What is the truth about Don Juan, about what he was really like inside? We carry with us a myth about the lifestyle of this famous character, always denying what may be true about such a person. From my own view, this is what Don and Donna Juan are really like.
* They feel deep pain and worthlessness who have found worth through their beauty.
(The word beauty is used in a universal, "Hollywood" sense.)
* They obtain admiration and affection through their looks but, in fact, feel no worth, no substance at all. They rely on something doomed to fail them, and no one can offer assurance of the true value of their souls because somehow it is always hidden.
* They feel they cannot be loved.
* They let sexual urges and sexual thoughts go before other, more important things.
* They claim sexual needs cause them to surge forward and find a lover, somehow, and to "get laid" at all costs. Sexual need is a substitute for seeing the real need inside for which there seems to be no solution or fulfillment.
* They are never beautiful enough in their own eyes. Always they are too ugly, too fat, their hair is never "right" and they are ashamed of their looks. Before making any other changes in their lives when they feel unhappy-they starve to lose weight, buy new clothes, change their hair, buy a new house or car, or take up karate or a fitness program.
* Beauty of the opposite sex speaks louder than any other human quality, and the sexual excitement caused by someone beautiful distracts and even RULES.
* They find having sex very desirable until the deed is accomplished, and then something changes. Rather than get closer to the truth-to the real person-they would rather have someone new they haven't slept with yet. In fact, going back to the one before is a pain-filled experience.
* They compare themselves with others of the same sex, relentlessly cursed by jealousy and the tendency to be OVERJOYED when someone else gets jealous at the sight of them.
* Knowingly or secretly they are in deep despair.
* They live for new lovers. The experience of falling in love with a new person is so extraordinary and exciting and Don and Donna thrive on this ecstasy. As John Bradshaw stated in his lecture on the family: who wouldn't like this feeling that we all have at first love to last forever? But it doesn't last forever. It doesn't last long. Don and Donna know this and leave before the magic is over. They also claim that it doesn't matter, that they don't believe in having permanent relationships.
* Hardly anyone knows or deeply loves them because they have maintained an arms length distance. They want love but they cannot have it. Intimacy brings complications, and neither they nor the ones they choose can abide the pain of it.
*Childhood relationships spelled out the disaster of intimacy and spelled out pain. A pattern of avoidance has been established.
*They expect a person of the opposite sex to be sexually stimulating, i.e., physically "exceptional", but more than this they expect themselves to be sexually attractive and everything that occurs to the contrary-every bit of flabbiness, overweight, or wrinkling is a traumatic threat to being attractive. So it is also a threat to their security; it is terrifying! These people believe that if anything causes them to lose any degree of attractiveness they will lose love.
Love cannot exist without their attractiveness. They have to measure up.
If a lover cannot be delighted by what they present in their physical bodies, then they cannot delight a lover as individuals. The real love they could have without physical beauty recalls painful memories of a kind of intimacy they cannot bear. There is a feeling similar to claustrophobia, maybe. The intimacy they already experienced was most likely claustrophobic and did not allow expression or freedom, in short, genuine love.
For them there is no other kind of intimacy. Physical beauty is a safe, hard shell, which a person can hide behind (until it is gone). The world of exteriors is a place where many beautiful people hide from their fears. Physical beauty has a life of its own; it determines Don Juan and Donna's boundaries and defines their lives. The world of movies and television seems to be in tune with this. If you can make things look good--your body, your car, your house--then things are good. If they look perfect in the controlled environment of TV or movies to others--then one can vicariously experience that perfection. Physical parameters can be comforting even in their limitations.
* They don't notice that people are happier who love themselves without physical attractiveness. Other people have love in their ugliness, but what does this matter if, in fact, Don Juan and Donna cannot face intimacy?
* Everyone they meet fits into a pattern of escape, of finding intimacy impossible, though they may not understand why no one can stay with them.
There is a drastic difference in attitudes between beautiful women who were raised on love and the Donnas who were not. The ones who grew up with love see themselves on the inside--where they are loved. They have less use for beauty and it is obvious by what they project.
What use do they have for emphasis on their looks when they have always had love? They become that much more beautiful because of their self-worth and men are attracted to them. Yet, they have no use for men who care more about their looks than about themselves. A wise, beautiful person knows that she can never be as flawless and glorious as her appearance makes her out to be.
A foolish Donna, forged in love-lessness, enjoys creating the appearance that she is as glorious as she appears. She flaunts her beauty, is vain, and has vicious competitions with other women who are beautiful, hoping to be envied. She attracts men through her beauty and not through her worth. And all of these things apply to Don Juan as well.
CONCLUSION:
What can happen to Don and Donna is that they come to a dramatic dead end where they cannot find joy in the temporal any longer, and realize that they are hungry for love after all. They want it but at the present rate may not get it. At this point they are forced into an intimate relationship with themselves that is inescapable and the pain of it is indescribable.
It seems like an eternity before one gets to the end of the long journey back to understanding love. The journey cannot be completed and I do not recommend it without God who has given us the road map.
The journey is, in fact, the journey towards true love and esteem for oneself. Don and Donna do not love themselves and they do not respect themselves. The golden rule is: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If a person does not love himself, what he would have others do unto him is probably not healthy!
Thus we have the cause for hurting others. We hurt ourselves first, that is why we hurt others. The commandment is: "love thy neighbor as thyself." Of course, the commandment implies that we are already truly loving ourselves, and many a twisted religious person has equated loving oneself with being selfish, saying, "well, we always find it easy to love ourselves now, don't we?"
But we do not love ourselves easily, and self-love is NOT the same as selfishness, since selfishness is, without question, destructive of oneself. No, we must love ourselves and then love others as we love ourselves.
Love is in a contest with our pride. Adam and Eve had to choose between having sweet love and security in God and the chance to actually BE God. They chose to be God, something we do time and time again. We always have to choose between love and pride, which also means love over power. (Dire Straits would add: Love Over Gold.) When you realize that someone loves you, you have a choice between love and pride. You can begin to gloat to yourself over your victory and the power you now have over the one who loves you, or you can choose to receive love and the benefits and/or changes it will bring you.
Billy Graham could choose to think of himself as a god because so many people listened to him and adhered to the same beliefs as a result of his ministry, or he could rejoice that he was fortunate enough to participate in the healing of many people's lives. Bill Gates can think of himself as a god and try to use his power for his own good to the exclusion of others, or he can rejoice that he has made my writing so much less of a nightmare along with so many others who benefit from the upside of technology. Doctors can try to manipulate and rob people or they can try to heal. We always have these two choices before us, and each of the above mentioned people has also been required at some point to decide which it is going to be.
When people are not raised on love they do not know how good it feels and they do not know how to receive it. They learn the patterns of pride, and the way of love becomes foreign and frightening to them, as pride is something we develop in the absence of love. What happens when a culture is full of such people?
The culture we are in has taken great strides away from love. Self-love has taken a fall along with all the other love that has been drained from a society that centers on gaining property, proving the genius of man, and having power. When you are truly satisfied with the love in your childhood it can last for a lifetime, in fact, celibacy can be achieved with surprisingly little effort if one aspires to it because satisfaction has been achieved early along with emotional maturity.
So says psychologist and author Gabrielle Brown*, who compares the nuns and monks of today with yesterday, pointing out that it has become too difficult today for most to maintain a celibate lifestyle. In the past, before industrialization, our agrarian society stuck to simple family bonding and people found emotional satisfaction. That satisfaction made sexual restraint much easier.
Why is it painful to go back to the person that the Don or Donna Juan has slept with already, instead of finding a new one? First of all, there is shame. Both partners feel ashamed and don't want to face each other with the reality. Secondly, it's because of the pain of intimacy. You have to love yourself and be OK with yourself to have someone else know you well and come near you. Avoiding intimacy is a way to avoid knowing yourself or someone else knowing you.
I respect John Bradshaw to some degree, yet he falls somewhat short of the truth. You cannot patch up a society by saying, "let's just start getting smart here and raise better families which will produce better people." How are you going to "just" do that? It's about as dumb as saying "Just say NO." It is true that some families have become sicker and so have the people in them.
It is also true that many families have, to some degree, been sick down through the ages. Healing does not begin with trying to patch these things; it begins with the individual and his spiritual regeneration. It begins by looking UP, not just at US.
We are all suffering from whatever has happened to us as a civilization. You are not alone.
*The New Celibacy, by Gabrielle Brown, PhD, Ballantine
