On the Home page of my website, you’ll find a welcoming introduction to the pilgrimage of psychotherapy. As I reread this introduction, I saw something I hadn’t seen before. I invite you to read the following paragraph of my introduction and substitute the word marriage, or however you term your committed relationship for the word Therapy or Psychotherapy.

Welcome to the pilgrimage known more popularly as Therapy, a wandering, digressing sort of journey that loops, spins, backtracks and often contradicts itself.  Therapy is a potentially powerful and delicate exercise, which is, although chancy and difficult, worthy of our best efforts.  Psychotherapy is a noble profession and its practioners, although ordinary mortals do have moments of genuine transcendence during which they are able to promote the healing and wholeness of others.  As one who attempts to assist those who seek his assistance, I acknowledge that not all best-intentioned efforts succeed.

In my previous article, Affairs of the Heart, Affairs in the Making, I stated “Affairs are significantly associated with dissatisfaction within a relationship.” It’s a popular aphorism that marriage is a verb not a noun, and that relationships keep no better than fish. All relationships age, but how?

After nearly 40 years of private practice, I can state confidently, your relationship will begin to uncouple, and drift when your attention and efforts are recommitted elsewhere. When the distance between the two of you increases, the identifiable turning point will not hinge on an argument or the typical emotional catastrophe that besets any relationship. Instead, uncoupling will be related to changes in each of your individual social worlds. Slowly over time, if you are not careful, you will begin to redefine yourselves as separate people, developing separate lives, complete with separate friends, experiences, and futures. When being partners is no longer a major source of identity, and your identity comes from other sources, then neither of you will find your uncommitted relationship satisfying.

By contrast, committed relationships begin when two individuals renegotiate who they are with respect to each other and the world around them. They begin to restructure their lives around each other, creating common friends, memories, and a common future. When two become one, it doesn’t mean I become you, but successful coupling isn’t afraid to redefine their identity as a couple. The coupled identity becomes constantly reaffirmed through public confirmation providing a stable location in the social world validating your committed identify.

A satisfying relationship requires strategic care and weeding:

• Focus on understanding the needs of your partner and commit to meeting them
• Seek to understand more than try to be understood
• Support the relationship when at times it is not supporting you
• Understand how you contribute to every problem in your relationship
• Seek a second opinion through counseling sooner than later
• Keep a sacred date night just for the two of you every week!