The couple is exposed to large movements related to the meeting of two individual stories and the vagaries of life. Its borders and its rules are regularly undermined (arrival of a child, decreased libido, adultery, mourning...).
The life of a couple is punctuated by cycles which have to be accepted for being reinvented over time. So much is accumulated: need of affection, desire for freedom, intense anger, sexual appetite, painful feeling of loneliness, bitterness broken promises, disappointment and humiliation of all kinds. Their desire to be happy again like in the early days is becoming increasingly important as time passes. But at the same time, anything that might reveal those needs and frustrations become a threat in itself.
These tensions are so terrifying that the couple often can not afford to look straight at these issues without thinking that they would take a huge risk: braking the relationship. All the drama of the conflict is tied quietly, tacitly, so that the actors sometimes doubt the reality of what they experience. The tensions builds up over time. These conflicts and tensions take strength and magnitude until the crisis broke out. The conflict surfaced for a while, then scared by what they just experienced, the couple postpones until a next wave.
Over the years they have become accustomed to compromise: they go when they are angry, pretend an affection they do not feel and hope that the weather will change their attitude. The structural ambivalence of their own human feelings can't be discussed. Often, rather than to evolve the relationship can become encysted in an operation ending into a vicious circle.
The couple psychotherapy is an invitation to understand what leads two different people but linked by a common history and feelings repeating cyclic patterns of conflicts in which they feel trapped. This is an opportunity to step back thanks to a neutral and respectful framework to express their suffering, expectations and frustrations. This is an opportunity for everyone to redefine its place and function in the relationship.