Relationships, Intimacy & the Unconscious
Why Relationships Feel So Confusing
in Midlife
By midlife, which can begin as early as your thirties, assumptions and ideas about relationships often start breaking down. You may find yourself questioning whether to stay or leave and feel confused about your attraction to someone outside your relationship. This attraction can cause anxiety and shame, but it doesn't usually mean what you think it does.
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If you've already made the decision to end a long-term relationship, jumping into the arms of what appears to be your white knight or soul mate without a period of self-analysis can lead to red flags that you ignore out of fear of making another mistake. "I'm not going to screw up this one," you tell yourself, forcing honesty into your shadow.
You might swear off dating totally out of fear, or get back out there and drown in vulnerability and awkwardness.
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This is not a regression.
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All of this is part of a normal psychological reorganization and an opportunity to uncover the parts of you that have been hiding in your unconscious.
You’re not doing relationships wrong. You didn't fail.
You’re ready to learn how to experience a deeper level of relationship
with yourself and others.
The Hidden Agenda in
Every Relationship Encounter
Every relationship, no matter how long, carries a hidden agenda — not in a manipulative sense. Relationships are the primary way we learn about ourselves and are prompted, even forced, to grow psychologically and spiritually.
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We are drawn to people not only for the reasons we're conscious of, but for what they symbolize and constellate inside us. Attraction often arrives as a feeling, an intensity, or a sense of inevitability before we understand its meaning. Unfortunately, from then on, our minds begin asigning meaning based on automatic beliefs and assumptions, most of which are unconscious and limiting.
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At midlife, we may have outgrown the relationship, or might not have learned the lessons. Our psyche might be less willing to maintain old compromises. What we’ve disowned, delayed, or adapted to becomes untenable, and because we're usually unaware of what's percolating, our unconscious may be dramatic in trying to get our attention to face the truth of our situation. ​​
Anxiety, exhaustion, headaches, injuries or illness, fantasies, or strong urges we can't resist are all ways ​our unconscious is trying to get us to explore what's beneath the surface.
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It's complicated and it's sacred work to uncover the deeper meaning of our relationships, no matter how long they last.
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I loved my husband. I still do in a different way, but I never saw the hidden secondary agenda hidden beneath the surface of our relationship until after I had come to terms with wanting to end our twenty-four year marriage, which led to discovering my mother wound and how it showed up in my marriage.
I hadn't realized that I needed my husband to rescue me from the chaos of my relationship and sexual experiences before I had met him. Me, the independent feminist activist!
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Healing those wounds became the cirrulcum for my midlife unraveling and reconstruction phase.
There's a deeper reason you thought they were "the one,"
and it makes perfect sense.
Dating, Divorce, and Relating Without Needing
Learn more about a depth psychological perspective on sexual attraction.
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Dating after divorce or long-term partnership often exposes how much we’ve been taught to need relationships to stabilize our sense of self.
When intimacy begins with self-relationship rather than projection, dating becomes less about outcome and more about being open to an encounter. You are learning how to relate while not negotiating your worth.
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The paradox is that we need relationship experiences to see what we cannot see about ourselves. We learn through relationship, and if we learn the right lessons along the way, our sense of self strengthens.
Without needing an outcome, your heart and soul are open, which also means they are vulnerable, but mutual vulnerability is the only path to deep human connection.
As you grow your capacity to weather the discomfort of awkwardness, you are rewarded with new heights of ecstasy and depths of meaning you never knew were possible.​
You’re allowed to meet someone
without deciding what they mean yet.
Misunderstanding Sexual Attraction
Sexual attraction is one of the most misunderstood forces in adult life. We tend to treat it as either a command to act or a threat to suppress.
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From a depth psychological perspective, attraction is neither. It is information. It carries energy, imagery, and possibility — often pointing toward qualities or capacities seeking expression in you.
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Especially in midlife, sexual attraction can arrive as an initiatory force, disrupting certainty and inviting reflection rather than immediate resolution.​​
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Learn more about a depth psychological perspective on sexual attraction.
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You don’t have to do anything with attraction
to learn from it.
Psychological Sovereignty in Relationship
Psychological sovereignty is the capacity to remain in relationship with another person without abandoning yourself or using the other as a solution to your inner life.
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When sovereignty grows, projection becomes visible rather than remain unconscious. Desire becomes less urgent and more curious. Intimacy deepens because it no longer carries the burden of rescue, completion, or permanence.
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A psychologically sovereign person is already whole (mostly). They didn't start out that way, though. Midlife unraveling can be the start of a journey to psychological wholeness.
A psychologically whole person doesn't need another person to complete them. Their sense of worth is rooted in their relationship with Self, which is the bridge to the transcendent (God, Divine, quantum realm, nature, commuinity). Compliments are nice, but praise doesn't elevate and criticism doesn't destablize.
The psychologically whole person has developed the capacity to slow down and observe their experience of life rather than be controlled by it. Not all the time, but more than those who are not consciously exploring their unconscious.
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Being open to relationship encounters intead of needing them to be something allows for fully experiencing life instead of anticipating potential outcomes out of fear.
Learn about a depth psychological perspective on psychological sovereignty.
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Intimacy deepens when ...
no one is responsible for saving the other.
How is this landing in your body so far?
Uncovering the Hidden Meaning in Your Relationships
In my work, I use a simple framework to explore the deeper meaning of relationship encounters.
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Purpose - How is this relationship
asking me to grow?
Projection - What am I seeing in the other that belongs to me and vice versa?
Permanence - Am I confusing intensity with destiny? What is my deepest fear?
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These three words capture every aspect of relationship between all human beings, but they play out more dramatically in those of a romantic nature. If a couple can explore their relationship through this framework, no matter what happens, there will be growth, fulfillment and meaning.
These questions aren't meant to be answered quickly.
Which part(s) of your body are activated by each question?
Purpose
We often don’t discover the deeper purpose of relationship until after one has ended. Or if we’re lucky, we get a little glimpse when we have the humility to explore a conflict or dissatisfaction rather than avoid it. It can feel mind blowing to discover this ulterior motive that has been hiding from the mind, which thinks it knows exactly why we do what we do.
In my work with clients, we get out our magnifying glass and examine areas of friction without making anyone the bad guy. Our starting point is that all of our behavior makes sense once we understand our individual and family psychology. With that out of the way, we can be curious as we search for the root of our discontent which is showing up in our lives today.​​
Projection
So, how does this spiritual and psychological growth happen in a relationship? We relate through projection. It’s a simple concept that plays out in complex ways. One way to understand projection is to realize that we not only view the world through our unique lens, but we view other people’s experiences through our lens as well. We get trapped in assigning meaning in a way that seeks to affirm and validate our perspective.
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Projection is helpful in the areas of our lives where efficiency is important. Unfortunately, our growth (personal, professional, psychological, and spiritual) depends upon not being imprisoned by our own perspective. Without a proper framework to manage all your varied experiences, you can become overwhelmed and fall back on rigid ideas, which over time become stagnant, limiting, and even dangerous.
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In my work with clients, we bring a sense of curiosity to the process of debriefing old and current conflicts, slowing them down as if we were watching a movie. We step back and search for all the small pivot points leading up to the emotional reaction. From there, we use neuroscience to strategize which tools can help disrupt the momentum of what we now know is predictable.
Permanence
There’s an interesting paradox at play in relationships. Real knowledge of this paradox, as with all paradoxes, requires really knowing it in the mind AND body. Here it is. The more you cling to the need for a relationship to be permanent, the less likely it is to last or be satisfying. We may prefer that a relationship last, but the need for it to last is rooted in fear, and fear is never a good motivating factor in relationships.
Let’s turn the paradox around and make it proactive: Letting go of the need for a relationship to be permanent, increases the chances that it will indeed last or be fulfilling even if it doesn't last.
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In my work with clients, we set aside the need to know the right answer, whether we should stay or leave. Whether I'm working with an individual or with a couple, my concern is individual truth first, which will naturally lead to discovering the answer that is right for both individuals, even if they cannot both see it at the time.
By now, you might have questions swirling in your head.
Journal about them, explore related videos, blog posts, and videos and then...
Relationship Encounters as Vessels of Deep Transformation
The six months following my divorce was filled with new life lessons that had little to do with finding a life partner. Rather, every one of the kind men I dated facilitated coming into healthier relationship with my body and sexuality. One of them became a dear friend.
My experience with them seemed to prepare me for a more serious relationship, this one bringing me closer to my inner being and the Divine. As a newbie depth psychologist, I sensed the a transcendent force mysteriously directed my first post-divorce relationship with a younger man, which facilitated the healing of my sexual and spiritual wounds.
To demand that this relationship be permanent seems selfish and arrogant. It had to end, but that man will always have a special place in my heart because our encounter cracked me wide open, leading to a deeper relationship with myself, the Divine, and unleashed me creatively.
In fact, I now understand that soulmates are not so much about being perfect partners. Soul mates are about soul making, which means finding truth for yourself. And this process of finding truth requires you to go against those who take the easier route and allow others to think for them.
Learn more about challenging conventional beliefs about relationships.
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In my work with clients, seeing relationships as vessels for transformation is a difficult step, because our minds are intent on keeping us in the familiar, even if it is dysfunctional. What is even more challenging is when the relationship is "good enough," yet you sense it has run it's course. Not being able to find a "good enough" reason to want to move on can feel like torture. In fact, the unconscious will begin searching for reasons to make your partner the bad guy, and that's not fair to them. Add your family and friends warning you that the grass isn't greener on the other side (this reflects their own fears), and society's judgment of you as a failure, can be the hardest challenge of your life.
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Yet, you are the highest authority of what is right for you! ​
From this perspective, relationships are not just personal stories. They are psychological and sometimes spiritual initiations. They undo us where we are rigid. They awaken us where we are asleep. They ask us to relate more consciously to desire, power, embodiment, and truth.
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Some relationships come to awaken, not to stay.
What if your current relationship is shaping you,
not completing you?
Related Resources for Relationships, Intimacy & the Unconscious
Image by Kendra Cunov
If you’d like to explore this terrain more slowly, these resources offer different entry points. You don’t need to take all of this in at once. Start where curiosity feels alive.
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