Couple fit-and refit
In some marriages or couple relationships it can seem that one partner exudes a wealth of confidence and charm whilst another appears to be quiet or withdrawn; one partner appears to create a lot of commotion and the other appears calming and contained. It’s as if together they make up a whole and in this togetherness the whole spectrum of emotions and thoughts are managed. The feeling of wholeness couples have when they are together is what the relationship psychotherapist Henry Dicks, in his book Marital Tensions, called the marital or ‘couple fit’.
Henry Dicks suggested that there are three areas involved in a couple fit:
1. A public fit of social class, ethnicity, and education between couples
2. A personal fit where beliefs, choices, conscious expectations, values and attitudes play their part
3. An unconscious fit which stresses the unconscious complementarities between the partners.
Dicks argued that couples were unlikely to even meet and date if two areas did not fit and it was difficult for marriages and couple relationships to survive well if there were significant differences in two of these areas; the marriage would not be able to “contain” these wider differences.
Indeed, some of the problems we come across in relationship counselling are as a result of a shift or growth in these areas, creating what appears to be intolerable differences between couples. The task of the relationship counsellor is often to explore these differences and encourage the couple to recalibrate or “re-fit” their relationship.
