Anima Projection

I'm 38, been married 12 years and have a young son.

Recently I've become reacquainted with a woman I knew before my wife.

I find that I can't stop thinking about her.

In fact the intensity of my feelings for her is in such contrast with the feelings I have for my wife (more like brother-sister than lovers) that I'm strongly considering divorce. I'm aware of how painful a divorce will be and at the same time staying in my marriage feels like death. Can you give me any perspective on this?

Welcome to a midlife crisis. Let's focus on the part of your dilemma that is most turning you upside down. If the attraction you are experiencing is so strong that it seems to flood your being, so strong that your usual controls are on the verge of being overwhelmed, you could be experiencing what the Jungian's would call an 'anima projection'.

Perhaps we are overstepping a little by tackling such a rich concept with the limited number of words we have here but you might find it useful to get a start on it. Basically an anima projection (a woman going through this experience with a man would be experiencing an 'animus projection') occurs when a man is highly charged or enlivened by a woman (or less commonly by a piece of land, or treasured art) to the point where all his energy gets directed to 'her' and his strongest sense is that he needs to 'possess' her in order for him to carry on with his aliveness. This urge is so strong that every other option feels like death.

The first important thing to realize is that the intensity of this 'attraction' is almost always in direct proportion to the amount of emotional deadness that the person has been experiencing the previous months or years. From what we have witnessed, people who get hit (and that is the right word) with an anima (animus) projection, have often been neglecting their inner selves, perhaps hiding out, perhaps deeply involved in some project or life task. Even though what they have been doing may have been quite fulfilling in some ways, deep down (perhaps even past their immediate awareness) they have been feeling empty, too long, and that emptiness represents a kind of a big hole in their being.

The most common mistake made by people who are experiencing an 'ap' is to allow themselves to fall into the immensely seductive trap of assuming that the object of their 'love' will fill this hole. They don't recognize that an 'ap' is as much as message to themselves as anything and that the message mainly has to do with reclaiming a lost part of themselves. If you are resonating with this so far, you might imagine a part of your own deeper psyche (a part more related to your feminine self) saying to yourself something like: "Hey this guy I'm living inside of has been going dead and he doesn't even know it. He's so busy running around there's no way to even get his attention. If he's dying, that means I'm dying too. I've got to do something dramatic to change this but I can't tell him directly because he's so busy up in his head, and so unaccustomed to looking inward, he won't listen to his own inner voices.. so. I'm going to deliver up some overwhelming images, dreams, and desires. That 'ignition' will help him to wake up to how dead he has been. Since his inner attention is mostly shut down and relatively untrained I'm going to have to project his lost sense of aliveness on someone (or something) so he has a chance of bringing it to his own consciousness. With him more rattled and humble (and all the usual controls shaken up) we can then get down to the real business of reclaiming ourselves."

The trouble is most people don't grasp the projection aspect of this drama and get even more lost as they spend their effort trying to 'possess' the person they dream will make them complete. Whether this person takes the form of an old flame or a young body or a fantasy lover matters not. Focusing all attention on the outside rather than doing the work inside is a continuation of the same old problem that created the hole in the first place. The juiciness of the pursuit might last for a period of time but without some serious inner exploration, nobody really grows the parts of self that need to grow.

Only you can decide whether or not to crash your marriage (and the world as your son knows it). We can tell you that from what we have witnessed, the person who is in a full-blown anima projection is not nearly as connected to consequences as they might 'believe' themselves to be. We can tell you your wife is not nearly as dead as you might imagine her to be and with a lot of hard work (which nobody in an anima projection wants to do!) you can probably get your marriage more to man-woman relating as opposed to the brother-sister relating you are experiencing now. We can also point out that individuals who receive anima projections (individuals who are well matched in deadness deep down) might experience excitement at first but eventually get squashed by the burden (Marilyn Monroe is a classic example).

Before you do anything we strongly suggest you undertake some personal deeper level exploration in order to come back to earth and really get a better handle on everything that is happening to you at this point in your life. The state you are in is a signal for significant change and the biggest change needs to happen inside you.

By Doug Moseley