How to couple?
What unites?
What topics cause contention?
On what foundations is the union based?
Each couple is an enigma.
But the relationship can be seen as a territory of expression, a field in perpetual evolution.
"The couple is told through places (physical or symbolic) revealing their intimate life", explains clinical psychologist and therapist Ivy Daure, author of
Couple is a place - When the analysis of places tells the couple
(1).
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The deciphering of this kind of amorous architecture-geography gives clues to the way in which the relationship unfolds or crumbles.
“If the places of the couple, such as that of the meeting or the holidays, have always been very present in the story of a therapy, the health crisis and the confinements have confirmed the importance of living spaces, continues the therapist.
Deprived of freedom of movement, many couples have found themselves in crisis, causing the breakup of some and preventing the birth of others given the difficulty of meeting people.
The house, place of the couple, a priori space of protection and security, has become a place of confinement and constraint to be together.
Based on numerous clinical cases, Ivy Daure questions the
Miss Figaro.
– How does the analysis of the places tell the story of the couple?
Ivy Daure.–
Each period of a couple's life is marked by physical places of reference, which become intimate territories.
These places (the apartment or the family house, the restaurant of the meeting, the places of vacation, the city of the move…) are a source of reading for the therapists, recounting the good times as well as the bad.
With them, it is the affective, emotional space-time that is expressed.
“Rome is our city,” one of my patients, Marie, told me one day.
“When we were in Brest, we were happy, I tell myself that we should perhaps go back there”, evoked another patient, Louise, regretting a bygone era, while supposing that Brest could revive her relationship with couple.
The place and its magic, its magnetism served to build the “couple-place”.
The "couple-place" is based on the inventions that each makes to reach the other, it is a fictitious territory that the couple invests
Ivy Daure, clinical psychologist and therapist
What do you mean by the notion of “couple-place”
?
It is a metaphor of the couple.
The “couple-place” is built up as the relationship progresses, inflections, habits, elements of language, shared life experiences, successful projects or projects to be carried out, wounds... It is based on the inventions that each one makes to go towards the other, to make of the couple a place.
It is a fictional territory that the couple invests, a landscape which can be at the same time beautiful, sunny, full of life or on the contrary dark, opaque, contentious, nebulous.
Each couple-place is unique and evolves over the course of its history.
This relational topography says a lot about the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the members of the couple.
It allows us to glimpse the possible places to invest together and highlights the unoccupied spaces or spaces left empty by the relationship.
For example ?
I think of this couple who made sport a place of unification of the relationship.
When I ask Pauline to describe the current landscape that represents her couple, she says: “It's a storm, a storm that hasn't stopped since my husband changed jobs.
The only moment of chemistry is when we play sports together.
Sébastien, her husband, replies: "I think there's a bit of sun, it's true that it's not easy at the moment, but when we go surfing together, when we manage to hiking, we meet again.”
The interest in physical activity and the maintenance of the body is a refuge, a common value.
This defines them in a recognized bond, but also differentiates them from others, from those around them.
Are there any bad couples places?
Yes, there are hurtful places, for example, those which have hosted a painful moment, like a patient who tells me that she understands, during a dinner with friends, that her husband has a relationship extramarital affair with a woman, who is also present.
This house, in which the group of friends used to meet to have a good time, has become a terrible space, dirty, and therefore associated with their greatest sorrow.
Some places are hurtful for the couple, those who hosted a painful moment, for example
Ivy Daure, clinical psychologist and therapist
You also speak of “place-symptom”…
In a couple, each of the partners can sometimes have conflicting demands, especially with regard to important decisions in the relationship, such as commitment, the acquisition of real estate or a child project.
This asymmetry creates tensions.
Thus, the question of the desire or non-desire for a child in a couple can become a place of thought, of conflict, of affection which impacts the couple, questions the future of their relationship.
The child who is not there has a crisis then a symptom.
When couples argue about this, I've often heard the reluctant partner mention the fear that the arrival of the child will undermine their perfect understanding or ruin the success of their exclusive relationship.
The therapy must allow them to investigate the places of their relationship,
how the child would be the place-symptom of a previous conflict or of a personal problem.
My role, as a therapist, is to open up to other possibilities, other perspectives, in order to help the couple get out of the impasse, to think and build the future.
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You make a connection between architecture and the difficulties of certain couples. What is this idea of a "couple's house"
?
A couple is a dynamic.
A construction that never ends, a relational space that we must always continue to enlarge and embellish.
At each stage of the life cycle of the two-person relationship (meeting, introductions to parents or friends, etc.), the architecture of the couple is nourished a little more.
We don't know what the next surprise will be, what we'll find in the next room, but we're taking it step by step.
This architecture of the relationship becomes for the couple a dynamic place and the common thread of their life together.
Can changing location save a couple?
Yes quite.
Shaking up the routine by going to other places allows the couple to come together.
I am thinking in particular of a couple whom I ask to bring me photos that are important to them.
The two, without consulting each other, only show me pictures of their holidays.
I ask them why and they tell me that these are the only times they have sex.
Their life being so intense and punctuated by their work, their children, their worries, that there is no place in everyday life for seduction, conjugality... Changing places is conducive to lightness, to the unexpected, to sensuality.
It is also important, when there is a lot of tension in a couple, to go solo in one place.
Change the physical places to test the couple-place, and thus know if the
Changing places is conducive to lightness, the unexpected, sensuality
Ivy Daure, clinical psychologist and therapist
Is multiplying the places the sign of a
powerful
couple ?
The couple needs social recognition.
Many spouses confide to me that on the surface, they excel in the image of the perfect couple.
But if some need to shine in the eyes of others by multiplying the evenings, dinners, trips to the other side of the world, others flourish in a restricted and more discreet circle.
And that's the whole wealth of the couple… Because we are often surprised by the breakup of some, and conversely by the longevity of others.
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Do the places of the couple evolve with the times?
To feel good, to blossom sexually, to experience intense moments… Today's couple have greater demands than those of our parents and grandparents.
It has become a complex place, where everyone seeks their own happiness and success.
A kind of race to find the ideal couple-place, with the idea and the illusion that it must come from the other.
Gender equality has changed the situation.
Conjugality is now closer to everyone's experience, but it imposes new constraints around which couples seek to build themselves.
The ways of seducing are evolving and the virtual is bringing about major transformations. Does the meeting place, real or digital, have an impact on the construction of the couple
?
The virtual place has become a real meeting place.
If they differ from the physical encounter (the smell of a person, the gaze games...), the codes of virtual seduction are very real and are measured in number of SMS, time and length of responses, use of emoticons.
I find that virtual places are devalued.
There is a kind of guilt for not having succeeded in seducing in a more traditional way, the feeling of having been deprived of the magic of finding love.
But when the virtual couple manages to go beyond the physical encounter and advances in the construction of a stable couple, it is structured like another in a unique way and with benchmarks to define the relationship.
When the virtual couple manages to go beyond the physical encounter, it is structured like another in a unique way
Ivy Daure, clinical psychologist and therapist
Reinvesting the house together, reinventing places of relationship in a new availability: retirement is a challenge for the couple...
Retirement is the passage to a new place, a space of evolution where many uncertainties about the future invite themselves.
It is indeed complicated to reinvest a territory full time, especially when one of the spouses has always been at home or retired before the other.
If some live this period as a space of freedom, a time to be together and enjoy, others live it as a form of confinement.
But the more the limits of the new relationship are set harmoniously, the greater the ease in exploring this period will be.
New places of the couple can arise, physical places, such as a reinvested family home, ephemeral places of travel and, of course, places of the relationship, spaces to be conquered in mutual care, in short the
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Is the rupture the end of the “couple-place”
?
No.
If the physical places change, the relational space persists in the organization of parental life or the tensions linked to the separation.
There are also couples who continue living together despite the breakup, or go on vacation together to please the children.
And therein lies the full force of the couple-place bond.
The couple will always remain an enigma, a union with multiple definitions which, even if they are not all easy to be accepted by society, are indeed real.
* Editions ESF Sciences Humaines, 204 p., €24.
The couple is a place - When the analysis of places tells the story of the couple by Ivy Daure
(Editions ESF Sciences Humaines).
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