What does the Eros and Psyche myth tell us about sexuality, love and consciousness? They’re not easy and they must be earned. Of course, this flies in the face of what self-indulgent, feel good movies and therapists who pander to their patients’ self-pity, beliefs and entitlement impart. “I just want to be happy. Why can’t I find someone to love me?” My question in turn is “What have you done to deserve it?”

There are different kinds of love: the familial love between parent and child; between siblings; between friends. That’s different. I’m referring to romantic love between two adults. Chronological age, however, has nothing to do with emotional and psychological maturity.

Early childhood is a time of dependence and symbiosis with your parents. It’s a necessary and safe cocoon needed in the first part of life. Adolescence ushers in a period of rebellion and our first clumsy attempts at autonomy. Attaining adult awareness or consciousness is a difficult journey spanning across a lifetime. Attempts to force or dictate it lead to personal suffering and tragedy.

Psyche attempts to become conscious too soon in her development and suffers the consequences. She tries to force the outcome she believes she needs. The journey toward consciousness requires that we confront inner daemons, childish fears and beliefs and experience them, not run away from them. Some people confuse making the same effort over and over and over with facing their fears and personal growth. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Keep pushing that boulder, Sisyphus.

We childishly try to force an outcome that will never work. We petulantly hold onto the belief that this effort, this relationship must work because the alternative is experienced as devastating and ego annihilation. We must have this thing or person to be happy and feel good about ourselves. We struggle to “win” in a relationship; when we ought to explore what it would mean for us to “lose.”

What painful feelings and images does it conjure? These are the source of primitive fears, doubt, shame, loss, and emptiness. Until these daemons are acknowledged, confronted, accepted and let go, we’ll never be able to truly embrace another because the fear of being in a relationship will continue to play upon these fears.

These are arduous tasks that take a lifetime and replay themselves over and over again. One of the most difficult tasks is integrating sexuality/love (Eros) with a higher consciousness (Psyche). They’re opposite aspects of life: Eros is instinctual, primal and irrational; psyche is deliberate, cerebral and rational.

It requires a “rebirth,” which is symbolized by Psyche’s descent and emergence from the underworld. Some of us have had those experiences in life and in relationships, which forever alter our perspectives, beliefs, and attitudes, and make it impossible to return to and earlier way of being. This is what I mean by “rebirth;” you’re a different person, yet the same. This is growth and it was probably incredibly painful at first.

Some people become stuck here and don’t move forward. They don’t recover from the destruction of long held beliefs and tell themselves, “I tried my hardest and gave my best effort to this particular person. That’s it. Nothing will work.” He acts like a child who folds his arms and holds his breath because he didn’t get his way. This is the vestibule to the doorway of change, growth and adult happiness. We can walk through it or hang out and pout. There’s always a choice, even if we don’t arrive to it willingly.

With each impossible task, Venus demanded, Psyche despaired and contemplated suicide (signifying the depression that often accompanies this process). Strength and assistance came from places you wouldn’t expect; lowly ants, the wind, an eagle. They’re symbols of what we can draw upon when our trials seem too daunting- nature. Slow determination and persistence in the most humbling of circumstances are what guide us. In order to experience joy, you must first know suffering.

This is how we develop as aware, autonomous individuals. Many of us try to find ourselves through another; this never works and generally ends badly. I’ve often wondered if this is one of the contributing factors to the astronomical divorce rates. If either one or both partners are unwilling and/or unable to make that journey alone or together, they will separate. Eros and Psyche did reunite; but not as whom they’d been at the beginning of the tale.

“For the happiness of both partners they must have a full life in the world, and with each other as equals. That, this story conveys, is most difficult to achieve for both, but it cannot be avoided if they wish to find happiness in life, and with each other” (Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, 1976, p. 295). This is easy enough to say, extremely difficult to do, but so very worth it.