Therefore, he applauds her super-autonomous stance, finding it enormously attractive. The male partner in the emotional system that the pair has created would be the closeness-seeker, while the wife would express the autonomy needs for the pair of them. She would assume his need to be a separate person and assert it for him, along with her own. He would carry her need for warmth and relationship, along with his own, well within his conscious awareness—because staying close to the mate is his area of specialty. Inevitably, a pursuer-distancer relationship would develop.

Frustration and confusion are inevitable, because the rules of the system decree that neither can get what he or she seems to desire so ardently, and at some level both members of the pair seem to know it. In a way, the intimacy-seeker has promised to chase but never overtake the partner, and the autonomy-seeker has promised to run but never get too distant from her breathless, dissatisfied pursuer.

Suppose that the wife in this situation were offered a job that required her to spend long periods of time away from her spouse. In the course of making a decision she would tend to recognize her autonomy needs primarily and perhaps exclusively, while her husband would see and assert the competing needs for togetherness. As a result they would polarize around the issue and come out of their corners swinging—instead of recognizing that both of them want to be intimate and both of them want space in which to develop their own interests and separate talents.

Although ambivalence about personal space and the need for personal closeness to the partner is the basic concern, mates at Level 4 can and do polarize about any human-relationship issue that can be imagined—competence/incompetence, logic/emotionality, strength/weakness, martyr/tyrant, angry/never angry, irascible/even-tempered, devil/angel, and so forth. If the issue can be placed in a continuum, the spouses will be at either end of it

What one partner is, the other partner is not—or so it seems at the surface of the relationship. Underneath, however, self and other are inextricably and confusingly intertwined. For it is impossible when spouses use projection as a means of relating to each other for either mate really to know whether the anger is in himself or in the intimate other.

In these marriages the partners' underground wiring is crossed. A depressed wife may be hauling her husband's unacknowledged vulnerability and sorrow for him, while he is assuming her disowned healthiness—disowned because she learned in an earlier context that she was not loveable unless she was weak, needy, and dependent. Level 4 relationships are always characterized by such unconscious quid pro quos. The overriding problem for both of the spouses is that of recognizing just where one person ends and the other person begins. But so long as projections continue to be exchanged, that problem remains unresolvable.

LEVEL 3: CONSCIOUS SPLITTING

This level may best be thought of as a way station between the two very different interpersonal worlds that exist above and below it. When swept up in a marital battle, partners at this level are likely to behave and even feel like Level 4 couples, but eventually, when they calm down, they can acknowledge the existence of their own internal ambivalence.

The key difference at Level 3 is that even though the spouses are projecting unwanted thoughts and feelings onto each other, they are more conscious of doing so. Each is able, when the smoke clears, to take ownership of that dark, "split off" side of the internal battle—the need to be close or the need to be separate—that has been banished from awareness and is being connected to only in the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of the intimate,

Partners at this level may process unwanted mental material through each other—in other words, engage in Level 4 behavior—but they are able to achieve some insight about what they are doing. A story told by a husband and wife whom I interviewed is a good illustration.

The couple, who were in their early fifties at the time of our talks, had gone to Rome for what was to be a working vacation for him and a purely relaxing vacation for her. But the husband, once in Rome, became more and more involved with his Italian colleagues; he was the owner of a corporation and was thinking of forming an Italian subsidiary. His wife was left fuming and miserable in their hotel—or out sightseeing, and lunching, and sometimes even eating dinner by herself. The tension between the two of them rose as she continued to demand more of his time and attention and he asserted his need to devote himself and his energies to the important decision at hand. The trip, which was disastrous, culminated in one of those quarrels that neither finds it bearable to think about afterward.

What, exactly, had happened? To begin at the beginning of this sequence, the husband had asked his wife to accompany him—an intimate request on his part. Traveling together to a foreign country is, however, an intensely closeness-fostering experience, and a couple often has much more emotional contact in these circumstances than during the round of daily activities at home. He had apparently responded to what he perceived as intensified demands for intimacy by withdrawing, running away. Something about the situation had scared him, and his reaction had been to assert autonomy for the pair of them.

Later on he could acknowledge this, and was able to say: "Sure, I knew that I wanted to spend more time together, but she started haranguing me about my other arrangements almost from the time we got there! So while I did initially want to be with her, she didn't give me much space in which to feel that. My feeling was that I was being dogged—that she was chasing after me so hard that I'd better never stop running, or there wouldn't be a minute that belonged to me!" His own wishes for closeness had been thoroughly disowned in their interaction—but he could, upon reflection, recognize that such needs really did exist inside him, and had indeed been responsible for the original invitation. A Level 4 individual could not have made conscious contact with these repressed, denied aspects of the self at all.

The wife, it should be noted, had accompanied her spouse on this vacation in a less than totally willing frame of mind. She was a clinical psychologist with a demanding practice. Their trip to Rome had required her to take two weeks from a busy schedule—and then to sit there tapping her toes in a hotel lobby, when she would have been far more content to have remained at home. She could, however, admit that she had been unusually demanding and irritable because she disliked traveling, and hadn't really wanted to go along with him in the first place.

Why, then, had she gone? Her answer, given with a shrug and a wry toss of her head, was that she had decided to do so because he was so keen on it. It had been, given his enthusiasm, impossible for her to refuse him. So even before embarking upon the journey she was championing the togetherness and intimacy in the relationship, and discounting her autonomy. Little wonder that she had been so provoked by his withdrawal; she had sacrificed her own wishes and needs on the altar of closeness. In the course of their Italian sojourn they had polarized around the question of who wanted intimacy and who wanted to withdraw.

But each was, in retrospect, capable of becoming aware of the "split off" side of his or her internal conflict—her suppressed desire to be separate and his to be close. Couples at Level 4 cannot do this. They cannot recognize that there is any inner battle going on, for the autonomy-carrier perceives himself as uniquely without feelings and the intimacy-carrier perceives herself as wanting only warmth and togetherness. What is introduced at Level 3 is a greater awareness of complexity—of a conflict within the self as well as a conflict with the intimate partner.

Level 3 is not really an experiential world unto itself—as are the other levels I have described—but a mezzanine of sorts between the levels below and above it. One could, in fact, think of Level 3 as a large waiting room, with various couples milling around in it and with escalators bringing other couples down from Level 2 and still others up from Level 4. Those arriving from below would be partners whose relationships were improving-because both were in the process of taking conscious ownership of those devalued aspects of the self which they had been projecting onto the mate. Those couples coming down from above would be people whose relationships—owing to great stress or to difficulties arising around a life-cycle shift—were deteriorating. Such a pair might, if their problems remained unresolved, continue their journey downward; the relationship might even break apart. Or the partners might, over a period of time at this level, spontaneously move to the "Up" escalator and return to that far healthier transactional world with which they were already familiar.

LEVEL 2: TOLERATING AMBIVALENCE

This level is called "ambivalence" because ambivalence is what each partner is now able to contain and to tolerate. Spouses at this higher level of separation and individuation can take conscious ownership of both sides of the fundamental inner conflict. The Level 2 partner is able to endure the tensions generated by this conflict without transforming them into a conflict between himself and his mate. He can accept responsibility for his psychological innards, because he feels complete—able not only to take care of himself but also to bond intimately with another human being.

Couples at this level of development can recognize with relative ease the point where each one of them ends and the other begins. The husband who is angry, for example, knows full well that the anger is within himself and not his intimate partner. The wife who feels uncertain about whether she wants to spend her Sunday afternoon painting or walking in the woods with her spouse is able to experience these competing wishes as a conflict that is inside her. People who inhabit a Level 2 world can take responsibility for their ambivalent needs, thoughts, feelings, and desires.

In dealing with the ongoing business of the relationship, these couples tend to work matters out in a two-step process. First, each of the partners recognizes and honestly addresses his or her own inner ambivalence. Second, each brings an up-to-the-minute report on his or her own conflict into their mutual discussion.

The wife engaged in choosing between remaining in her studio and painting and going for a walk with her spouse concerns herself with her own ambivalent urges as well as with any potential conflict with her mate. If she should experience her need for closeness as existing only in him (as a Level 4 or Level 3 person would do), she might agree to go out walking but end up feeling exploited and annoyed—because the only internal need she was aware of was a need to spend that time alone in her studio, painting. But at Level 2 both members of the couple would be far more likely to consult all of the cards in their inner decks, and play out a transactional game that was much more mutually gratifying.

LEVEL 1: INTEGRATED

Level I on the scale—"integrated "—is relational heaven itself. It is, Stuart Johnson suggests, less an interpersonal reality than an ideal. Couples who exist at this Olympian level no longer conceive of their needs for independence and for togetherness as conflicting forces within each partner, or as a conflict between them. Instead, autonomy and intimacy are experienced as integrated aspects of each partner's humanity and of the relationship they share.

This peak of healthy functioning can be conceived of as the Level 5 experience turned inside out. For at that lowest level of individuation being close and being a separate person were experienced as equally dangerous; they amounted to the same thing. At Level I the two needs have collapsed in upon themselves in a similar fashion, but now the inner experience is that being close and being separate are both equally safe and gratifying. Both are acceptable all of the time, and there is no conflict between them that requires resolution.

What has to be negotiated by the partners in this interpersonal world is the activity to be engaged in—not whether to assert one's need for intimacy or one's autonomy at any given time. Thus, if one member of a couple wanted to finish watching a television program and the other wanted to go to bed and make love, the matter could be worked out fairly easily.

The mate watching TV would not tend to feel that his wife was crowding him, trying to take away his autonomy (his choice about the way in which he wants to spend his time). He might indicate to his wife that he wants to complete the autonomous piece of behavior in which he is engaged, and can't do that and make love to her at the same time. So could she wait until he is feeling a bit more interested? A couple at this level will easily work out some kind of mutually acceptable quid pro quo, because the fact that one feels different from the other—and is a fundamentally different person—is not experienced as a threat or a betrayal.

Couples in an "integrated" relationship of this kind perceive autonomy and intimacy as states of being—not, as at Level 2, as spatial positions on a closeness-distance continuum. At Level 2 being close or being separate was fundamentally tied to what the partners happened to be doing. If they were making love, each had sacrificed a certain degree of his or her separateness and autonomy. If each was involved in an independent activity—if she were doing some errands downtown and he were at the zoo with their son—each had surrendered some of the intimacy in the relationship.

At Level 1, however, intimacy and autonomy are perceived as aspects of the way the members of the couple are, rather than of what activities they happen to be engaged in at the moment. During lovemaking, for example, a partner may be doing something highly intimate, but his essential separateness is not being obliterated or denied. The feeling at this highest level of self-differentiation is that while he cannot exercise his autonomy at that particular moment, being close to the partner will not bring his separateness into question. On the contrary, he experiences himself as more fully able to be himself—who he really is—in the presence of the intimate other. Being close to the partner supports being a distinct, separate person.

And being separate supports a sense of closeness, because to the degree that my spouse lets me know that he recognizes and feels comfortable with my essential differentness, I can feel safe about letting my hair down and being who I really am with him. And even though I may be visiting a dear family member in Texas while he remains at home in Connecticut, I carry my feelings of closeness to him within me. Intimacy is an internalized state of being—I can feel near to him no matter where I am, and whatever I happen to be doing at that moment. So his championing and protection of my autonomous needs (such as making that visit) enhance my ability to be close to him.

At this integrated level of relationship partners can live comfortably with their differences—even with differences about certain deeply held beliefs and values. For instance, one highly functional couple I interviewed were in their late twenties—the husband owned an automobile-radio sales and repair shop, and the wife worked in the mayor's office of a small Connecticut city. They had one young daughter, and an important religious difference—she was a devout Catholic, and he was a lapsed Catholic who was not interested in religion at all.

She regretted, she said, that he could not share a belief that was so important to her, but the agreement worked out between them was that he would support her church-related activities and not undermine her with their child. He, in turn, would never be asked to do anything that would make him feel compromised or ridiculous—nor would she cast him in a bad or wrong light in the eyes of their children (she was pregnant, and their second baby was due very shortly).

The negotiation of this important difference supported each person's separateness in a way that both of them could live with relatively easily. Most important, in order to work out the arrangement, each had had not only to understand that the partner was a different person but also to recognize the particular ways in which his or her differentness manifested itself. Recognition of the partner's otherness is, in a situation like this, another way of getting to know who he or she is. Separateness feeds closeness, and closeness feeds the capacity for being the different person that one is.

At higher levels of separation and individuation, the clinician Mark Karpel observes, a couple's intimate relationship takes the form of a dialogue between separate beings, rather than the form of fusion and interpersonal merger that it takes on the less-differentiated levels below. "Dialogue represents the mature stage of human development," he writes, "in which the poles of "I" and "We" are integrated in such a way that they nourish and foster one another. "

Individuation (the differentiated "I") and dialogue (the differentiated "We") are complementary parts of the overall process of both partners' simultaneous self-delineation in relationship.... dialogue represents the mode of relationship that maximally fosters continuing individuation for both partners. Unlike fusion where difference is avoided, in dialogue it is sought and affirmed. Partners aim toward an ideal of responding to the other as a whole and truly other person and not merely as a part of their own experience.