Intimate Relationships and SD
Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2021 8:56 am
I wanted to share an interesting piece on the SD model applied to intimate relationships that has helped me grok the SD model a bit better.
http://integralleadershipreview.com/148 ... velopment/
http://integralleadershipreview.com/148 ... velopment/
I still might not know what in the heck I am talking about, but my lightbulb insight was something like "Money is Evil" at Green is just like "Gender Roles are Evil" at Green, and I do know what causes people to become so uncomfortable that they must transcend "Gender Roles are Evil." It's one thing to have an ineffective meeting with your political action group at the community center; it's another thing to have an ineffective meeting with your SO in the bedroom.At the stage of First Love this couple can integrate or loop back into aspects of the Roles Stage in their current process without fear of losing themselves or their identity. This can be seen in assigned duties where they can temporarily work in a hierarchical configuration. This helps avoid conflict other less developed couples would experience. In their sexual relationship, where maintaining the polarity between the masculine and the feminine (Deida, 1995) is combined with aspects of power (Schnarch, 2009), the couple is able to maintain a vibrant sexual encounter. David Daeda describes how the healthy masculine can open up a woman into her full femininity. A man in a relationship at the lower Relational Stage of development for example, occasionally moves too far and too quickly away from his power learned at the Roles Stage of development. Rather than bringing forth power and including “equality is…often overvalued so that differences tend to get flattened, marginalized or drained of vitality” (Masters, 2012). In this instance we are referring to Daedas’ masculine and feminine polarity. The diminishment of male power in the relational stage I have found sometimes correlates with problems in sexual performance. It appears that in an effort to become more mutual and equal, he rejects and thus fails to integrate masculine power to the detriment of himself and his lover. Transcending without including masculine energy precludes a fully charged dyadic sexual polarity, David Deida and David Schnarch independently concluded.