Parterapi is regarded by many I've spoken to as a last ditch effort. After a long period marked by great dissatisfaction, one is almost ready for divorce. Long talks and arguments haven't helped. Neither has speaking with friends and relatives, priests and bartenders. All the good advice one gets seems difficult to apply and one is close to giving up.
Parterapi is perceived as the last resort. A brave attempt to save a faltering realtionship. For many the thought of having to pay cash for help in working out a relationship is seen as a defeat. And it's expensive as well...
When a couple arrives at therapy, the expectations of the two individuals are very often quite dissimilar. For some the end has already been reached. Hope is gone and help is needed to end the often painful situation. The man, or the woman, may not really want to go into therapy but has let him/herself be "dragged" into therapy so as not be regarded as the one who, in the end, wasn't willing, or able to take part in the rescue attempt.
Many people come with expectations of getting some quick advice on how to shore up their partnership so they can continue happily just as before it all started to change.
- and to their surprise they are told by the therapist that no magic cure is forthcoming. They are told that it they, themselves, who will have to work hard and that the help the therapist can provide consists of support ang guidance, in help to rebuild a stable and trusting realtionship. They are also told that it will take time and that the work will at times be hard, that progress will be made and relapses occur. They will experience laughter and also tears and that , more than anything else, it will require courage.
Courage is needed to open up and reveal one's thoughts and aspirations to another. It takes courage to share feelings, to allow another to see one's strengths and weaknesses. And it takes courage to open oneself to another, vulnerable and without the protection one has built up over a lifetime.
Boy ! Not strange that so many give up after a couple of tries. Or never even begin.
For those who succeed, the payoff is great. They end therapy with increased confidence in themselves, in life and in each other. They acquire strategies they can apply to solve future difficulties and disagreements. They get increased insight into their own ways of meeting the world and how they are different from each other and thereby can help each other to achieve more than either can achieve alone.
And they often ask themselves in the end: "Why did we wait so long?", "Why didn't we do this before?", "Just think of all the time we have spent in frustration, how much we could have achieved if we'd done this long ago?" , "If only we had known"
