipient of another’s amour have often suffered from my ennui, and this is despite the fact that these people have often been very loving and wonderful exponents of the art of love and relationship.
I would posit that for me it is ultimately important that I am the aggressor in love, the hunter and not the hunted. Sexual relationships revolve around archetypal basics like this more than any other types of relationships because our sexual selves are very close to our earliest instinctive, animal like, perspectives on life. What would you best describe as your position on the jungle’s see saw of love and lust?”
©Sudha Hamilton – excerpt from his book House Therapy: Discovering who you really are at home.
