The Unlived Life of The Couple
I’m 47. As a heterosexual male, I’ve seen all facets of relationship.
I did the young love in the 20’s thing without kids. I did the mid 30’s with kid. And then I did the mid 40’s thing with older kid. And yes, all with the same person. In all phases of relationship, I know firsthand that an energized and passionate relationship can be extremely elusive.
Yes, even in my 20’s without kids, I sometimes wondered, after the first few years, really, is this it? Watching videos on weekends? Eating dinner together most nights? There must be more.
And in my 30’s and 40’s and beyond, it got much tougher to honor our coupledom. Raising a son, a busy lifestyle, running a business together, trying to take care of ourselves, manage a home, my wife and I clearly noticed when we were connecting and how much more powerful we were, as opposed to when we were not. In connection, we had jet propulsion. In disconnection, it was like bad petroleum.
For most couples past the age of 35, life just happens. It’s a cliché but it’s everywhere. Work, kids, house, finances, busy lifestyle. Life has taken the couple by surprise. And yet with a simple elder who’s been through it, it wouldn’t. Consistently couples complain, I’m stressed, he’s stressed, we don’t have enough time for everything. And in the cross traffic of life, we miss each other. Even worse, we start to blame each other for the misses.
We miss the wisdom – that our energized and connected coupledom is the fruit of our lives. With kids, it is the bedrock of our family. Be weak in your coupledom and your family falls apart.
And yet don’t we know this already? Haven’t we been told? Or do we get so bogged down in the stress of work, the kids, that we get blind to this truth?
Carl Jung said, “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.”
Now extrapolate the phrase “unlived life of the parent” to the unlived life of the couple. Can you imagine what I’m getting at here? The unlived life of the couple. The couple that misses one another. The couple that has lost one another
With divorce rates as high as they are, it’s not far fetched to say we are a nation of unlived lives of couples. There often is no life of the couple, if even a couple. Instead, there are two frantic individuals going it alone, trying to cobble together a family structure financially and logistically.
And when the unlived life of the couple reaches extremes of unlived-ness, the couple wonders, where is my partner? Who is he? What matters to her? And in here, divorce often ensues, sending the family into a tail wind.
And so, how can this be different? How can you as a couple engage and energize one another? What does the “lived life of the couple” look like?
Simple. One word. Connection. Okay two. Meaningful connection. And in here, is the spark igniter.
The lived life of the couple ignites just like this.
You sit opposite your partner at the kitchen table or in the bedroom. The kids are asleep or watching tv (if you have kids). It’s a week night 9pm or maybe Saturday at 9am. You light a candle to set the space. (If that’s too hippie dippie for you, scrap the candle.) You take 30 seconds of silence and take a few breaths together. You clear out the cobwebs of the day or the morning.
