Seeing the Person Behind Your Spouse’s Persona

Part 2 of a 5-Part A Christian Counselor on Becoming Series

This series is staked on a premise outlined in Part 1: that the emerging “Self” is not self-centered, but quite necessary for survival, safety, and service to others.

Because the “differentiated” Self is “separate and together,” it’s by nature genuinely relational, trusting, and emotionally available to others. Its boundaries function not to exclude others, but to create sanctuary and to risk intimacy in relationships.

This core Self knows to befriend, but also to firmly mitigate, those less developed (although quite sophisticated) ego selves that are always bargaining for attention, control, and security.

As we’ll see, the attuned Self can also call out the core Self in another person, but without overstepping its bounds or losing itself.

Reality in Fantasy

It might help to begin visualizing these concepts in a story – because all life and relationship is rooted in narrative.

The movements of a Self-in-relation are richly illustrated in C.S. Lewis’s allegorical fantasy The Great Divorce (between Heaven and Hell). Lewis’s purgatory-like “Hell” is characterized in part by the choices people make to stay rutted in the demanding, tired old ego scripts of their undifferentiated selves – choices that are devastating to relationships.

In Lewis’s book, the Ghosts bused in from “the grey town” encounter the celestial “Solid People,” or citizens of Heaven whom they once knew on Earth. But now, reunited in the foothills of Heaven, the Ghosts discover that the rubric of relationship is quite different.

The Weight of Change

The Solid People (known as Bright Spirits) have been sent to invite and escort the Ghosts up into heaven’s mountains. However, making this trek will require the Ghosts to inhabit a Self – which means suffering for the sake of real change (instead of chronic misery).

The need for change becomes painstakingly clear: though only in the foothills, the Ghosts can barely stand the solidity of heaven’s reality. Even a pointed blade of grass is hard on ethereal Ghost feet. The emotional blackmail and ego-flexing that Ghosts are so fluent in from their earthly days is … flimsy. It does not carry the same clout in these new environs.

The real weight is in the emotional honesty and transparency of the Solid People, each living from his or her wholly differentiated, but overflowing, “core Self” (my term) – a Self that fully realizes and expresses its perfect union with Christ.

The Lady, the Dwarf, and the Tragedian

The reader is introduced to Sarah and Frank Smith. A married couple on Earth, Sarah died first and has been living as a Solid Person in heavenly realms for some time. Now referred to as “the Lady,” Sarah is robed in a regal, joyful luminosity, and tended by a procession of singing angels, animals, and other Bright Spirits.

In contrast, Frank arrives not as a singular, unified Self, but as a pair of “phantoms.” At first glance it seems Frank is the taller Ghost called the “Tragedian.” But this ghastly figure is actually collared, chained, and directed by a minuscule “Dwarf” Ghost beneath it. And it’s the Dwarf or someone masked by the Dwarf, whom the Lady addresses as Frank.

The Dwarf rarely speaks for itself. Instead, it jerks the chain to summon the pretentious, theatrical antics of the top-hatted Tragedian, whose role it is to recite old grievances from Frank and Sarah’s earthly relationship while casting self-serving suspicion on the Lady’s gestures of kindness.

The few times the Dwarf dares to speak in its own croaked voice, or to return the Lady’s gaze and really drink in the beauty of her true Self, a curious thing happens: The human Frank begins to emerge in shape and dimension. His Dwarf-ish features fade as he rounds into form. Less shadow, more substance.

This alarms both the Dwarf and the Tragedian. They take turns alerting each other to their loss of control, then regrouping to question the Lady’s character. At times, the two phantoms speak in unison, which at first shocks the narrator, a fellow Ghost who’s observing the scene:

I realized then that they were one person, or rather that both were the remains of what had once been a person. The Dwarf again rattled the chain.

For the longest time, the Lady ignores the Tragedian. She stares intently into the Dwarf. It’s as if she’s caught a glimmer of Frank’s core Self beneath the strategizing of his two fragmented ego selves: the deviously shy Dwarf who plays small, and the bullying, blustery Tragedian who does his bidding.

The Lady’s carefree love and laughter flow out of herself, yet in a Self-contained way. The Ghosts are insulted that the Lady has been just fine in heaven without them. But she refuses to be baited into justifying herself, or guilt-trapped into pleasing and pursuing them. She confesses that her earthly love was “mostly a craving to be loved.” She has “missed” Frank here, yes. Only, not in the same needy way.

“Come and see. You shall be the same. We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.”

As the Lady’s differentiated love penetrates the Dwarf’s defenses, the outlines of Frank’s face slowly appear again. He begins to grow in size and solidity. He becomes more fully himself. But the Tragedian, fixated on his role, howls in despair:

“She needs me no more – no more. No more,” he said in a choking voice, to no one in particular.

Frank is both drawn to and terrified by “the sweet compulsion” of a love so firm and free. “Merriment danced in her eyes” as the Lady confronts her former lover. She asserts the authority of the true Love she’s now living in instead of grasping for.

“Frank! Frank!” she cried in a voice that made the whole wood ring. “Look at me… What are you doing with that great, ugly doll? Let go of the chain. Send it away. It is you I want. Don’t you see what nonsense it’s talking?”

Christian Counseling: From Persona to Person

In Part 3 of this series, we’ll see how the Lady’s encounter with the Dwarf and the Tragedian plays out. Frank is lost in what the renowned analyst C.G. Jung described as the dark, wounded “shadow” side of himself – those denied parts we are too ashamed to acknowledge. If we don’t work to honestly see and integrate these parts (the Tragedian and Dwarf, in Frank’s case), then we risk being dominated by them instead of redeeming their enormously rich potential.

Frank is like all of us – he sees, dimly. He wants to see more but doesn’t. He’s ambivalent about his own growth. With his defensive posing, his hiding, and blaming, it’s hard to locate the real person behind the projected ego personas. These personas are ‘protecting’ Frank, yet slowly destroying him.

Christian counseling can help you to identify where you’ve become misaligned with your core Self in God, and where you’re at the mercy of your “shadow” parts. If you contact me here, I would welcome the opportunity to explore with you a freer and truer way of living.