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3. The Couple and Life’s Challenges: Grief, Illness, Conflict, and Vulnerability

This is the second part of our journey into couple dynamics: through illness, infidelity, and the trials that test every bond, how can two people endure, rebuild their connection, and reinvent life together? Between truth, maturity, and new forms of balance, the journey begins.

Life occasionally interrupts the usual flow of events. Illness, bereavement, separation, conflict, exile, and insecurity can erupt, and thought itself may falter. W. Bion describes these moments when the drive runs wild and suffering defends itself by halting thought. Sometimes one partner becomes the caregiver, the other the patient; this asymmetry can threaten the erotic connection, as if it becomes impossible to preserve a trace of playfulness, humor, or affectionate moments that keep life and vitality alive.

Often, these trials expose the quality of shared containment — not the effectiveness of solutions, but the capacity to endure, to postpone action, and to choose words that do not inflict further harm. As for infidelity, whether acknowledged or denied, it can take the form of a rebellion against an assigned role, an attempt to rekindle a desire dried up by an overly rigid ideal, or an attack on a pact seen as silent or obsolete. From a Lacanian perspective, it can be understood as a pursuit of the “object a,” that mysterious, elusive remainder that keeps the machinery of desire in motion.

At this stage, two paths emerge. One is separation, with each partner retreating into their own story; the other is reconstruction, where the pact is renegotiated, losing its grandiosity while gaining in authenticity. Nothing can change if the wrong adversary is targeted. The true opponent is not the partner, but the unspoken that has made denial seem the only option. When speech is replaced by control, intimidation, or violence, the situation is no longer a manageable conflict but a genuine danger.

Next comes growing old together, which means learning a new language of connection. The body changes, losses accumulate, and some ideals fall silent. Sexuality shifts toward tenderness, enduring time, and caresses that acknowledge a shared history rather than demand proof. Here, we can again draw on Winnicott, who speaks of the capacity to be alone in the presence of the other — to tend to life side by side, to walk in step without succumbing to boredom, and to cultivate a distance that keeps the workings of the relationship running smoothly.

Through all these stages, the same threads run, simply changing color. First comes the tension between closeness and distance: the longing for the other to heal past abandonment, and the suffocation when they come too close.

Then arises the need for recognition: to be seen without shame, to admire without losing oneself, to sometimes take the lead without pushing the other aside. Then come the families of origin: acknowledging what they give, setting boundaries, and creating rituals for living together. Work and money replay dynamics of power and dependence, stirring shame and pride, debt and gratitude. Children, both blessing and challenge, demand clear roles without encroaching on the couple’s space; health and fatigue call for sharing, support, and the admission of limits. Sexuality, ever-changing, requires conversation as an ongoing adventure, never as an obligation. And if infidelity occurs, it requires neither denial nor endless melodrama. Instead, it invites reflection: what in our story has become so rigid that it needs a dramatic turn to move again?

This journey does not offer formulas, but shapes habits of thought and a new kind of maturity. It helps, for instance, to set aside structured times for conversation, to distinguish what is non-negotiable, such as core values, from what is flexible, like everyday contingencies. It helps preserve a shared third space — a project, a culture, an activity — as well as separate third spaces, like friendships or personal passions, all acting as windows that refresh the air of connection. It teaches how to repair, to apologize without justifying, and to acknowledge hurt rather than downplay it.

At major life thresholds — the arrival or departure of a child, loss, vulnerability — it encourages opening the conversation early, so reality does not have to shout to be heard. And when speech becomes blocked, individual or couples’ therapy can help bring back what fear has silenced and make it possible to reflect on it again.

A happy couple is not one that has avoided storms. It is one that, after each passage through rough seas, inspects its hull, acknowledges the leaks, and sets out again, truer to itself.

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The Couple: An Imperfect Fiction Built for Two