DO YOU KNOW A COUPLE IN CRISIS?

We've all seen them. Perhaps we see they are in more trouble than they realize. And they usually wait far too long to do something about it, don't they?

Despite the relative isolation of the nuclear family, a couple is more than an island inhabited by two people plus their children. When two people come together as a couple, they become something more to everyone who knows them. A couple is a star in the social universe of many other people, not just that of their children. When a couple self-destructs, other people's universes also collapse in little ways, sometimes big ones. If you know a couple in trouble, you're in their social universe and will be affected if their relationship implodes.

Some signs of trouble:

• Do you have a friend whose marital fights escalate out of proportion to the magnitude of the triggering incident?
• Does your friend ever say that there are times when they have cooled down and can't remember what the fight was about?
• Does your friend comment that there is a deja vu quality about their marital quarrels, something strangely familiar that makes your friend comment "the words have changed but I've done or seen this before?"
• Do you have a feeling that their relationship has already passed the 11th hour?

If you know people in these situations, don't let them be the couple version of the proverbial man in a car who tells his wife he doesn't need a map and won't admit he has no idea where they are. You may not feel you have the right to interfere, but the act of omission of saying nothing adds to the couple's sense of hopelessness, abandonment by each other and alienation from everyone.

Couple's counseling, couples therapy, marriage counseling, relationship coaching are all names for the professional supports available for couples who are trapped in a death dance of their own creation. Untangling the toxic communication patterns, restoring respect and healthy boundaries, recovering from affairs, understanding that their destructive patterns may have antecedents in each partner's family of origin, bringing partners to an awareness of their individual responsibility within the couple and the impact of their behaviour on each other, on their children and on others in their social orbit –these are just some of the areas addressed in the therapeutic adventure of transforming their relationship deadlock to a new healthy relationship process that may never have been part of the couple experience of these two people.

Usually in marital conflict, no one is looking at the map any more. If you know a couple in crisis, invite them to choose the hopeful alternative of reaching out for professional support.