Couples: Intimacy

Are you alone within a couple?

Intérieur – Gustave Caillebotte

Caillebotte shows us two people lost in reverie who have forgotten they once were friends.

SHE: Resigned, longing for contact with him and support for engagement with her world. Perhaps she is thinking: “You have all the power. I am endlessly accommodating. What about me? Do I matter?”

HE: Reading, possibly with engagement, perhaps to avoid trouble. Repeated failures have turned him away from his need for her. Why is he cut off at the edge of the painting? Perhaps he is cut off from himself. Has he given up friendships and interests other than work from his sense of marital duty? Perhaps he is thinking:

“You have all the power. I am endlessly accommodating. What about me? Do I matter?”

• Does resentment help you to be heard?
• Is coldness getting your needs met?
• Is a power struggle what you dreamed of?

Some of What Therapy Can Do for Your Relationship

• Real friendship is safety and paradise. Good therapy protects friendship from endless power struggles, needless accommodations and repetitive scenarios.
• Therapy helps you to feel heard; helps you come to terms with how you aren’t heard.
• Therapy helps you listen to your partner.
• Paradise is the ability to put yourself in the place of your partner, to show up in the way the other needs.

One partner comes to therapy, the other not – or not now. Each comes separately or together or both. Whatever it takes to move forward.