Every marriage goes through cycles of intimacy.
Sometimes we will feel close to each other and yearn for ever more emotional, physical, and spiritual intimacy. At other times, we will feel that we are drifting apart. If the drift apart becomes too severe, we may actually begin resent our spouse’s efforts to renew and restore emotional, physical and spiritual intimacy.
Some of the driving forces which tend to push couples away are what I will call normal circumstances. These encompass the normal competitors for time and energy — like jobs, parenting, hobbies, et cetera– and the normal vices of human nature — self-absorption, selfishness, envy, boredom and the like. These are “normal circumstances” because they arise in nearly every marriage and are addressed in nearly every book on marriage advise.
But there are also extraordinary circumstances. Unfortunately, these extraordinary circumstances are not rare. I call them extraordinary not because they are rare but because can loom so large in the psyche of one or both partners that they may render a spouse truly unable to even work at being who or she wants to be without professional counseling and an extraordinary effort on both partner’s part.
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