Intimate Relationships and the Ego

For the ego, an intimate relationship is a contract from which it hopes to gain worldly things such as security, wealth, sex, and/or social status. The contract is “If you give me one or more of these things, then I will give you one or more of them in return.” The relationship is based on a set of demands, and giving is done only to get. Each partner is expected to perform tasks in order to be “worthy” of the other. As soon as one fails to uphold their end of the contract, the other becomes upset. There is no acceptance – there is only the constant desire to have someone satisfy the ego’s demands. This is a hostile relationship.

An egoic person cannot properly serve his partner because his ego comes first, and he cannot serve two masters. He is too focused on satisfying his ego to fully care about his partner. If his partner is also egoic, then she cannot properly serve him either. Each ego is a sort of paramour that prevents the two partners from truly connecting.

When neither person lives through their ego, then a real relationship is possible because each true self is free to serve the other. There is no third or fourth entity demanding, giving to get, or becoming upset. Only true selves are involved, and the true self is incapable of negativity. As a result, there is nothing but gratitude and love, and if there is any desire, it is only the desire to give.

Who Suffers?

As we well know, the ego's desire causes suffering. It wants something, feels a sense of lack without it, tries to get it, and experiences disappointment when it does not get it.

But who suffers? The true self, or the ego?

What is the ego? A thought process. A thought cannot suffer.

But the true self does not desire the things that the ego desires (wealth, social status, etc). It simply is. Therefore it has no unfulfilled desire. So how can it suffer?

Yet we perceive suffering.

Ah, there's the key word: perceive. We perceive that we suffer. But do we?

When we live through the ego, we are pretending to be it. We fantasize that we are this little action figure that desires things. Since we don't have those things, we pretend that this conceptual self is incomplete, lacking something, in an unpleasant state. So we imagine that it is suffering. Since we are pretending to be this conceptual self, we pretend that we suffer. It's like watching a play or a movie: we temporarily identify with a character and pretend to feel what s/he is feeling. Eventually the play or movie ends, and we no longer imagine that we're feeling those feelings. Similarly, when we wake up to who we really are, we no longer imagine that we are a suffering little ego.

So we don't really suffer; we only pretend to suffer. And this imagined suffering will end as soon as we stop pretending to be an ego.