Often the starting point for my clinical work with struggling
couples is their desire to remain together.
Other times, it is with couples where one or both of them are not sure
if they want to stay together. Or, the clinical
work begins with couples that have made the decision to move their relationships
toward divorce. In any of these
scenarios, I am interested to assess what marriage cycle the presenting couple is
in. And how their “previous marriages” evolved. Even if they were to each other.
Based on my years of practice, in most long-term relationships
spouses generally marry each other 3 times.
The 1st marriage usually occurs pre-children (“pre-children”). The 2nd one during the years of co-parenting
and work (“children and work”), and their last marriage once their children are
leaving/have left the home and retirement looms (“post-children”). Many of us mark our 1st marriage
with a formal celebration of some kind.
It is the other 2 that quietly occur without any conscious awareness of
any remarriage taking place. It is in
the adjusting to this next marriage that problems sometimes occur. In my post-graduate training I was taught to
identify challenges within “developmental milestones.” This meant pinpointing events that forced
a family to change the way they related to one another. Many of these events are normative, like the
birth of a child, or the adding of another one.
Other times they are unexpected and traumatic like a death or a fire. For couples, I consider the transition from “1
marriage to the next” to be a developmental milestone. A couple has to re-adjust to a changing relationship
between them. It is this unaware experience
that can breed resentments.
The pre-children marriage typically occurs in relative
youth. A couple is more emotionally and
sexually agile because they carry less responsibilities. Even if they don’t realize it there is more
time! There are fewer distractions and they
are able to focus more fully on one other.
In contrast, the children and work marriage is a different and distinct
marriage. A couple must now manage the
multiple stressors of juggling a marital relationship alongside a co-parenting relationship. A couple cannot focus on each other the way
they used to. Men can feel ignored and
women can feel stressed by being everything to everyone. The post-children marriage is in part a
return to the original marriage. A couple must now figure out how to re-focus
on each other without the distractions of their busy family and work lives. They
must now figure out if they still like each other and if they still want to be
together in retirement and for the duration of their lives.
It is not uncommon for me to hear couples discussing anger
and hurt from their current post-children marriage that occurred years ago in their
pre-children marriage. A husband, for
example, realizing that he had been “grieving” a time when he felt noticed by
his spouse. Or that same time when a
wife felt like her husband wanted only her.
Marital transformation regardless of the starting point in my work
occurs when a couple becomes more conscious about their various marital life
cycles. And its impact on who they were,
and who they are, both individually and as a couple.
