Couples therapy is about finding the right path forward for both partners. Couples often seek therapy because they know that a radical change is required, but they often arrive concerned that therapy can only deliver one answer – the termination of the relationship. But in fact therapy can provide more creative solutions.
Couples come to therapy with the intention of healing a relationship, but inevitably there can be a time in the work when forward motion seems hopeless. There has been a lot of jostling around and a lot of negative thinking. It might come to a point where the couple is deadlocked and unable to agree on anything. A therapist can get caught in the middle of a contest where each partner feels that they are right and that the other one has to change. Both partners can engage in the game of “the pursuer and the distancer.” The pursuer is the partner who most assertively calls for change and can be most vociferous about finding a solution. The distancer, on the other hand, complains that if the pursuer would just stop complaining everything would be fine. In this situation, the more the pursuer pursues, the more the distancer retreats. The complexity in this dynamic is that the one who is retreating does not want to go too far or run too fast because if they do, the relationship ends. So being deadlocked keeps the couple together but leaves both partners unhappy.
In working with couples, the goals are the same as in personal therapy: to discover the space to truly be yourself. A therapist who can assess the dynamics at play here will make use of this impasse to challenge the couple to work harder at either saving the relationship or ending it.
Do we need to abandon the idea that the marriage oath is until death do us part? Ending a relationship as an option has been appraised by Esther Perel, who has in recent years been providing “Separation Ceremonies”. She suggests that the oath to be faithful until death is outmoded when we are living so much longer than previous generations. If we can accept this notion, we might find that a space opens that mitigates the feeling that the years together have been lost and wasted. Putting a positive spin like this allows us to appreciate the good times and the adventure of having made a leap of faith to begin with. In a separation ceremony, shame can be replaced with celebration for the good moments a couple has shared. Finding gratitude in the other makes the choice to stay together or to part ways much easier.
And what about saving the relationship? Is there a path for a lifetime relationship? Often when I am at a wedding I think about Woody Allen’s film Sex and Death. The stakes indeed seem so high and the vows we take are often addressed to some other worldly authority that we were already suspicious of. “You’re not the person I married.” Of course not, but neither are you the same person your partner married. Better to begin the dialogue with “do you want to be right or do you want to be together?” Personal evolution is inevitable. For those that choose to stay together, Perel offers this observation: in our longer lifetimes, most of us will be married two to three times, many of us to the same person! Seeing a partner anew and redefining the relationship is a growth process. When two people can work in that way, it is about finding that kind of space in the relationship. That is, to find a way to honor the space of the other and remain together.
