The couple relationship
When distance settles in without any particular argument, when conversations repeat themselves and lead nowhere: on what can be done before deciding whether or not to stay.
Few couples come to a psychologist after a big argument. Most come after a long silence. Nothing in particular has happened; it's just that, at some point, one of you noticed that you talk only about practical things — who picks up the child, what we're eating, who rings the bank — and that you can no longer remember when you last talked about anything else.
Distance does not usually come from a lack of love. It comes from an accumulation of small things, left unsaid at the time because they weren't worth a discussion, which piled up until there were too many of them to discuss. Each of you has a version of the story, and the versions no longer meet.
At other times, conversations start repeating themselves endlessly. It is in fact the same argument, with different pretexts, ending the same way every time. When a discussion keeps repeating itself, it means it is not about what it seems to be about. It is about something neither of you can say directly: that you don't feel seen, that you carry more than the other, that you felt left alone at a moment that mattered, that you are disappointed and disillusioned.
The loss of intimacy almost always comes after this distance, rarely before it. And infidelity, if it happens, is more often a symptom than a cause. At that point the question “how could you?” is really hiding another one: “what couldn't we say to each other?”
Couples counselling does not decide for you whether you stay together or not. It is not a court, and there is no side that is in the right. It is a space where you can say, in the presence of someone who takes no one's side, what cannot be said at home, and where you can find out, perhaps for the first time, what the other hears when you speak. We work in joint sessions, with both of you.
There is only one condition: you both have to want to understand what happened. Not necessarily to stay together — that will become clear along the way — but to understand. When only one of you wants this, individual work is possible, and that is no small thing.
When does it make sense to come? When the same discussion has taken place too many times. When you have caught yourselves thinking “maybe this is normal after so many years”. Or when one of you has said the word “separation” and the other has replied, even as a joke: “maybe that's a good idea”.
If you recognise yourself in this text, you will find more on the page Couples counselling.
If you would like to talk
Write me a few lines about what brings you. There is no need to explain everything.
Or write to me directly at radutudorache@protonmail.com.