When Eros was dispatched by Aphrodite to spoil Psyche for eternity by marrying her to Death himself, he slipped and pricked himself with his own arrows of love, falling hopelessly in love with Psyche herself. Whisking her away to his hidden and mysterious abode under cover of darkness, he established his one “rule of marriage” (not unlike that of Bluebeard many centuries later.) The rule was that she may never see him in daylight, only be with him in the darkness of night. He is the god of the married man retaining his mysteriousness.
When married men naturally must take their private time alone, or work extra long hours, or become devoted to a passion project, one that may be secret, or that she would not want or need to have the fine details about, it masculinizes him to have more to bring to the marriage and the bedroom.
While all the media world might suspect ill-intent on the part of a typical husband having a private life, personal goals not directly beneficial to the woman or family in being away or out of communication - or secretive - it is not imagined dastardly things he is up to, but rather a kind of spiritual nourishment that he is giving himself in autonomy and privacy from his wife, an empowerment that can only benefit her indirectly in having a happy, masculine partner, and she will discover that the monster is a god.
This process is naturally also mysterious to her, like when they were both single, and again is an example having roots in the female Oedipal period of life, when her own father was a mysterious and god-like creature in terms of power and size, and presence. Like the tale of Bluebeard, it is the male’s natural need for autonomy and privacy that both feeds him, and gives her the experience of irresistible mysteries to solve about him.
To give men the benefit of the doubt in their use of privacy and autonomy is the way to go, as Helen Rowland has said, “Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.” In other words, have boundaries, limits and “dealbreakers,” yet give a husband a very long “leash.”
The instinct of Eros is to maintain strong boundaries even within a relationship, and find that in so doing, it feels joyful and vitalizing to find that any drama or disagreement stabilizes when he takes a stand.
