Integral Relationships: A Manual for Men

Integral Relationships: A Manual for Men integrates the socioeconomic, biological, psychological, developmental and spiritual dimensions of love relationships into a comprehensive map that allows men to meet women with integrity, strength, understanding, and kindness at their level of consciousness. In Part I of the manual, the reader learns how to differentiate between the biological sex, learned social gender roles, and feminine/masculine polarities of males and females. This allows him to understand her primary sexual fantasy to attract a successful male protector and provider with status and wealth, her primary emotional reaction of fear, her social expectations, and how to balance and harmonize the opposing poles of agency, communion, ascending (Eros), and descending (Agape) that generate sexual attraction and synergy. Next, the manual provides information about multiple intelligences, competencies, values, interests, passions, and emotional needs that must be compatible between couples for their relationships to thrive. The following chapter covers developmental levels of consciousness (from archaic to transpersonal), spirituality (from gross to non-dual), sexuality (from repressed to transcendent), and his anima and her animus complex. The understanding of her levels of development in these four crucial domains is paramount for his ability to meet her as an opposite and equal partner. The final two chapters in Part I discuss states/phases of love relationships that allow him to stay cool when the various hormones that impair his and her ability to make rational decisions rush in, and personality types that help him to understand her behavioral patterns and how she gives and receives love. Part II of the manual introduces the fact that humans have (1) an interior mind and (2) an exterior body, and are (3) simultaneously whole as individuals and (4) part of larger collectives. This insight allows him to identify eight forms of love (none-love, friendship, infatuation, commitment, romantic love, crazy love, companionate love, and integral love) that he or she may experience in kind and degree when a resonance in their collective interior (which generates intimacy), exterior (which generates passion) and/or unconscious dimension (which generates various forms of dependence) is experienced. Part III of the manual informs the reader how to use observations as well as answers to specific questions to determine a woman s highest level of consciousness, spiritual, sexual, and animus development. Combining his insights with the number of perspectives (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th person etc.) that she can take, allows him to define her Kosmic Address which provides him with pointers to the type, quality, and sustainability of the partnership for which she is available for. He can then decide to improve an existing love relationship (if she is willing and capable to do so) or to end it with compassion and to develop an integral dating strategy to find/attract a more compatible partner. Appendix I of the manual provides integral reviews of 30 selected self-help books for singles and couples that allow him to quickly select additional reading material that supports him in addressing relationship challenges. A comprehensive Bibliography and Index complete the manual.