How to (literally!) break down the Berlin Wall in YOUR marriage
. . . with one of Britain’s top counsellors – whose mini-break with a difference rekindled the spark in LINDA KELSEY’S romance
H appy anniversary, d arling,’ I say as we make our way, with the help of Google Maps, through the streets of Berlin in 34-degree heat.
Our destination? Neither a restaurant for a slap-up lunch nor a cocktail bar at which we will toast the ten years of our relationship, but the consulting room of the renowned marital therapist andrew G . Marshall.
Itmaynotbeeveryone’sideaofthep erfect mini-break — and I admit I was tempted to call the whole thing off as we questioned earlier, over breakfast, what on earth we’d let ourselves in for.
By signing up fora relationship MO Tin lieu of a romantic holiday, was there a danger of ra king up problems that didn’ t actually exist?
Could playing the truth game, laying bare our deepest feelings on the shared couch, result in us saying things better left unsaid?
Might we benefit more from insteadgoing round the museums and picnic king on currywurst in the Tiergarten?
Well, it was too late to back out now — and Ire minded myself why we were doing this.Theideaofcouplestherapyhadintrigued both of us. after a decade of being together, I had started to notice that I’d become a lot snappier with my partner, Ronny. More easily irritated, listening less, resenting our differences.
and it had got me thinking about past relationships — my short-lived marriage when I was 19 and the 23- year relationship with the father of my son.
Might counselling have saved us? Wasn’t it better to reflect on things before the rot had set in, rather than waiting for a major crisis when long-held resentments are too embedded to be resolved?
Now in my mid-60s,I want this bond to be for life, for us to grow old together —
Understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next NORA EPHRON, WRITER
and Ronny wants the same. We’ve survived health scares and the challenge of his adult daughter moving back in for a year.
Doubtless, there will be more bumps in the road. If counselling can keep us on track, it has to be worth a try.
So, here we are for the first of five hour-long sessions with Andrew, who welcomes us into his airy consulting room and gestures towards a black leather sofa. We each nestle into a corner and I note a box of tissues. Won’t be needing those, I think, we’re too happy for tears...
Andrew — who moved to Berlin 12 months ago after 30 years as a therapist in the UK and having written 16 books on relationships and infidelity — explains the principles behind the programme he’s designed as a ‘therapy holiday’.
‘When people lead busy lives — especially with young children — it can be hard to fit in therapy on a weekly basis,’ he tells us. ‘It can actually be easier to clear your diary for a whole week.
‘It also feels safer than to leave the session in the air with a week’s gap between. If things go pear-shaped in the meantime, you can come back the next day to discuss it, rather than having it hang over you.’
Most people, Andrew knows from experience, crush marriage against the wall because they’re too involved in daily life. The advantage of this intensive week is that you get to work on your marriage 24/7, away from the distractions of work and picking up the kids and other responsibilities. The focus becomes entirely on the two of you.
Andrew had been visiting one of the few remaining sections of the Berlin Wall and discovering the poignant stories of divided families at the adjacent commemorative museum when it occurred to him that, as with the divisions between East and West Berlin, in a long relationship you might ‘start with a bit of barbed wire between you, then build up to full search lights and shoot-to-kill’.
What might we learn from using the Cold War as a metaphor for relationships and the walls couples build between one another?
DAY ONE
AFTER taking basic details, Andrew asks what brought us here. I say that I think in some ways, we’re very different people — that we’re East and West, to use his own metaphor — and that we got heavily involved and moved in together within a year of meeting.
That we came to the relationship as fullyformed adults in our 50s and didn’t focus on our differences, which had now come more to the fore. That I was the one who got most easily irritated by these differences and I didn’t like this aspect of myself.
Asked to elaborate, I find myself reeling off a list, including the fact that I’m organised, while Ronny is disorganised; I like change, Ronny is resistant; I’m focused, Ronny is easily distracted; that I want to act when I’m anxious, while Ronny procrastinates; that he comes out with stuff in a torrent, whereas I first need to sit on it and think things through.
It sounds like a litany of complaints, so I try to get Andrew to understand that they’re all petty things. He notes my anxiety to emphasise how good our relationship is.
Ronny explains that the house we live in belongs to me (his flat is rented out) and that I have a lot of rules, such as not being able to leave one plate unwashed or surface unwiped after we’ve eaten. And that if he makes for the TV or phone before the kitchen is spotless, I give him a look of incomprehension. These spoilers, he says, get in the way of our love for one another.
We talk, too, about how Ronny, who wears his heart on his sleeve, encourages me to express my feelings and how sometimes I find it overwhelming. Andrew notes I appear to swallow my feelings with thoughts and Ronny explains how he feels closer to me when I let myself soften.
Andrew reassures us that however petty we believe some of our dissatisfaction to be, we need never feel embarrassed about airing ‘small’ topics because we might learn from them.
He also notes moments of sadness — in me — and tenderness between us. Our homework is a reflective listening exercise, to talk about our