We are at the dawn of a very different form of relating between men and women. It began in the sixties as people began to break out of gender stereotypes and traditional forms of sexual orientation and identification. The transformation has been simmering away over the decades since as people experiment with many different relating forms.
There are two main forms of change that are occurring.
1) Soul relationships based on love, self actualisation and spiritual liberation are replacing personality relationships based on on survival, family security and tribal ( religious, racial, gender, political etc ) affiliation.
In reality both these relationship values are present in every relationship but the emphasis and centre of gravity is shifting into the soul from the personality.
2) The soul is group conscious rather than duad focused and so this is influencing trends in polyamory, open relationships, pod relating and so forth. The personality lives in the 3d world that is dual and therefore seeks to complement itself with polarity - emotional, sexual etc. The Soul is hermaphrodite and lives in the world of subtle energies and is seeking its group via resonance in order to generate love and manifest its collective purpose. As above in most relating there is a mix of these two modes - the duad and the group. In the old world the duad is the centre and the group is secondary. In the Aquarian age the group will be primary and relating between couples will enrich the group life. The mother/father king/queen central archetype of the piscean age will give way to the image of the group wheel or chalice which distributes the waters of life.
The gateway or portal between these relating paradigms is the triangle. Sexual and love triangles can be the source of greatest emotional pain as well as the stimulus for incredible soul development. The triangulation of love can be experienced as the doorway to a whole new world or it can be experienced as the ultimate betrayal of everything that is held sacred. Sometimes both exist simultaneously.
To explore this dynamic it may help to look at the world of symbol and mythology where the soul reveals itself. At the height of the piscean age we have the story of Camelot - a utopian kingdom run by King Arthur and his Queen Guinevere. This is the standard model of the duad except that there is also a round table and a quest for the holy grail. This foreshadows the Aquarian age of the group but only represents the masculine side - a group of knights in search of the grail or their own feminine. The feminine is seen as undeveloped and needing help ( damsels in distress in need of protection from dragons ). The kingdom falls because of a sexual/love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere and the bravest and best of the loyal knights - Sir Lancelot. The King is betrayed, the Queen tarnished and the loyal knight disgraced. Arthur dies in battle and Lancelot and Guinevere both retire to a celibate existence of monk and nun.
When I look up modern psychology around love and sexual triangles the most common word used is ‘betrayal’. One site even uses the three descriptors for the triangular relationship. The Betrayer. The Betrayed and the Object of Betrayal. In practise secrecy, cover ups and lies are also a common theme and often the real pain in the betrayal is not the sexuality but the betrayal of ‘trust’. However even when it is honest, consensual and in the open there can still be deep feelings of abandonment, jealousy and betrayal. Archetypally what is being betrayed is the Piscean ideal. - The sacred marriage of the two fishes. This sacred marriage is out pictured in the divinely appointed couple - the king and the queen at the centre of their kingdom - whether that be the family unit, the country or the empire.
When the alchemical work of the inner marriage is done however, men and women are not meeting as one half of a duality seeking to be unified with its opposite. They are coming together as souls, hermaphrodite, possessing both polarities inside themselves. Those souls are coming together in mutual recognition of love and shared purpose. Can we imagine another way for the story of Camelot to end? After all Lancelot and the King loved each other. So did Guinevere and Arthur and so did Lancelot and Guinevere. All the legs of the triangle were expressing love. Perhaps it may have been easier if it was a mff triangle rather than a mfm as we wouldn’t have the added trouble of homophobia between men but we would still have the potential for jealousy and competition as long as there can only be one king and queen and as long as any member of the triangle has not completed their own inner marriage and is therefore seeking to possess an outer man or woman as their contra sexual self.
If, instead of the relationship between the sacred couple being the centre of the kingdom, love itself was the centre, then the kingdom may have flourished in a totally new way catalysed by the shared love between three of its most prominent members. If the round table now consisted of both men and women who had each completed or were completing the quest for their inner marriage and therefore found the holy grail of the soul - perhaps the group could become then the sacred chalice that pours forth the divine waters of life that symbolise the aquarian age. Coupling would still occur within the group as each member of the table is capable of expressing both polarities however these pairings would be viewed in light of the group vision and mission. How does each relating deepen the marriage inside each individual and contribute to the love of the whole ? Triangles would be seen as opportunities or doorways to demonstrate greater and purer love in the aquarian model rather than a tarnishing of the purity of love in the piscean. This demonstration of aquarian love is not a denial or bypass of the very real challenges of our human experiences of emotional and sexual jealousies and betrayals - but a penetrating of them, a passing through them to a purified group love.
Ultimately our core abandonment wound is a feeling of separation from God, alienation from the Goddess and a fear of exclusion from tribe which once meant death. When we have found the soul and opened its central mystery then God/Goddess are experiential realities - inside and outside of us. We draw our soul tribe to us through vibration and resonance, and we grow and purify our love as well as learn to share power through the sacred triangle.
At the centre of the Arthurian mysteries is the chalice well with its two streams of red and white water symbolising the red and white dragons of masculine and feminine energy. The vessica pisces is the symbol for the piscean age and the sacred marriage of the two. Out of the overlap is birthed the divine child or the soul whose image is the sun. When this marriage is effected in each person then it is souls that come together in the Aquarian age. What emerges or is revealed at the centre of the triangle is the monad, the mystery, whose symbol is the black hole or galactic centre - the central spiritual sun of the sun. The triangle reveals the ‘Glory of the One’ - that central dark mystery that allows all suns to shine.