Most relationships organized along marriage-of-opposites lines are deeply energized by each partner bringing certain emotional elements to the relationship that are lacking or diminished in the other partner. One especially important area where this takes place is sexuality. Generally, one in the relationship drives sexual activity more than the other, and often this pattern has been existent since the end of the marital honeymoon. Often up to the end of the marital honeymoon things are not so clear, but generally as the honeymoon stage comes to an end one or the other partner assumes a more primary sexual role.

There is great danger, and the prospects for marital healing dim, when the typically initiating partner looses sexual desire in the relationship. Certainly, all relationships suffer without the infusion of fresh feeling that can come along with an active sex life. More importantly, however, is the high likelihood that the sexually initiating partner who is no longer initiating is also beginning to disconnect and be only partially present in the marriage.  When this loss of interest stretches into several months, depthful marital healing and working-through of marital disappointments becomes highly problematic. For this reason, it is crucial to engage this issue early in marital treatment, lest the marital work have no genuine chance of long-term success.

Of course, how to engage the loss of passionate interest is a multi-faceted challenge. Emphasis, however, must be focused on where in the history of the relationship the more sexual partner gave up on the other partner with a sense of defeat. At this point “huge effort” must be brought to bear to heal the recurrent disappointment  between the two that led to this massive shutting down. Of course, other issues may have to be engaged before such focused work can begin. However, it is vitally important to engage this issue fairly early on in treatment, because to not do so is  to attempt marital healing without the more passionate partner fully present/invested in the treatment. Such work seldom succeeds.

One of the things that I have noticed with my own increasing aging (soon to be sixty years), and have heard from some of my older patients, is that surprising memories come up from the past, of this or that person long forgotten, that are wonderful and cherished. Often these are fond remembrances that were not recognized as such during the moment or their happening; yet thirty or forty years latter they emerge, in some fashion, as important and valued. Why is this? My own thought about this is that as we move into latter life some of the outer-self attitudes (eg. status, recognition, attractiveness, accomplishment, winning/losing, etc) that we have long protected ourselves with, and aligned with, begin to fall away, and the inner thoughts and feelings that we have long not recognized begin to emerge. One of the really big defenses that many of us have used throughout our lives is the attitude of devaluing. It is this attitude, in particular, that begins to dissolve as we move through the latter third of our lives. The bonus is the bitter-sweet recognition that people along the way that we self-protectively devalued, were and are, in truth, precious to us. While these past relationships are often not fixable in our outer world, their reparation within our inner world is an unexpected bounty to our aging selves.

The problem with outer-styled organization is that this method of managing in life so effectively hides and shields against personal need/vulnerability that there is little inside to propel/motivate personal growth. The challenge for the therapist is to somehow penetrate the protections of an overused outer-self, in order to bring out more truly personal experience from within, but to do so in a way that “brings the patient along” rather than frighten/damage/or wound. This can only happen within a therapeutic atmosphere permeated by patience and support. Without patience/support and empathy for the underlying fear that often drives the outer-styled, the outer-styled will have nothing to hold onto during the moments of marital conflict, crisis and confrontation.

It is my experience that all individuals have, to varying degrees an empty place within. One of the most difficult things in marriage is the extent to which the relationship evokes “the empty” within each of the partners. In fact, assessing the degree to which this is the case in any given marriage is one way of describing the extent of the functionality of a marriage. Intervening with this process, and learning to come into a “mutual quality of presence” that counteracts it, is one of the central challenges, and most important goals of a healing marriage.

Of late, I am reminded that it is not only “what couples say to each other” but also “how they say it”, that determines the outcome of couple’s interaction. However, behind the “what” and the “how” are even the more important “inherent assumptions” that underly all verbal communication and interaction in marriage. When negative, “the mutual assumptive process” does more to undermine and destroy relationship than any other dimension in marriage.