The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Keys to Human Nature
We humans like to believe that we are consistent and mature, and that
we have reasonable control over our lives. We make decisions based on
rational considerations, on what will benefit us the most. We have free
will. We know who we are, more or less. But in one particular aspect of
life these self-opinions are all easily shattered—when we fall in love.
When in love, we become prey to emotions we cannot control. We
make choices of partners we cannot rationally explain, and often these
choices end up being unfortunate. Many of us will have at least one
successful relationship in our lives, but we will tend to have many more
that were decidedly unsuccessful, that ended unhappily. And often we

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repeat the same types of bad choices of partners, as if compelled by
some inner demon.
We like to tell ourselves in retrospect that when we were in love, a
type of temporary madness overcame us. We think of such moments as
representing the exception, not the rule, to our character. But let us
entertain for the moment the opposite possibility—in our conscious
day-to-day life, we are sleepwalking, unaware of who we really are; we
present a front of reasonableness to the world, and we mistake the
mask for reality. When we fall in love, we are actually being more
ourselves. The mask slips off. We realize then how deeply unconscious
forces determine many of our actions. We are more connected to the
reality of the essential irrationality in our nature.
Let us look at some of the common changes that occur when we are
in love.
Normally our minds are in a state of distraction. The deeper we fall
in love, however, the more our attention is completely absorbed in one
person. We become obsessive.
We like to present a particular appearance to the world, one that
highlights our strengths. When in love, however, opposite traits often
come to the fore. A person who is normally strong and independent
can suddenly become rather helpless, dependent, and hysterical. A
nurturing, empathetic person can suddenly become tyrannical,
demanding, and self-absorbed.
As adults we feel relatively mature and practical, but in love we can
suddenly regress to behavior that can only be seen as childish. We
experience fears and insecurities that are greatly exaggerated. We feel
terror at the thought of being abandoned, like a baby who has been left
alone for a few minutes. We have wild mood swings—from love to hate,
from trust to paranoia.
Normally we like to imagine that we are good judges of other
people’s character. Once infatuated or in love, however, we mistake the
narcissist for a genius, the suffocator for a nurturer, the slacker for the
exciting rebel, the control freak for the protector. Others can often see
the truth and try to disabuse us of our fantasies, but we won’t listen.
And what is worse, we will often continue to make the same types of
mistaken judgments again and again.

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In looking at these altered states, we might be tempted to describe
them as forms of possession. We are normally rational person A, but
under the influence of an infatuation, irrational person B begins to
emerge. At first, A and B can fluctuate and even blend into each other,
but the deeper we fall in love, the more it is person B who dominates.
Person B sees qualities in people that are not there, acts in ways that
are counterproductive and even self-destructive, is quite immature,
with unrealistic expectations, and makes decisions that are often
mysterious later on to person A.
When it comes to our behavior in these situations, we never really
completely understand what is happening. Too much of our
unconscious is at play, and we have no rational access to its processes.
But the eminent psychologist Carl Jung—who analyzed over the course
of his very long career thousands of men and women with stories of
painful love affairs—offered perhaps the most profound explanation
for what happens to us when we fall in love. According to Jung, we are
actually possessed in such moments. He gave the entity (person B) that
takes hold of us the name anima (for the male) and animus (for the
female). This entity exists in our unconscious but comes to the surface
when a person of the opposite sex fascinates us. The following is the
origin of the anima and the animus, and how they operate.
We all possess hormones and genes of the opposite sex. These
contrasexual traits are in the minority (to a greater or lesser extent,
depending on the individual), but they are within us all and they form
a part of our character. Equally significant is the influence on our
psyche of the parent of the opposite sex, from whom we absorb
feminine or masculine traits.
In our earliest years we were completely open and susceptible to the
influence of others. The parent of the opposite sex was our first
encounter with someone dramatically different from us. As we related
to their alien nature, much of our personality was formed in response,
becoming more dimensional and multifaceted. (With the parent of the
same sex there is often a level of comfort and immediate identification
that does not require the same adaptive energy).
For instance, small boys are often comfortable expressing emotions
and traits that they’ve learned from the mother, such as overt affection,
empathy, and sensitivity. Small girls, conversely, are often comfortable
expressing traits they’ve learned from the father, such as aggression,

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boldness, intellectual rigor, and physical prowess. Each child may also
naturally possess these opposite-gender traits in him- or herself. In
addition, each parent will also have a shadow side that the child must
assimilate or deal with. For instance, a mother may be narcissistic
rather than empathetic, and a father may be domineering or weak
rather than protective and strong.
Children must adapt to this. In any event, the boy and the girl will
internalize the positive and the negative qualities of the parent of the
opposite sex in ways that are unconscious and profound. And the
association with the parent of the opposite sex will be charged with all
kinds of emotions—physical and sensual connections, tremendous
feelings of excitement, fascination, or disappointment at what one was
not given.
Soon, however, comes a critical period in our early lives in which we
must separate from our parents and forge our identity. And the
simplest and most powerful way to create this identity is around
gender roles, the masculine and the feminine. The boy will tend to
have an ambivalent relationship to his mother that will mark him for
life. On the one hand he craves the security and adoring attention she
gives him; on the other hand he feels threatened by her, as if she might
suffocate him in her femininity and he would lose himself. He fears her
authority and her power over his life. From a certain age forward, he
feels the need to differentiate himself. He needs to establish his own
sense of masculine identity. Certainly the physical changes that occur
as he gets older will fuel this identity with the masculine, but in the
process he will tend to overidentify with the role (unless he identifies
with the feminine role instead), playing up his toughness and
independence to emphasize his separation from the mother. The other
sides to his character—the empathy, the gentleness, the need for
connection, which he absorbed from the mother or were naturally a