Relationship Therapy:
Who needs it ?

There are people who appear to sail through life blissfully. Their partners are as near perfect as they can be, their children sociable and caring. Nothing, on the surface at any rate, seems to phase them.
OK most of those images are the pure televised fiction of commercials as the creatives know full well that the reality is far from that for most us, yet nonetheless we long for it. These images can make those struggling to communicate with each other in less blessed circumstances feel very low indeed, but nothing is ever what it seems. Most families have their problems, some are simply more adept when it comes to hiding them away from the outside world.
In America virtually everyone with medical insurance seems to use a therapist. It is the done thing. Here there is still a reluctance to admit that problems exist and to seek help yet we all have problems of one kind or another. Whether we are the couple who can’t conceive and who have allowed that to sour and destroy their relationship. Whether we are in a violent relationship or realise, too late, that the person we thought we’d partnered with is as far removed from our rose tinted version as can be. Or perhaps we feel held back and stifled because whilst we have grown up and are hungry for new experiences, our partners simply aren’t able to move on with us. The swagger and the arrogance that once attracted us may have worn thin. Familiarity inevitable breeds contempt but how we do deal with that. It seems that most of us, if the statistics are anything to go by, separate and/or divorce without a backwards glance. These days, it seems, we take less care choosing a life partner than we do a new pair of shoes… which inevitably means that when the novelty wears off we may find there was no real or lasting foundation to the relationship.
We are all individuals with our own traits and personalities which are formed from our own upbringings and from the influences of those around us. Perhaps we all expect life to be too perfect and cannot countenance any veering from the path we want to follow. Many of us arrogantly seek to change our partners’
habits and behaviours in order to make them confirm to our ideal. We are generally more selfi sh and have higher expectations than we used to but aren’t prepared to put the effort in. Maybe that is why so many relationships are failing and the children of those relationships going on to follow similar patterns as they try to form their own relationships and so on and so on and so on.
And what is happiness and what is contentment to most people these days anyway? What values do we hold dear? What do we care about above all else?
One of the saddest things these days is that families don’t sit down and simply talk together very much at all or give each other their full attention when they do. It seems they don’t value their relationships with each other at all. This leaves many important thing unsaid and a very real feeling of isolation which exists as much for those living with others in dysfunctional relationships as for those living completely alone. It sets a bad example for the children of the family who come to fi nd that the only way to get one to one attention is to be naughty.