If a man graduates correctly out of the Forest of Morois, it opens up a new world for him. He discovers that there are parts of himself, potentialities and forces, that he can't live out through a woman. He discovers that he can't make woman the carrier of all his unlived life and his unrealized self. He finds that there are things that he must do by himself and for himself: He must have an inner life; he must serve values that have meaning for him; he must have interests and enthusiasms that well out of his own soul, that are not merely spin-offs of his life with woman. This is the naked sword that Tristan places between himself and Iseult. It is the consciousness of his own individuality, of his own life, distinct from the life he leads with woman.
To do this does not hurt his relationship with woman: On the contrary, it makes relationship possible. As he relieves his woman of the burden of carrying his soul for him, it becomes possible for the first time to see her as a woman, to relate to her in her individuality, her specialness, and her humanity. He realizes that she also has to be an individual, must have her own life and her own reason for being. Neither can she project all of herself onto him nor live her life through him nor spend the rest of her life as a foil for his unlived self.
An awesome potential is at stake in this evolution. It is the potential for being fully individual while also relating genuinely to a fellow human being. It is by leaving the Forest of Morois, by returning Iseult to the King, by putting his own soul back inside himself, that a man wakes up to the fact of his individuality. In becoming aware that there is a part of himself that can't be lived through another person, for which he must take responsibility on his own, he awakens to the unexpected extensity and complexity of his individual self. In turn, as he awakens to his own uniqueness, he becomes capable of relating directly to a woman in her individuality. The test of true individuation is that it include the capacity to relate to another person and to respect him or her as an individual.