Marriage thoughts include the archetypal wife

Today on Vanessa's blog Into Something Rich and Strange, she writes about her upcoming marriage to Phil and how they plan to live as a married couple. After mentioning some helpful resources, Vanessa shares, "At the same time, I just finished Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore, which is a fabulous book and has helped my thoughts on ALL of the above areas start to crystallize. This morning, because I didn't feel ready to put it down, I was flipping back through Care of the Soul, looking at some of my underlinings and dog-ears. I came across the following passage in a chapter entitled "Jealousy and Envy: Healing Poisons," which discusses Hera, wife of Zeus and taker of vengeance against his paramours." Vanessa quotes from Moore's book about wife, including,

"It takes special skill and sensitivity for a man or woman to evoke the wife within a relationship. Usually we reduce the archetypal reality to a social role. There are ways that Hera can be drawn into the relationship so that being an attentive and serving partner is vitally present in both people. Or Hera might be evoked as the atmosphere of mutual dependency and identity as a couple. In the spirit of Hera, the couple protects the relationship and values signals of dependency. For Hera, you make a phone call when you're on a trip or out of town. For Hera, you include your partner in visions of the future."

Vanessa follows with her own feelings about inferiority and dependence.