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"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee." Genesis

So it is that we as women find our unique gifts cursed in the very first chapter of our Bible. The very gifts that we carry - the gifts of bringing forth life, cherishing and sustaining life, and the deep-seated longing for relationship - have been turned into a burden and have become the curse of the women who carry them. As we look at what has happened to these gifts, we enter the realm of the Shadow King.

Until recently, relationship, marriage and childbearing were essentially a woman's only choice in our patriarchal society and the Shadow King still agrees with this point of view. This was a woman's job in the world, whether or not she liked it. But relationship was no longer viewed as a gift; it had been turned into an anxiety-filled curse. The average woman worried that she would not have a proper place in ordinary society if she did not have a proper husband. Most women, and their Inner Patriarchs as well, viewed marriage and childbearing as their prime goal in life. They devoted the greater part of their early lives to "catching" a good husband. For the women who valued their freedom and independence, this requirement to be married and to bear children, was not very attractive.

Times have changed and now we have moved over to the opposite point of view. In our current social and political climate, the woman who longs for a monogamous primary relationship - in the past, we called this "a marriage" - often feels uncomfortable. She wonders if she is lacking something within herself when she feels a need for someone else to share her life. This attitude as an indication that the Inner Patriarch is working in the shadows of the unconscious. There is a Catch-22, however. Although he still requires a "real" woman to be married, the Inner Patriarch basically sees the yearning for relationship as womanly and, therefore, an evidence of weakness. He has no idea that this need for relationship, the desire to be partnered, might be a gift.

I have spoken to many intelligent and competent women in their thirties and forties who feel ashamed and weak because they are actively seeking a husband. They are uncomfortable because their Inner Patriarchs judge this quest as a sign of inferiority, and the goal of marriage as a womanly pursuit rather than a manly one. These women are embarrassed to let others know that they want to get married and that they are looking for a husband. Their friends or families usually worry about them and see this search as a real problem or, at best, a serious challenge.

It is a rare woman who allows herself to see this search for a husband as a proper age-appropriate goal and goes forth to reach this goal in an organized businesslike fashion using all the resources at her command. Instead most women trust to luck and, at best, make sporadic, disorganized and unfocused attempts to meet someone. They certainly would not treat a professional or work related goal in this way!

Interesting enough, when a man in his thirties or forties decides that it is time to get married, the announcement that he is looking for a wife usually is greeted with joy as though he has made a mature decision and is now ready to settle down. His friends and family are delighted to help him and are usually confident that he sooner or later he will meet someone appropriate. There is an expectation that it will take some time and several attempts, but this is not a deterrent. Thus the same decision is seen as a sign of maturity and manliness in a man and as a sign of weakness and neediness in a woman. This discrepancy is always an indication of the Inner Patriarch at work.

Let us look how the traditionally feminine gift of caring for others has been turned into a curse, first by the outer patriarchy and now by the Inner Patriarch. On the one hand, this natural need for relationship in women has always been valued. Until very recently, women were encouraged to approach the world as loving and responsible caregivers. On the other hand, this same need to care for others was seen as a weakness and was often used as a means of manipulation, exploitation and domination. Women were expected to do this because this was their nature. Therefore, they should not require anything in return for the gift of love and nurturing that they bestowed upon others. The Inner Patriarch still carries these values and we can see the cultural result: women expect to be caregivers and they are often exploited as such.

In fulfilling this role of the caregiver and the protector of relationship and family, women have learned to move beyond their own needs in order to meet the needs of others. This has been creative and quite wonderful in many ways, but women have paid a high price. We have lost our ability to make choices, to know what it is that we want, and to think for ourselves. It feels as though, in the realm of the Shadow King, there is a law that says: "Others come first." Women can only do as they wish after everyone else has been cared for.

However, it is the women who have disobeyed this law, and have moved away from these distinctively female gifts of relating and caretaking, who are most likely to meet with outer success. They are more likely to receive recognition in the world and financial rewards than the women who have devoted their lives to family, lovers, and friends. Thus the women who have disowned the traditional roles that emphasize relationship and nurturing are more likely to be valued by the Inner Patriarch. They are the ones seen as having led productive, fulfilling and successful lives.

Success and productivity is not usually equated with what we might think of as the ultimate act of creativity - the bringing forth of new life. Instead, in the realm of the Shadow King, this ability to bring forth new life has been, until recent years, like a jail sentence that a woman was forced to complete whether or not she wished to do so. It was her duty to get pregnant, and then to finish the pregnancy. This is the belief of the Shadow King, even though the woman may not have desired a child in the first place and a new child might well create an unlivable situation.

To do otherwise, to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, has been viewed as a sin, and has been written into our laws as illegal. In the interests of protecting the new life of the fetus, the woman's choice in this matter, her own needs, and her own life have been overlooked. It is my feeling that her awesome - yes, truly awesome - ability to create and destroy life is something that has felt dangerous and that the patriarchal society has needed to control. The knowledge that this is true power is something that the Inner Patriarch denies to women.

For me, the fear of this power over life and death is the underlying issue in the battle about abortion. Yes, abortion is killing an unborn child. The taking of life is a sin. It is an action to be considered very, very carefully. But most women are uncomfortable to say this aloud and to stand behind their actions when they do have an abortion. The carefully-considered decision of a woman to kill is too threatening, too evil in this realm of the Shadow King.

I find it interesting that this moral issue is never considered when, as a nation, we decide to go to war. There, too, lives are taken, many lives in fact. But I have never heard heated discussions over the rights of the people we are planning to kill when we go to war, only concern about our own projected casualties. And now with the automatic use of air power, we are not killing just the warriors who have chosen to go to war, we are killing innocent non-combatants as well. I am not talking about the outer world of policy makers or of men when I speak of this contrast in value judgments, but of our Inner Patriarchs as well. War, even in the Bible, is seen as an act of power if you do it for the right reason, but abortion, a woman's ultimate act of power (if we admit that it involves killing) is always seen as a sin.

About the Author

Hal Stone, Ph.D. and Sidra Stone, Ph.D. are the co-creators of Voice Dialogue. They are hopeless romantics and, as clinical psychologists with a combined experience of about 80 years, they are committed to keeping the magic and vitality in relationships. They have co-authored five books. Their latest book, Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship, sums up a lifetime of wisdom. Their books are available at local bookstores or from Amazon.com. www.delos-inc.com