What is an Integral Relationship Evolutionary?
Throughout history, males and females co-created three major forms of relationships that supported their survival and procreation:*
1. In hunter/gatherer societies that existed exclusively until about 12.000 years ago, hunting males and gathering females took equal responsibilities for their food supplies. They formed relationships between opposites and equals.
2. In agrarian societies that followed, men took on the primary responsibilities for food production and public sphere, while women began to dominated the private sphere. They formed relationships between opposites who where not equals.
3. In the industrial age that emerged about 200 years ago, male strength was gradually replaced by machines and modern weapons, which allowed women to enter previously male dominated domains and made them increasingly independent from men for their survival. Today, relationships are predominantly between men who are stuck in their old gender roles (to be success oriented) and women who have the freedom to choose (occupation, to be success or fulfillment oriented, to be single or in relationship, to have children or not, etc.) Time Magazine asked in an article about The State of the American Woman in 2009: "What needs to be done to free American men to realize their full potential?"
The world fertility rates per female (with over-aging and shrinking western societies as a result) also illustrate this relationship trend in modern and postmodern societies:
Red = < 2, Yellow = 2, Green = 3-4, Blue > 4, World = 2.58 children per woman.
USA: 2.1 children per woman in 2010 (down to 1.93 in 2011). 2.4 Hispanics, 2.0 African Americans, 1.8 Whites, 1.7 Asian.
Relationship Evolutionaries realize that human history has been created through the female sexual selection process and the resulting offspring, and that this dynamic will continue in the future. As Barbara Marx Hubbard said: "Men do what women want," and Warren Farrell wrote: "If women loved and had sex with men who walk on their hands, men would be setting up hand-walking contests tomorrow!"
Relationship Evolutionaries also see that the significant social, political, economic and environmental problems that we face today are created through our sexual selection process--or the lack thereof if women decide to stay single, which is also a form of sexual (non)selection--and that the solution to these problems lies in making different partner choices and co-creating different kinds of relationships, which we may call Integral. It is a bottom up process; from the individual to love relationships, families, communities, nations, societies, and world.
Integral Relationship Evolutionaries co-create partnerships in which men and women assume equal rights AND responsibilities. Not only for their individual partnerships and children, but also for a peaceful and sustainable future for all humanity. These couples realize that their relationships tetra-arise in all four quadrants. They balance and harmonize the four healthy masculine and feminine polarities (click here for previous newsletter for details) along the levels of all seven chakras (material, sexual, power, emotions/heart, self-expression/creativity, vision, and spiritual/higher evolutionary purpose). Integral couples not only focus on a masculine transcending (evolutionary) path of ascending (away from the body, emotions and the earth) but INCLUDE the feminine descending path as well. They not only focus on hyper individualized agency and going it alone, but also on responsible communion and deep intimacy, where authentic truthfulness becomes more important than the outcome of the relationship.
Integral Relationships are the next step in the evolution of human love! They become possible after women claim their full female authority or exercise their feminine power, and start living their authentic evolutionary purpose in partnership with Evolutionary Integral men (see Integral Relationships: A Manual for Men).
Many western spiritual and evolutionary teachers (who are mostly married) see this need for Evolutionary Integral Relationships:
"Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness."
Eckhart Tolle "The Power Of Now" page 132 (159 paperback edition)
"It is important that women rise to full partnership with men in the whole domain of human affairs. This is happening whether men like it or not. As women rise, men are regaining some of their deepest capacities, instead of being so patterned by their traditional roles, which don't work so well anymore as the economy and the ecology are collapsing. This is the time for women to get together WITH men and make them see what women can offer, such as the sensibility for process, patterns of connection, and-above all-creative wonderful strategies for issues in local communities; not as power, but with love. This is giving us a very great and different perspective on the relationship; men and women are deeply, deeply, deeply needful of each other."
Jean Houston
Ken Wilber in response to the question if it is possible to evolve beyond the need to be in a romantic relationship:
"No, that would be like playing checkers with ourselves. On the "manifest side of the street" things tend to manifest in polarities all the way up in the gross, subtle and causal body, and the boy/girl duality is pretty fundamental to our existence. Even though you want to embody both qualities as well as you can, you can't be feminine and masculine simultaneously. In order to engage in the dance between the two polarities requires a man and a woman-all the way up. And where the two-the ultimate masculine pushing, clarity and drive, and the ultimate feminine compassion and embrace-come together in "one taste" is on the other side of manifestation."
"Relationships dedicated to growth constitute one of the best bulwarks against stagnation.  Growth-oriented relationships provide us with honest feedback to compensate for our blind spots.  Relationships aimed at recognizing and releasing psychological, spiritual and developmental limitations are invaluable. There are many forms of relationships, however, perhaps the supreme method for obtaining second person feedback are intimate relationships and marriage."
Roger Walsh in a conversation with Ken Wilber
"The proof of the depth and embodiment of your realization will be seen in your love relationship. That's where the proof is in the pudding. If it all collapses in your relationship, you have some work to do. And people do have a lot of difficulties in their relationships."
Adyashanti
Visit www.integralsingles.com if you are single and would like to be in a healthy Integral relationship.
