The Dance of Relationships
Larry B. Gelman, Psy. D.
Relationships between a man and a woman are like a dance.
With a dance, we have been taught that “the man leads, the woman follows.”
However, in my opinion, the man leads by following the woman to lead him.
The woman follows by leading the man to follow her.
Consider my version, on psychological grounds, of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Adam is created first; therefore, he leads; Eve is created second, therefore, she follows.
(“Let he who would be first, be last and serve the rest.”)
The ’deal’ is for as long as Adam and Eve do not partake from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, all is well.
But cross the ’Big Guy’ and the ’deal’ is off!
As I recall, the snake gets the blame for seducing Eve to break the rule.
The moment she partakes from the tree of knowledge, she has pioneered “free will,” as both an elective choice and as a volitional action, in vivo.
Eve then invites Adam to “take a bite” but he immediately hesitates for fear of the consequences.
She encourages him to do so anyway because she had chosen that “whither thou goest, I too shall follow.”
Despite his reluctance, Adam, eventually, accedes to the repeated entreaties of the “temptress” Eve.
Once he partakes from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, like Eve, they now ’know’...just like their Creator!
They are now confronted with their nakedness (or “raw truth”) and are promptly cast away, out from the mindless idealizations of their infantile dependency upon a parentifying
caretaker.
The lesson is clear: the price of knowledge is the loss of innocence and eternal banishment from the Garden of Eden.
Into the real world must they now enter, hand-in-hand, to recreate Paradise, anew, in their own image.
Now lest you conclude there are any “bad guys” in my rendition, the story actually, worked out exactly as it was designed to, since the Creator, not only created Adam and
Eve along with the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge, but also, He created the snake and the construct of “free will” ...all divine creations of the divinely Divine!
Adam and Eve were supposed to be “tested” as to whether or not they would forever remain psychological children to be taken care of by an Almighty parent or opt to take care of themselves and each other, in order to parentify “the child within,” for each to each and each to the other and to freely choose their path by their own acts of freely-willed self-creation.
To recapitulate:
Relationships between a man and a woman are like a dance.
With a dance, “the man leads, the woman follows.”
In my opinion, the man leads by following the woman to lead him.
The woman follows by leading the man to follow her.
Adam and Eve danced the first dance.
In your dance, you can choose who leads and who follows.
You have “free will”.
But be duly forewarned...
That once you partake from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge...
You shall forever be as God!
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Author Note: Dr. Larry B. Gelman is a Clinical Psychologist and a Personal Mentor
Copyright © 2014-2023 Larry B. Gelman, Psy. D. All Rights Reserved.
