Don Paglia | Marriage and Family Counseling. Constellations Workshops

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After sixteen years of marriage Bill and Betty find themselves in marital doldrums. Although neither would say it openly, each felt their marriage had become lackluster and was clearly in a rut – “boring” was how Bill explained it to his closest friend.

What had characterized their marriage and family life, which consisted of two children, was a lot of routine, and a life that was adrift in long established patterns and predictability. Even Bill’s worn out “joke” that Friday night was their night for sex “in order to get it out of the way for the weekend” – a weekend filled with more predictability and tedious repetition, was more true than he or Betty realized. It typified the lack of seemingly no element of surprise or delight. They efforts to provide their family with safety and security had instead created an all-too-patterned life of mostly sheer monotony.

The truth is that their marriage problem came about, as quickly as after their honeymoon period had ended when Bill and Betty began to settle in to married life, with each realizing it isn’t quite the constant bed of roses that they imagined it to be. Each quickly began treating marriage as something they had now accomplished and instead of looking at their own marital relationship as something to cultivate and develop, they were now moving along to their next tasks at hand: getting a house of their own, having children, moving along on their career advancements, and so on, while looking to their marriage as though it would take care of itself.

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