Many marriages exist in a state of perpetual unhappiness, surviving on a diet of denialism or just plain fight fatigue,

More worryingly though, many, many marriages exist today in a state of perpetual unhappiness, either surviving on a diet of denialism or just plain fatigue to fight anymore. Unspoken truces. Incomplete lives. Doing what is needed. How sad is that? Not being able to grow and learn and become a vital dynamic part of humanity.

So I took a conscious decision a few years ago not to do marital therapy/counselling simply because it was way too draining and depressing. I was happier to see a raging psychotic patient thrashing the ward and scaring the c**p out of everybody than sit in front of Mr and Mrs Miserable.

The main reason for this decision was that all that happened in these sessions was that they moved the battleground to my office. I was expected to be referee, judge, adjudicator and at the end they probably didn’t absorb a word I said. The listening deaf. They hear sounds but no words register. So they end up reacting to tonal cues rather than actual meaning of words. So what was the point, I thought?

More recently, however, I had to have a rethink after a wise person said to me that the age of information has passed and we are now in the age of wisdom. There is a ton of data on brain function. There is even more written about human relationships. There are studies which show how these two are connected. The brain is an organ, like the heart, lung, liver and so on.

It follows a certain set of rules that govern its function. It needs blood, oxygen, nutrition to function. It is affected by external forces more than any other organ in the body.

If it’s exposed to a constant high level of stress/unhappiness it’s going to take strain and the fuels used to make it run are going to run out. So what happens when brain fuel runs low? Negativity ensues, irritability and anger emerge, helplessness and hopelessness start to take over, sleep, appetite, energy levels, motivation and levels of interest slowly decline and eventually the person is just surviving physically.

So if we take all these points of