Hope Springs, the new film starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones,
highlights a growing trend among 'silver wedding’ couples to turn to
relationship counsellors. It tells the story of a meek
empty-nester, Kay (played by Meryl Streep), and her curmudgeonly husband, Arnold
(Tommy Lee Jones), embarking on a week’s intensive marriage therapy.
Paula Hall, a counsellor for Relate, who has seen and enjoyed the
film, says it is an uncannily accurate reflection of the boredom of many
long-term marriages and the indifference couples develop towards each other.
“There’s a very moving scene in which Meryl Streep dresses up
seductively but her husband doesn’t notice,” says Hall. “It’s a moment many of
my clients have had, realising they have become invisible to their partners. I
see so many couples who are best friends and run a very efficient home, but they
no longer see each other in a sexual way.
“For many long-term couples, it’s really hard to define what’s
wrong,” Hall continues. “Everything is very practical; for example, Streep and
her husband sleep in separate beds because he snores, but they just don’t
connect any more. Marriages have always been like this, but it didn’t used to
matter so much, because after 30 years, you’d be ready for your pipe and
slippers. But now we live so much longer, you might be married for another 30
years and you can’t tolerate such a passion-free existence.”
Relationship counsellor Andrew G Marshall, author of I Love You, But
I’m Not in Love With You, confirms that an increasing number of his clients are
“silver-wedding couples”. “I used to very seldom see anyone over the age of 45,
but now it’s perfectly common to see couples in their late fifties or early
sixties,” he says.
One reason for this is that therapy is no longer regarded as
suspicious. “People now understand that therapists don’t all come from Germany
and speak in a strange accent and ask clients to talk about their mothers. They
have also realised that talking to each other might not be so terrible.”
Late middle-age is also the time when people can no longer escape
their mortality. “There’s nothing that so forcefully brings home to you that
life’s not forever as sitting at the bedside of a very elderly parent,” says
Marshall. “Couples of this age find themselves in that situation and it forces
them to address issues they’ve put off tackling for five, 10 years, thinking
there would always be time later. Now they think: 'This is later, and I can’t
put up with this any more.’”
Geraldine Bedell, editor of the online site Gransnet, says that a
proportion of the site’s members have found it a therapeutic place to vent about
long-term relationships. “It has given many the courage to leave partners whom
in hindsight they wished they’d left much sooner,” she says.
According to Bedell, retirement can be a make-or-break time for many
relationships. “We see a lot of posts about husbands being at home all day and
not giving their wives enough space and autonomy. Men develop theories about
household management, what the wife should buy, how she should cook, which can
make their partners furious.
“There are also a lot of tales about formerly very happy sexual
relationships, where the man has suddenly stopped having sex without
explanation, and that makes the woman very unhappy.”
But can counselling help? A study by Northwestern University in
Illinois found that 70 per cent of couples felt happier with their marriages
post-therapy, citing lower levels of conflict and improved communication,
although the researchers warned that “improvement often doesn’t catapult couples
into the realm of the genuinely happily married”.
Paula Hall insists that long-term relationships can be saved. “As in
the film, most marriages don’t end in drama, the connection just dies as you
both change. You do change over time, but counselling gives you the chance to
rediscover each other, to rejuvenate things. The vital thing is to tackle problems
when they arise, not when you’re already exchanging solicitors’ letters,” Hall
adds. “If you think, 'Things could be better than this,’ then do something about
it.”
(Taken from 2-in-2-1.co.uk)
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