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I'd like to begin with a quote from a favorite writer of fiction and essays, David Grossman (2008):
If we observe those around us, we will find that even between couples who have lived together for decades — who have lived more or less happily, and who love each other and can function well as parents and as a family — there can often be almost instinctively and unwittingly, a complex unspoken agreement (whose application, incidentally, requires a most sophisticated and nuanced form of collaboration) the main tenet of which is that it is best not to know one's partner through and through. Not to be exposed to all that happens within him. And not to recognize these “occurrences” or name them explicitly, because they have no place within the framework of the couples' relationship and they might even tear the relationship apart from the inside and bring it crashing down, something neither partner desires. (p. 32)
Later on he notes:
… we human beings are uneasy about what truly occurs deep inside the Other, even if that Other is someone we love. And perhaps it is more than unease; perhaps it is actual fear of the mysterious, nonverbal, unprocessed core, that which cannot be subjected to any social tamping, to any refinement, politeness, or tact; that which is instinctive, wild and chaotic, not at all politically correct. It is dreamlike and nightmarish, radical and exposed, sexual and unbridled. It is mad and sometimes cruel, often animalistic for good or for bad. It is, if you will, the magma, the primordial, blazing material that bubbles inside
This paper is a version of a discussion paper in response to Virginia Goldner's paper, “Romantic Bonds, Binds and Ruptures: When Love Hurts,” presented at the Fifth Annual PCPG/NCSPP Annual Event on October 27, 2012, at the David Brower Center, Berkeley, CA.
Page 8every person simply because (s)he is human, simply because (s)he is an intersection of so many forces, instincts, longings and urges…. To be able to touch, if only for a moment,