If it has fulfilled its purpose, this book has helped you become more aware of how you relate to your partner in various areas of emotional and sexual contact. It has not discussed the content of your marriage, the many preoccupations you find yourselves talking about, discussing, arguing. The range of discussion in each marriage is different. But the problem areas of the marriage may not be the ones most frequently discussed. Sometimes one topic for discussion is favored over another which is more important and more threatening as a kind of diversionary tactic: it ventilates emotions properly belonging to another source.

You can often avoid the need for outside help if you sit down yourselves and take stock of your relationship. You might run through many issues before uncovering the one which, upsetting you unexpectedly, proves to be vital.

Sometimes anxiety is vague, free-floating, and its origin hard to find. You may try to deal with it by activating some familiar conflict and releasing tension. But this works only for a short while: you have selected the wrong conflict. For example, you have had your usual argument about whether one of you is a safe driver whereas the deeper conflict is about whether one of you drinks too much. When arguments do not 184 clear the air and reduce tension in a lasting way, they repeat themselves frequently and obsessively. Then the best solution to this interminable conflict may be counseling. The counselor will often be able to identify fairly quickly, taking a bird's eye view, what the real issue is—often to the couple's surprise. However, there is a danger that the counselor, if working on his or her own marriage, will select an issue on the basis of personal obsession and be quite wrong.

Many modern psychotherapists and counselors do not offer hard and fast diagnoses or prepared treatments. There is some point in this: human beings are not machines. A wounded self-esteem is not so identifiable as a wounded elbow. But there is some overlapping: a "broken heart" may well become a broken heart. A physician will discuss the sore throat you complain about; he will not set about amputating your foot—which is analogous to what some psychotherapists end up doing to your psyche. And the medical model, despite its mechanistic base, does offer some respect and responsibility.

A counselor might claim, with some justification, that the area of specialization is broad: it is the complete functioning of couples or marriages. If this were so then the counselor's expertise would have to be almost superhuman. As a normal human being, the enormous scope of the counselor's own marriage will be more than enough to handle with the required balance and detail. The current emphasis on "holistic health" sounds good; it makes sense to treat the person as a whole: of course diet, emotional life, sex, attitudes, the body and senses are all integrated aspects of the whole person. But is a holistic practitioner really able to treat them all?

Finally, only you as a couple have the time and the genuine motivation to find out how you need to function, what kind of sexual and emotional life you want, and how many children you want to bring up in what way. The truth is, as a couple you are on your own. You are, in yourselves, a potential evolutionary unit. You have an essential place within the scheme of things. Without couples, whether in short or long term relationships, there would be no people, no society. Society is the sum of you.

Good counselors, of course, will simply not agree to make decisions for you or even try to influence you. They will only accept the role of consultant and they will be prepared to let you delineate the main areas in which you need an objective viewpoint. In other words, you set the limits of the consultation and the territory it is to cover.

Another kind of limit is that of time. Do not hesitate to go for one consultation, or a series of consultations spaced as you wish, not as the counselor proposes. If you accept a program of work on your marriage, it will be someone else's program, not yours, and your autonomy will be diminished. This book is, of course, a kind of program. But it is within your control—you can use it as you wish. The consultant's time and skills can be similarly controlled.

You are justified in finding out something of the consultant's skills, background, and marital situation (I would not, myself, go for marriage counseling to a counselor who is not involved in a marriage of at least an informal sort). While avoiding invasion of privacy, you should be able to elicit basic facts: marital status, whether they have children, their opinions on child rearing. For example, La Leche League, an organization of nursing mothers, has found that whether a male physician supports breast-feeding is much more closely linked to whether his wife breast-feeds than to what he has learned on the subject (usually nothing) at medical school. There is no point in going to a counselor who holds radically different views on family life than your own and you might as well find out about this at the start.

Another helpful area for preliminary enquiry is that of discussion groups or therapy groups for couples. One of my clients went with his wife to a couples workshop and found that it included gay couples. He had no objection to gays—he simply did not consider that they shared the same kind of life or problems as he and his wife. The group leader did think so, however. Remember, also, that all groups encourage disclosure of your personal life. My own experience is that this provides temporary relief and feelings of being understood but that these initial feelings are followed by resentment and a sense of lost dignity. Think how guarded you would be in talking of your married life to even your closest friends.

Finally, it is essential that you both agree to any outside consultation. Too often, one partner drags the other to a counselor in an attempt to find an ally. The counselor and the more enthusiastic partner then gang up on the reluctant one.

If you are so unhappy with your marriage that you seek outside help without your partner, you will not have been able to follow through on the explorations suggested in this book because they require mutual cooperation. You may feel the need for an outside opinion on your own functioning, in individual counseling or therapy (which you should also treat as a consultation). But beware any counselor who diagnoses your marriage on the basis of your description alone. Too often, I have had a client discuss their marriage during therapy, only to have the spouse enter therapy later with a version which makes it sound like a totally different marriage. Only when you are making statements in front of each other is there some chance that an objective picture of your marriage will emerge. This is as it should be. Marriage is not an objective but an intersubjective experience.

To sum up in the form of a few guidelines for work with an outside consultant:

Seek a counselor who will accept the role of consultant.

Find out about his or her experience in counseling and in marriage.

Arrange sessions one at a time or in short series. Set the timing, at least, if not the exact times.

Define and continue to set limits to the terrain to be covered.

Insist on a discussion of specific problems even if these are "symptoms."

Do not hesitate to defend your own privacy.