Can This Marriage be Saved?

On a personal note, having gotten out of a relationship relatively recently, the following article touched home for me.

The next day, Marie arrived looking glassy-eyed and grim and announced, “I just sort of wanna get through the day.” Before the group began, while people were filtering in and picking at the breakfast of bagels and coffee Coché had laid out, the therapist took Marie aside to ask how she was doing. “I’m fine,” Marie said. Now she sat on the couch, eyes closed, holding her head in one hand, petting Coché’s Portuguese water dog with the other. Just before lunch Coché asked if there was any way the group could help. Barely looking up, Marie said that the only reason she’d returned was because of the “contract,” prompting Coché to ask why she told her she was “fine” before the group started.

“Because I wanted you to drop the situation immediately,” Marie said.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to discuss it.”

“Are you angry with me? Did I push too hard yesterday?”

“When I say I’m fine, that means just drop the subject,” Marie spat.

“Could you do me a favor,” Coché said, as calm and collected as if she were asking Marie for the time, “and instead of saying you’re fine, could you say, ‘I need to be by myself’?” Coché wanted Marie to see that when she was angry — at her husband or anybody else — she’d be better off stating it rather than withdrawing behind a froth of fake assurances.

“Um, no,” Marie said. “I find that when I say that the response is the exact opposite.”

“I see,” Coché said evenly. “So the only way you can get me off your back is to say you’re fine when you’re not.”

“I’ve found that’s the only thing that works with you, and with many other people,” Marie said, seemingly referring to the ghosts of her father and brothers that Coché believed were lurking in the room.

That about sums up what went wrong in my relationship and I suppose a whole lot of others too. If you're not "fine" don't say so you are lying and lying in a relationship, marriage, whatever is NOT COOL.

Oh yeah, and...

he said that she met perhaps his top requirement for a wife: She’d never “stray or look at other men or have an affair. Marie’s true to me, and that’s one of the things I wanted, and that’s what I got.”

Yeah.. I thought that one too. I don't put anything past anyone now.