Early on, in the beginning of your joining, you keep your money separate.

You live in separate spaces and, while you may see each other several times a week and speak daily, you still hold firm to an equal amount of time for separateness.

Eventually, if the bond grows and you stay together, you call yourself a couple and redefine, in fact, if not in words these very boundaries. With time and trust, you move toward union.

Interestingly enough, as the relationship becomes long term, there may be some reversals in a movement toward balance. Where you once reached toward union, you may now require individuation. Each couple works consciously or not on this balancing of togetherness with individual growth in an effort to keep in line with changes in circumstances and shifting priorities.

The arrangement or implicit contract, the understanding you have of the nature and conditions of your relationship always benefits from being made conscious, spoken out loud and even re-written at times to become congruent with here and now realities.

Cases in Point

Recently, Tom’s career has taken off and he’s been called upon to travel more and more, sometimes abroad, for weeks at a time.

Helen is delighted with Tom’s success but, not surprisingly, senses a major shift in their life together. She has been feeling resentful and anxious at times. She sees herself and her own work as somehow "diminished” in the shadow. Abandonment dreams remind her of her isolation.

Clearly, the relationship has been pushed out of sync by circumstances. The individual advance of Tom has cost the couple its comfort level. Balancing individual development with couple needs becomes the next order of business.

Sometimes couples describe disquieting feelings when the wife begins to earn more money than her husband and while they imagined this would be dandy, and despite egalitarian views, the husband suddenly finds himself depressed.

When the balance shifts this extremely from a more conventional arrangement, it’s certainly time to reevaluate.

What’s been gained and what’s been lost in terms of continuing a vulnerable and intimate connection?

Perhaps the priorities are negotiable and the commitment holds fast in the face of time apart and physical distance; but maybe the time away and the distance is a signal that the intimate connection is at risk. Loss of love is a heavy price to pay for sticking your head in the sand.

Case 2

Nell and Stan are American expatriats living in Paris. They are in their mid 40’s, not married, but consider themselves committed to each other.

In their first session, they confirm that they are stuck, and afraid to move forward in their relationship even though that is their declared intention.

They’re having frequent arguments, loud and adversarial. Stan believes that some of the current stress in their lives relates to coping with his aging parents. He has watched them grow more needy and dependent and that has reminded him that he and Nell aren’t getting any younger.

Nevertheless, Nell is disturbed by Stan’s angry outbursts. She feels attacked and watches herself withdraw. As the session continues, it becomes clear to all of us that Stan’s anger and Nell’s withholding keep the relationship in stasis, precluding further movement toward vulnerability and intimacy.

In spite of knowing each other for five years, they each lack the trust that they’d be in safe hands with the other without protective defenses.

So they keep treading water, keeping each other at arm’s length. As they consider Stan’s parents, and the conditions of aging, each grows less patient with the game and their stand-off seems less and less satisfactory.

Even so, Nell can’t imagine the comfort of surrendering to full trust in Stan. And while Stan says he can imagine it, he sits with arms tightly folded protecting his heart.

The process takes time but the conflict between fear and need is pushing their intimacy boundary demanding a choice and a risk.

In an intimate relationship, contact and distance - togetherness and individuation - are the watershed issues, powerful enough to be points of growth or deal breakers.

Elaine Z Mosher PhD

The cases in point which appear in this column do not represent any particular individual or couple, but are a composite representation of people with relevant life issues. Similarities with actual people are coincidental.

©1999 Elaine Mosher

Cases in Point: Archive