What Are Your Thoughts On This Question?

Recently, a friend of mine posted an interesting question to a bevy of women who have been discussing and answering my friend's thought provoking question via email. Having just completed UNPAC: A Couple's Course, I found her question relevant--and I paraphrase--

"Why be in an intimate relationship--Is it
children? I can do
that alone....Is it intimacy? I have that with my
girlfriends....Is it sex?
Is that all?"

I do think that the couple relationship informs children. If there's something amiss with the parents, the children know and will express that in some form. The couple partnership--married, divorced, friends, enemies-- is foundational to a child's understanding of life and relevant to parenting.

It was helpful to me to ponder her question, and I've included, as part of this blog, her question and my answer. I'd enjoy hearing your responses!

her question...."What is different and sets a relationship with a
significant
other apart from the rest of your relationships, apart from
sex and children?

and my response....

"For me, companionship, children, and a support partner are
obvious benefits of being in an intimate relationship.

Besides
those, an
intimate partner relationship is perhaps the most significant
pathway to
spiritual and emotional growth. People are attracted to someone
with whom they
can work out
unfinished business from their childhood.
Otherwise, there's no
attraction. And through this difficulty, our deepest
wants and needs can be
fulfilled. The inevitable power struggle is the
spiritual journey on offer.

For instance, when I say yes to whatever
Life brings me with Claud, and
I'm willing to see Claud as a unique person,
and not as me--when I take back my
projections and am vulnerable with him,
when I own what I want and say it
solidly and I let my "yes" be "yes"
and my "no" be "no", when I choose love,
over and over, I am not only
growing the relationship but I am meeting my
destiny--
creating myself
as a woman who is closer to Source and more closely
the creation I'm meant to be.

The
rubbing against each other seems the problem, but it
is actually the answer
to how to become real."