I’m writing about couples therapy and the shadow of death today, because of some events in the lives of people around me over the past week or so.  It’s not that anyone I know has died, but things have happened in their lives which remind me that we are all mortal, and our time here is short.

“Time swiftly passes by, and opportunity is lost. Let us awaken, awaken.

Take heed, do not squander your life.”

Buddhist Gatha

My father died late last year at the age of 86.  I expect that when he was a young man he would have regarded 70 as a great achievement, let alone 80.  But a very close friend this week had an operation to remove cancer which left her without an eye, and another found that a cardiac check-up led almost immediately to bypass surgery.  Yet another is struggling with persistent glaucoma.  Oh – and I’m losing count of my friends who had close calls with prostate cancer or breast cancer.   It’s like I’ve reached the age where my friends are falling apart.  “Let’s get younger friends” quipped my wife, the mistress of black comedy.  Or maybe I shouldn’t hang out with so many marriage counselors?

When I got married (the first time that is) a helpful elder relative offered the age old advice “Never go to bed angry with your partner.”  She wasn’t yet at an age where she might be anticipating waking up to find him cold beside her.  I think she was updating the Buddhist prayer above into the context of modern marriage.

Yes – but what if you are furious with your partner?  What if daily you look at them wondering who they are, and how you came to choose this person in the first place?  What if you have even spent a small fortune on couples counseling, and it’s still not the relationship that makes you glad to be alive?  What if you like the idea of re-incarnation, simply because it seems that you need a whole other life to start again and create a relationship that gives you the happiness and meaning you deserve?

I gave up all hope of happiness in love once.  There you are – I’m talking about the first marriage again.  Maybe I was lucky, because after I had given up and settled for the relationship we had, my wife gave up on me, and looked for her dreams with someone else.  I think that many years later, she has finally found the partner that makes her life meaningful.

When I met my current wife, I never for a moment doubted that this was the most fantastic person to spend my one and only life with.  Yet, there’s times when we very nearly didn’t make it through, and when I was back in that place where it was hard to think that this seemed like the only shot I had at being alive.  And being alive just wasn’t that much fun.  Days of unhappiness turn to weeks.  Weeks to months of half-living.  Of not doing the things I most valued doing in life, because I just didn’t feel like it.  A half life?  Or a half-death?

Then I have a week like this one , where friends narrowly avoid death through the miracles of modern medicine.  They are alive, but they lose a bit here and there.  An eye.  A prostate.  A little bit of heart muscle.  A father, a mother, a partner, a lover, a friend…a part of themselves.  The shadow of death.

What has this got to with couples therapy?  Well, you may have already read my blogs about how happiness is relational.   Relationships may well be the source of a lot of grief in our live – but by and large they are the source of meaning and fulfillment too.  And yet as a society, we tend to regard couples counseling as a desperate measure to take in the face of disaster (or divorce).  It often carries with it a stigma of shame, as if seeing a marriage counselor is only something to do when we have failed.

I still suspect that many people don’t really trust couples therapy to work.  I can’t blame them.  The statistics give marriage counseling a pretty bad rap – I blogged about that too.  There’s something a little different in Imago though, where for us couples therapy is really just a start of a long journey, and taking a couples workshop is an integral part of that.  But it’s also about a shift in how we see things, that the conflicts with our partner are a door into something richer and deeper.  They provide a way to become fully alive, and to live each day with joy.

Imago has made the difference for me, that when I feel the coldness of death creep close, I know how to connect with the warmth and love that once eluded me.