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Angels and Demons: The Perils of Friends with Benefits Relationships.
The Psychological Foundations
My quest is to maintain my core values (The Angel) without succumbing to (The Demons): the shadow: the negative (maladaptive) behaviours accompanying my quests for the ideal.
‘The Angel’ came from the longings for my mother’s love, ‘the ideal’ being the idealised love I believed I should have received from her. My vulnerability expresses itself in my desire for affection or seeing kindness in others (where it sometimes does not exist).
I project goodness onto others — the ideal I want to make real (The Angel). I always give them the benefit of the doubt whilst at the same time chastising myself. See, I cannot divorce one from the other; the Demon always accompanies ‘the Angel’ (the sacrifices and compromises I make to make real The Angel).
The Angel and Demon exist in a parasitoid relationship*. The Demons include behaviours that contravene the nucleus of the ideal (the Angel) and, in some instances, actively mitigate against its realisation. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the ideal; my challenge is not to warp reality to sire it into being.
The ideal encompasses the idealised relationship, one encompassing monogamy and romantic love. Some view romantic love as going against the values…
