The perfect partner is a co-traveler on the path to truth.  He or she is striving just as hard as we are to understand and resolve his or her defenses.  Childhood traumas that have been repressed in the unconscious must be brought into full awareness—enlightenment—before we can become, or attain, a perfect partner.  But this is a process.  It takes time.  Even if we, or our perfect partner, regress into old, negative behaviors or attitudes, we remember that the essence of each of us is perfect.  At the core of each is truth.  If eruptions of negativity occur, we understand that the source is a wounded child.  It is the job of each partner to monitor these slips and own them—and then to resume consciously evolving to truth.

In courting and then committing to a perfect partner, there are compatibility issues to consider.  Are our genders complimentary?  Do our interests in life overlap enough to enjoy activities together?  Are our backgrounds similar enough not to hit a conflict at every turn?  Are we freed of addictions so that our attitudes, feelings, and behavior are not distorted or destructive?  Do we share a sense of humor and can we have fun together?  All of these factors are important when forming a love bond, but the most important aspects of compatibility, by far, are our common interest in attaining wholeness and the degree to which we have resolved our childhood wounds.  All else pales next to these.

The reality is that most people skip the arduous preparation necessary to become a perfect partner—the lonely solo journey to an autonomous self.  Instead of resolving childhood issues before mating, they place mating first—with marriage with children so often soon to follow.  Finding a seemingly acceptable mate is done in place of finding an inner self.  Unconsciously we employ the fantasy that Prince or Princess Charming will save us from all that was wrong in our past, especially our denied childhood needs.  This imperfect partner becomes the object of magical rescue or, in time, if the fantasy of magical rescue wears thin, of murderous revenge.

Another common wayward path that many people take with a partner is to assume a façade of normalcy and bourgeois conformity.  While all is well on the surface, turmoil roils beneath the surface of their complacent life.  The denied traumas of childhood do not go away, but manifest discretely in emotional compromise, stunted creativity, depression, damaged children, addictions of various sorts, and physical and emotional illness.  These all exist to mute our denied feelings and wounds.

We must undergo extensive healing of childhood despair—which we all carry—to not play out our damage with our partners.  Yet in a world full of compromised liars who make up the norm it is a great comfort and aid to seek truth with an evolved other.  With strong boundaries at our side we often can find great value in co-travelers—be they friends or perhaps even more intimate companions—who remind us that our journey is real and that our goal is not to conform to the comforts of psychic sleep, but to grow into consciousness and to fulfill the perfection planted in us at birth.