Making Life Work: A Couple of Changes for 2018

It was early December just before the Christmas of 2017.  I sat in my office near Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. 
Behind the couple seated in front of me, my view centered on a deep paprika chrysanthemum, heralding fall.  It sat near a basket offering a fat pumpkin turned on its side. The gray stem of the pumpkin caught my glance through the 10-foot glass window that separates my office from the secret city garden next to Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. 
Tall, browning grasses and blossomed-out pink rose bushes surrounded young, lithe willow trees slowly losing leaves to approaching winter.
Husband John and I bought this office suite in 1997 and renovated it as the home for my city practice in clinical psychology. Clients waiting for their psychotherapy appointment listen to music, chat, look at the garden, and think about their personal work.
That day we expected the first snow of winter.  I looked forward to watching flakes drift from the sky and blanket the plants in the garden. If the snow melted quickly, as predicted, it would not harm the chrysanthemum.  I hoped for the best: a light snowfall disappearing into longer warm fall weather.
Inside a spacious tall room large enough to comfortably seat psychotherapy groups, I sat across from this graying couple in the dead winter of their long, icy marriage of nearly 30 years. 
Three adult sons are now married.  Sheldon is a long-waisted man with graying hair. He sat on my black leather couch, shoulders turned away from Aileen, his plump, pretty wife with shoulder length dark brown hair. Although Sheldon intended to teach her the right way to love him, his words sounded like insults instead of the tips he hoped would offer Aileen guidance in speaking successfully with him. Instead, she felt cut to smithereens. 
She opened her lips as if to retort but thought better of it and remained quiet.  Her slumping shoulders told me that she had been silenced, but just for now. She would soon be openly angry. Her eyes would signal when she was about to rise in modulated fury. Fury needs no volume to be clearly understood.
As the late afternoon got colder, a light dusting of large white flakes floated onto the chrysanthemum. It too endured the cold bath it received. As the couple tried to warm up their own lives, the garden in front of me turned to a wonderland of paprika flowers and with snow-white hats.
I felt exhausted from the tension evident as I sat with Sheldon and Aileen, but they are getting better.  In the years we have worked together monthly, they have personally experienced the intimacy spectrum from cataclysmic disaster to jubilance. 
They have weathered the agony and enjoyed the ecstasy of marriage.
My job is to help them redesign the space between them, so it works better.  I also attempt to facilitate ways for this couple to renew hope in the power of each other. Our skills combine to overpower dysfunction. We plod forward until we create change. It feels both exhausting and quietly thrilling to break through a marital deadlock. For me, it is worth all the effort.
Couples tell me it is worth all it takes for them to transform their lives.  I believe them.
Husband John Edward Anderson says he cannot imagine doing what I do and assumes he would find the work grueling. Sometimes it feels enervating. But a rush of energy surges through me as marriages rebound, providing me ample reward for my effort.
I design gut-wrenching work for what I hope to be a lifelong benefit. If Aileen and Sheldon continue to grow in 2018, the time spent will have been well worth the effort for all involved.
As we move into 2018, does your relationship need a couple of changes?  If so you are not alone: every couple I have ever met, including my own marriages, needs a couple of changes each year to keep growing.  What will yours be for 2018?
To consider: how might your intimate relationship benefit from more tenderness, more compassion, more quiet conversations and cuddling? Is there a way to discuss this? Do you dare? Why or why not?
To read: Coche, The Skillful Living Workbook. Available at www.cochecenter.com 
Find Dr. Coche overlooking the bay on 96th street in Stone Harbor as she treats couples and individuals and families.  Reach her through www.cochecenter.com.