Some people disparage Valentine's Day on the grounds that it is an imported event, purely commercial, even — let's say it — pointless! Everyone is free to embrace it, to celebrate, to give gifts, or not. But whatever our view on the matter, what counts most is what lies behind it: the couple, and the noble, universal feeling that underpins it — love. Because a "successful" relationship does not happen by itself: it is built, worked at and readjusted, between shifting roles, differences between men and women, and crises to be decoded rather than dreaded.
How Has Society Transformed the Couple?
On that score, we live in a society undergoing a major shift. Breaking with the traditional sociocultural model — in which, within the couple, reason took precedence over feelings, and roles were clearly divided according to a bedrock of commonly shared beliefs (the woman's role, the man's role) — today's society, fed by the emancipation of women and by consumer culture, has not only opened the door to love but has also upended the roles of the partners. And this epistemological break, where the couple is concerned, is a hard one to accept.
How Can You Reconcile Personal Fulfilment With Life as a Couple?
These days, whatever a person's sex, interest is focused more and more on self-realisation and fulfilment; on the capacity to change and evolve in line with ambitions that are often tied to the professional sphere. In this context, the social institution that often pays the price is the couple, plain and simple. The notions of sacrifice and compromise, once taken for granted, are today a heavy thing to accept and to shoulder.
How can a couple hold together when each partner is chasing personal fulfilment and expects the relationship to answer their individual quest? How do you juggle the three time frames — taking the past into account (each of us carries a share of wounds, insecurities and frustrations), managing the present with its demands (daily life and the pressure it exerts) and betting on the future and building it (securing your position and setting your children on the right track)?
The couple is at once a place of stability and a place of change. It is a paradoxical mission, one that requires both partners to set about the task of co-building their marital happiness.
A Relationship Is Work!
A "successful" relationship does not happen by itself. Some couples strike us as holding up effortlessly, while others, more turbulent, seem to earn their moments of calm only through endless clearing of the air, sacrifices and compromises. It is true that when partners share the same beliefs and values (the importance of family, respect for the other's freedom, personal fulfilment, raising the children), the task becomes easier.
A paradox governs this difficulty. We set out to build the foundation of the family nucleus — a vehicle for values and upbringing, presumed to guarantee psychological and material stability — and we do it all without anything or anyone having prepared us for it. Each of us improvises as a builder of relationships, carrying nothing but the model of our parents and other close relations, against which we act either by imitation, where we admired them, or by contrast, where we did not.
Often a person counts on their partner, or on the relationship, to dress their wounds, make up for their weaknesses and soften their insecurities. Except that this passive stance can be of no help in consolidating a relationship, which demands a deep understanding of oneself first, and of the other second.
What Differences Are There Between What Men and Women Expect?
Culturally, men and women do not bring the same expectations to a relationship. Even though relations between the sexes have changed a great deal, traces of this remain. For a woman, forming a couple and then a family often represents a goal in itself. Women's expectations are more concentrated on the marital and family relationship. Men, for their part, expect less from it most of the time, because the relationship serves as a springboard for facing their outside professional life. For them, the couple is, in a sense, "the warrior's rest".
The First Crisis: How Do You Decode It?
The first crisis comes at the moment when each partner tries, a little, to "take back their marbles", to become themselves again. The question that then arises might be put like this:
"Who do I want to be within this relationship? Who do I want to be in life, and how do I reconcile the two?"
Early Crises, a Precious Signal
The first crises, often painful to live through, are nonetheless precious. Because, like the fever that announces an illness in the body, they act as an alarm signal. All that signal asks is to be decoded, so that it pushes the partners into making a diagnosis. And, why not, into laying down the first rules of their relationship. There is no couple without crises. And a couple that goes through no crisis at all is a suspect couple. What is needed, then, is the ability to interpret a partner's dissatisfaction. And to see that, beyond their words and reproaches, they are expressing — perhaps clumsily — a request for change.
A Tool for Growth
What can be perceived and felt as destructive turns out to be a hand held out to us, to improve the relationship. Ordinary sentences such as "you're never available for me! You spend most of your time at work, you come home exhausted, you neglect your home!" might instinctively land as "You're a bad wife, a bad homemaker, you're guilty of working…". They are liable to open the door to a flood of justifications from a woman who feels unfairly attacked.
Beyond the surface meaning, we can decipher a call for closeness from our partner. A warning that could be an opportunity to establish communication and to take stock of certain aspects of life as a couple. The hidden message looks very much like "I miss you, I need you, try from now on to cut down the amount of work you take on outside. If you ask me clearly to handle certain tasks at home, I will be happy to do them". If the partner shows that she has grasped her husband's deeper message, he will bring the tension down instantly. And what looked very much like disparagement would turn into rich and fruitful communication.
Fusion or Distance: What Is the Right Space Between?
In its early days, the couple was not, in reality, a couple, but a fusion. There were not two people, but one hybrid being with four arms, four legs and one head. There are couples who go on living within this pattern. The partners define themselves only by reference to the couple. These are fusional couples, whose formula would be 1+1=1.
Since each partner's autonomy is a fundamental dimension of the relationship, there is a model of couple that allows each to go on existing with their own needs. One where each preserves their own desires and their own demands. This is the "interlocking" couple. It follows the formula 1+1=3. The couple is the third character, gradually enriched by the personality of each partner. Yet it remains different from the people who make it up.
| Couple model | Formula | Characteristic |
|---|---|---|
| Fusional couple | 1+1=1 | The partners define themselves only by reference to the couple. |
| "Interlocking" couple | 1+1=3 | Each keeps their autonomy; the couple becomes a third entity, enriched by both personalities but distinct from them. |
Love and the couple, whatever form the latter takes and whatever the age of the partners, are precious; and like anything precious, they need caring for, either on your own or with support. Given that preciousness, making constant readjustments becomes, and will remain, an effort that is always worth it. Happy Valentine's Day and… happy working!
