The Marriage Counseling Blog

Daryl and Sarah were in unusual situation – one that the experienced couples counselor they had chosen hadn’t witnessed before.

Daryl was still married – to another woman. Daryl and his wife had established separate living situations years ago but decided to stay together until the children grew older. Daryl had met Sarah at the sound studio in which he worked. She was a recording artist who came into town to work on her project and then promptly flew thousands of miles back to her home in New York City.

Soon afterwards, Daryl and Sarah established a long-distance relationship, mainly by phone and email. It started off as a friendship and work relationship, but grew as the years passed. Now they were in a difficult situation: Sarah was growing impatient and felt it was time for Daryl to “move on.” Daryl felt incapacitated – he felt obligated to his family as well as having pre-existing problems of his own (Daryl was coping with bi-polar disorder.)

The couple arranged for a phone appointment with a counselor for advice: should they stick it out or should Sarah move on, while Daryl dealt with his family matters and mental health? The counselor spent several sessions exploring what each person wanted in the next few years. There was no easy answers. The couple had obviously grown quite close and wanted desperately to stay in each other’s life…but time wasn’t necessarily on their side. Daryl was in an admittedly “stuck place” in his life and needed to make some difficult decisions for himself.

The counselor encouraged the couple to focus on their own lives for a while – whether it be career, friends, family, health. They could still contact one another but limited contact was best. As the months passed, both had to present to the counselor an “accomplishment report” based on the achievements they had met for themselves. This helped allay some of the fear and anxiety both were feeling in the interim and brought the focus back to their own individual lives, which was more manageable. Two years later, the couple married. Daryl has joint custody with his wife and Sarah is expecting a child of her own.

Love and relationships don’t always have an easy path. There can be lots of “overlay” especially as you get older. But that time in between can be useful and productive as well. It gives you a chance to explore yourself and some of your deeper fears, as you stay “in relationship” even when its triggering. An experienced couples counselor can lay out a plan to help make that tricky path a little easier.

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• Long Distance Couples Counseling
• Couples Counseling – Has the Distance Become Too Great?
• Marriage Counseling and Bridging the Distance
• Counseling, When Love Isn’t Enough
• Online Therapy For Families Split By Distance