What is Authentic Relating? A Chat w/Marc Beneteau, Author of As Lovers Do & Broke, Single, Crazy & Old
Free to Be You and Me
How often do you feel free to be the real you? Do you even know what it looks and feels like to walk around being the real you? Are you so used to shape shifting from one persona to another to meet the expectations of all the different roles you play in your life that you've lost touch with that eternal inner child part of you?
What's the cost of walking around not being you most of the time? Are you so used to adapting to the world around you, you've lost touch with the real you? Maybe you've never known the real you and now you can't stand it. Or perhaps you're well aware of the resentment bubbling up from your depths from having to meet other people's standards.
There seems to be a general awareness that our Mental Health is suffering because we are not only trapped in bigger systems that want to control us, but it's even worse, because adapting to many of those systems isn't leading to the fulfillment that was promised. Or maybe you're one of the many people who are getting screwed by those systems, yet are forced to work within them, and worse yet, if you express your displeasure, you're the enemy now.
If we're finding it difficult to be authentic with ourselves, how can we possibly relate to others authentically? The most recent research about how we're evolving as humans confirms the need for humans to form deep connections and that these deep connections are important to continuing to evolve as a species.
The situation is quite urgent!
Things are breaking down. Some of us want them to break down faster, and others are so fearful of change that they're losing themselves in a collective psyche that's willing to use violence to avoid changing. The very presence of these climactive negative forces suggests that the change is coming no matter what.
Consciousness raising is happening in individuals and in quiet communities around the world. Everyone is playing their role perfectly in order to prompt this consciousness raising. Those with the courage to self-reflect about themselves and what the chaos is mirroring back to them to explore are part of ushering in new ideas about how to live as humans.
No matter your starting point, self-reflection is the key. A hundred years ago, CG Jung suggested something like, the fate of humanity depends upon the self-reflecting human.
How's your self-reflection going? I'm here to help.
Building the Capacity for Vulnerable Sharing
Women and men, everyone, we're all wounded by patriarchal systems. Women's wound is more obvious: demanding the right to self-determination. I trust that even though there are sinister forces seeking to put women's rights back into the bottle, that Genie has already escaped for good. Men's wound is more sinister and quiet, because it's other men who keep men in their place, and because patriarchal ideas about men rely on hierarchy and ranking, it is men who emasculate other men more than women, although many women participate in that too.
Carol Gilligan, American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist, best known for her work on ethical community and ethical Relationships, in her book, Why Does Patriarchy Persist? suggests that even though a majority of people/Americans believe in equality, patriarchy is now a defense mechanism we use to avoid the vulnerability required for deep connection.
Deep connection between people is the Answer! Think about it. The lack of deep connection is what allows the Supreme Court to bless the corporate poisoning of water in many communities. It is the lack of conneciton that leads to the plunge in empathy for those less fortunate. It is the lack of deep connection that has led to policies that entrench poverty and allow for the existence of billionaires when we all know that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What Does It Mean to Relate Authentically?
In this week's episode of Dose of Depth Podcast, I’m excited to have a chat with Marc Beneteau about relational Intelligence, authentic relating, circling, and Marc’s honest telling of the end to his “40-year war against himself and against the world.”
Marc Beneteau is the author of 4 books covering various topics in Relational Intelligence, Emotional Communication, sexuality, and human potentials.
He is a self-described “love revolutionary” and former “relational idiot” which, according to him, is not a bad qualification for the job of being a relational leader. His recent book is a memoir titled, Broke, Single, Crazy and Old: The Redemption of a Sex and Love Addict.
Marc retired from the tech field in late 2021 and now works full-time writing, speaking and is involved with culture-change projects. His special interest is in the Authentic Relating and intentional community spaces.
You can find interesting information on Marc’s website, including an Introduction to Relational Power, and an Introduction to the Circling Guide. I’ll include all those links below too.
I literally bumped into Marc’s work.
It was fall of 2016. I had just secured my MA in depth psychology and was accepted into the PhD program. My 24-year marriage technically had ended about six months earlier, and I got myself swept up in the most ironic love affair with a man 17 years younger. That’s all in my coming memoir titled When Sex Meets God: a midlife story.
Anyway, I was at the bookstore, I backed up into a Marc’s book. It was a numinous experience and my soul was being nourished as I read, As Lovers Do: Sexual and Romantic Partnership as a Path of Transformation.
It was written as a manual for men to create deep love and powerful sex with any woman, but I didn’t read it as a manual for men at all. I read it as a beautiful exploration of the fluidity of the inner masculine and feminine inside all of us. It was one of the best books on relationships that I had ever read.
Over the next year, during my PhD courses, I was led to my topic of research. I certainly would never have thought of it on my own but exploring women’s experience of reconciling sexuality and spirituality through the Jungian Theory of Individuation ended up being the task of my midlife unraveling and reconstruction.
The book gave me a framework to understand my own receptive feminine, which is not passive. To receive is a choice. Coming into deeper relationship with my unconscious, my feminine, and giving my masculine a break, led to my creative unleashing.
It also helped me understand a period where a fantasy of sexual submission was torturing me. It’s all in the memoir. I still recommend Marc’s book on a regular basis to people.
I know my conversation with Marc will be juicy, vulnerable, and even humorous, which is the best way to survive a transformative experience.
Starting with Self-Intimacy
Coming into deeper relationship with yourself can be one of the most difficult journeys you ever take. Those who put others first aren't being as altruistic as they think they are.
To choose YOU prepares you to be more effective in relating with others, because you stop using other people to fill some psychological hole you have that needs to be filled by you, not others.
When we take back what we're projecting onto others, and dare to meet our inner being, the initial painful vulnerability will transmute into pure presence. Coming into relationshp with the Self is a spiritual experience because the Self is the bridge to the Divine, God, nature, the quantum realm, whatever you wnat to call it. When you touch the Divine, you feel new depths of meaning and new heights of ecstasy.
Try my guided meditation about self-intimacy and see what happens. If you're ready for a deep dive into your unconscious, subscribe to my website to get a steady Diet of free content to help you self-reflect. If you're ready to hire an expert, check out my services page and schedule a free exploratory chat.
Thank you for being a self-reflecting human
Dr. Deborah
Originally Published on https://www.deborahlukovich.com/blog/
