Speaking of ‘stories,’ I love the way John Le Carre, the author, defines ‘story.’ In an interview, he said, “‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not a story. ‘The cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is a story.” In other words, stories involve two characters or things or cultures coming into a conflictual relationship with one another. And what I think that means for couples is this: when you and your stories come into contact with me and my stories, we create new stories together, stories about the two of us. Does that sound confusing? (Or a little exhausting??!) Well…that’s also what makes couple relationships so interesting!

So the next time you’re taking offense at something your partner said or did, think about your stories. What stories are you telling yourself, and what new stories are you and your partner creating together as you come into contact (and conflict) with each other?

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‘On the table’ is all the things we know are going on, being talked about, being worried about, being taken care of, being fought over. Our money problems, let’s say. Or our sexual problems. Maybe one of us crashed the car and we’re caught up in the aftermath of that, trying to find out from the insurance company if it’s totaled, and if so, what to do. That’s all on-the-table stuff.

‘Under the table’ is all the underlying power dynamics, unspoken assumptions, unrealized beliefs, and hidden cultural artifacts that flow in and out of an organization, or a relationship. For example, an employee may enjoy lots of paid family leave from her generous company, but not know that she enjoys this because the founder of the company was once a single mom who had a really hard time, and wants to build a family-friendly culture as a way to work out her own painful memories. Or, to take the above example, the couple talking about a car crash might not be aware that both of them were emotionally affected by the incident, and that’s why they’re squabbling about it. That’s all the under-the-table stuff.

‘In the clouds’ is the stuff of dreams, the hopes, wishes, and desires an organization (or a couple) has. Most of the time, these dreams are not known and acknowledged. They’re ‘up in the clouds,’ cut off from conscious awareness. A couple may be fighting because one of them has a dream for how she wants to live, or what she wants to do with her life, and that dream is not being honored—by herself or her partner.

As you reflect on your relationship, what do you think might be under the table, or in the clouds? Chances are excellent that the thing you’re worried about, or the thing you’re fighting about, has to do with something that’s not ‘on the table.’

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And it’s a great metaphor for what happens to a person who learns that their partner has had an affair. Maybe this seems obvious to you, but finding out your partner had an affair is a deeply traumatizing experience. It instantly transforms a major part of your life into something you know nothing about: you’re now partnered with someone who had an affair…what else don’t you know about your partner??

That’s why, if the two of you decide to save the relationship, the person who was betrayed begins to present symptoms of PTSD: hyper-vigilant behaviors, intrusive thoughts, intense mood swings, and being triggered by certain objects or words. You have traumatized your partner. (Or, dear reader, you yourself have been traumatized.) What to do?

First, it helps to recognize this as the trauma it is. If you both understand that one of you has been traumatized enough to experience PTSD, that can help you both be patient and hang in there for the long haul. There’s a lot of repair work to do, but if you both understand the severity of the feelings the affair has caused, you can then relax and get down to work. For example, the person who had the affair might grow impatient with being “the bad guy,” or have a hard time listening to his (or her) partner as they work through their awful feelings. It ain’t pretty. You’re guilty, yet you don’t always feel guilty, and maybe you feel guilty about that. (Or maybe you don’t! Maybe you’re feeling impatient, frustrated, and blamed for something you don’t want to cop to.) And, if you’re like a lot of people who have affairs, you can’t help feeling hopeless about ever regaining your partner’s trust. In all of this, it helps to tell yourself that right now, your partner has PTSD, and people recover from PTSD. There is hope that you two will—slowly and carefully—get through this.

Or if you’re the one who was betrayed, you may feel so awful that you can’t imagine you’ll ever be happy again, or ever trust again. If you tell yourself that you have PTSD—that you were struck full-on by a car—then you can trust that, though your recovery might be slow, it is possible. It is doable.

Not everyone survives a car-vs.ped accident. Some affairs destroy relationships, and some individuals never do the work of recovery, never move forward with their lives. But you can follow a different path. You can appreciate how badly you hurt your partner, and begin the hard process of putting it right. Or you can recognize how badly you’ve been hurt, and also appreciate how much potential you have to work through it, heal, and trust again.

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If you’re in that place with your partner, I would work with you on making your breakup the best it can be. I want you to break up in the healthiest way you can. Here are a few tips (with the caveats that this is not an exhaustive list, and not every couple will do everything on this list):

1. Seek support separately. You may have had a relationship in which you both assumed that your partner is your best friend, your biggest fan, a linchpin in your emotional support system. This may sound obvious, but it’s not reasonable to expect your partner to be that person for you. Be sure you have friends and family of your own to fall back on, and it also wouldn’t hurt to have an individual therapist for yourself to help you sort out your thoughts and feelings during this difficult time.

2. Keep up some level of civil dialogue, if possible. For some couples, this is not possible, or not advisable, or both. But if there is any amount of civility between the two of you, have a system—in writing, if necessary—of communication that allows the two of you to relate to each other as you move through the separation process.

3. But don’t use that dialogue to re-fight the old arguments. You’re probably breaking up because of—to borrow a legal term—irreconcilable differences. It would help to put those old fights into the coffin, alongside the deceased relationship. You probably still feel a sting of hurt or anger about something your partner said or did. You may feel righteously angry. But you’ve handled the problem by deciding to break up. Any continued fighting is a sign that you’re getting rid of the positive parts of the relationship but holding onto all the negative, hurtful parts. Why would you do that? It’s better to work with your individual therapist on ways you can make sense of the old arguments, put them to rest inside yourself, and move forward.

4. Consider either a trial separation or a trial non-separation. It’s okay to take the breakup in stages. What would it be like for one of you to get an extended-stay hotel room for 60 days, and just “try on” the breakup to see how it feels? You would have to set the rules carefully: how much contact (if any)? Who goes to the hotel? Do you want to split the time so that both of you are home with the kids (or pets) during the separation period? And how will you come together after 60 days to talk about it? A non-separation (a term coined by this author) works like this: rather than separating, you go through a trial period of staying together in a new way. No one is making any promises about whether they want this to continue after the 60 days, but for now you agree to work with a couples therapist to decide how you would live together differently. You might try the date-night plan you’ve always talked about but never done. You might try new ways of communicating, coached by your therapist. You might decide to have weekly “staff meetings” in which you sit down once a week to talk about the household, yourselves, and how it’s going. This is not necessarily an attempt to reconcile. You are both free to say “No, thanks” at the end of the trial period. It’s just an experiment to see if, in fact, breaking up is the best option. And you’d have the satisfaction of genuinely trying a different solution before arriving at the decision to break up. (That is, unless you find that this new way of life really works for both of you!)

5. Hire a mediator. Again, this may not work for some couples for whom conflict is too high for a mediator to be helpful. But it’s a good idea to hire one if you’re able to do so, and I recommend hiring an attorney who is also trained as a couple/family therapist, such as this provider.

6. Finally, something for you yourself to think about: you will get through this. At some point, it will all be done, and the dust will have settled. You’ll be single again, or you won’t, but you will arrive at a resolution of the problem. Right now, it’s a good idea to ask yourself this question: “I will get through this, one way or another. What do I want to look back on, and be proud of?” The purpose of this question is to get you thinking about the deeper, more personal goal you have as you move through this tough time. Don’t just try to get through it. Don’t just try to survive it. Use this painful time as a life event in which you learn something about yourself, develop a skill, or do something challenging that forces you to grow.

Oh—and I almost forgot. Self-care is essential. Try to eat well, drink lots of fluids (the non-alcoholic kind), and rest as well as you can. And here’s another self-soothing idea.

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I love happiness. Sometimes I think it’s my job to help people be happy, pure and simple. But my friend makes some great points: relationships—parent, spouse, friend—are not always about happiness. Sometimes they’re about your growth and development, which is usually painful. Other times, they’re about another person, so…your feelings and moods are not the point. Maybe all of this sounds obvious, but I know a lot of people who never question the assumption that their relationships are “supposed to make me happy.” Yes, they are…except when they aren’t!

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A little over ten years ago, I started seeing someone. We moved through the usual stages or phases of an early relationship, with all the ups and downs you might expect, until in 2003 we, well, “tied the knot.” (Our marriage, alas, is not yet recognized by the state. But that’s another story.) Since 2003, we’ve continued to build our life together, making lots of decisions you’ll recognize in your own life and relationships: should we get a dog? (yes); should we get another dog? (yes); should we get another dog? (yes); should we have children? (no); should we live near either of our families in Arizona and Minnesota? (no)… and so on. This is life in a long-term committed relationship. And right now, as we close in on eleven years together and I prepare for my 40th birthday next month, I can tell you: I’m happy.

But—there have been some losses. Some of the decisions we made (and no, the list above is not exhaustive) didn’t go in the direction I wanted. Sometimes we’ve made decisions together that have led me to feel a deep pang of loss. “If I were on my own,” I’d tell myself, “I wouldn’t do this.” Often in my work with clients, people come to counseling bearing the wounds of these losses. Or they come with anticipatory anxiety about the losses they’ll suffer if they hook up with a person, or stay with a person.

And here’s my latest take on all of this. First, the losses you’ve suffered—and will suffer—are real, and they are painful. No question. I won’t insult you by trying to minimize what you’ll lose if you decide to go a certain way in your life, career, or relationship. You will lose something. And most often that loss will really sting. So… why do it? Here’s why (if you ask me). Whatever I’ve decided in my life—over the past ten years with my partner, and in the years before that—and whether or not I’ve been conscious of this, I have always wanted to be happy, to have delightful experiences, to join with another person in ecstatic union (sexual and otherwise), to laugh, to love, to be loved… in short, I’ve always wanted my life on this planet to be wonderful.

And now that I’m pushing 40 (and pushing it hard), I’m finding that whatever choices I make, whether they’re thought through and careful, whimsical and adventurous, or just plain stupid (!), I always have a shot at the happiness I want. If I had chosen differently ten years ago, six years ago, two years ago, or yesterday, I would not be with my partner right now, and that would have been a loss. Ten years ago, it would have been a lost opportunity. Yesterday or two years ago or six years ago, it would have been deeply sad and life-changing. But even then, I would have had a shot at the happiness I want, just as much as I do now, with my partner but without some of the things I’ve lost along the way while deciding to be with this one person.

So… it all comes down to this: if you’re deeply torn about what to do because you know that either choice is going to be painful, can you also see that, no matter what choice you make (even if it’s a, well, bonehead stupid one!), you can still find the happiness you want? After all, you’ll always have yourself, no matter what you choose. And you have a lot of say in what you do with yourself, no matter where you choose to take your life, and no matter where life takes you.

Does this open up the topic and clarify things a bit more? If not, I’d love to hear your comments and questions.

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And here’s what I recommend: don’t ask that question…yet. There will be time for it down the road. If you’re thinking about couples counseling, ask one of these questions first:

1. What do I need to do to be a healthier and more functional partner?
2. What is my ‘gripe’ about my spouse, and how can I articulate it to him/her so that my true concern is spoken and heard?
3. What is my vision for my relationship? Can I articulate that vision to myself, and also my partner?
4. What do I need to do as a next step in my own development as a mature adult?

These are just a few examples of questions I often encourage my clients to ask themselves. They’re a lot more complex—and, I think, rewarding—than the “Should I stay or should I go?” question. And if you’re working on these questions, you’ll find that whatever happens to your partnership/marriage—whether or not you stay together—you’ll come through it with a lot more insight about yourself, and a lot more tools to help yourself in whatever situation awaits you, whether it’s a restored relationship with your partner, a brand-new relationship with someone else, or a new life as a single person.

So if you’re not sure what will happen to your relationship, don’t worry. That’s not the most important question. We have a lot of other things to discuss first!

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But is it?

Michelle Cottle, one of my favorite journalists, offered this take on the Gore separation. I like what she said. As upsetting as it might be for many of us who look to public figures to exemplify healthy marriages, it’s not all that hard to see how this separation makes good sense for this particular couple, and need not be seen as evidence that marriage in general is in trouble. My partner and I have been together for ten years, and if I have my way, we’ll be toasting each other at our fiftieth in 2049, with hopes for another 20 years of love and happiness. (He’s a really great guy.) But some couples follow a different path. Notice Michelle’s comment about the “unblinking” public eye that gazed upon the Gores for so long. Could your marriage survive that? Maybe. But it makes sense if Al and Tipper found themselves at an impasse, even though they’ve been together for so long. (Or…because they’ve been together for so long…)

If you’re a curious, courageous soul who loves your spouse and hopes to enjoy a lifelong marriage, you won’t necessarily suffer the fate of Al and Tipper. Anything is possible, but conscious intent is powerful. If you’re worried or saddened by the Gores’ story, take some time to talk to your spouse. Find out whether s/he feels you’re both doing okay. Try to be flexible, open, and daring as the two of you learn from the experiences of other couples and plan a bright future together.

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