While I haven’t researched this, I am sure that a fair number of the troubled couples I’ve worked with over the past ten years had the same fundamental problem: They were never in love with each other in the first place. This is not a sour grapes verdict: “Well, therapy was frustrating or weak or ineffective, so obviously the couple were never meant to be together.” What happens is that a core disconnect, or never-connect, comes into view over the course of therapy. One sign is that no discrete grievance is ever resolved. You can see this in their eyes, by the look that tells anticipatory ruin of their partner’s next statement. I’ll describe one of the potential saboteurs of the Imago Dialogue, that smaller problems will not be well worked on as long as the deepest, longstanding issues have been ignored. I illustrate. Wife says: “It really upsets me that you rarely call when you’re going to be late.” A worthy problem, this grievance will be a nonstarter if the husband suspects she is cheating on him. “Dear, of course I don’t call when I’m going to be late. I have to sneak home to see who you’re sleeping with.” But the deepest issue is never something they can find. It is too undermining: They got together wrongly.
Each was terribly needy. They had sex after a drink and drug party, assumed it was love. Or they are not able to love.
There is no good way to prevent this tragedy but that one or both of them, prior to the commitment, would go to therapy. Depth process could help him see that need is not love. That she is looking at a cold father-figure and, still a child, is comfortable in his hands. That she wants to “save” someone because no one saved her and the best way to run from that is to turn the tables. That he is attracted to a wounded bag-of-feelings for the same reason.
But that’s a solution on paper. In reality, once a neurotic finds a bond, whether it’s alcohol (“God in a bottle”*), drugs, masturbation, fame, work, or a person, he is loath to return to his pre-made self. But this is true of any addiction.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.