Don't all couples have problems?

Everyone who stays in a difficult relationship says this at some point, and they are right: all couples have problems. So the question is what kind. This module is for the reader who cannot tell whether what they have is ordinary and hard, or something that has stopped working, and who is tired of friends answering with whichever one they happened to think.

The wrong test

The test most people apply is how bad the bad moments are. How loud the rows get, how long the silences last, how often you cry. That test does not work, for two reasons.

First, hard-but-healthy relationships can have terrible moments. Two people under strain, with small children, a bereavement, money trouble or a long illness, can say things to each other that would shock their friends and still be in something sound. Second, relationships that are not working can be quiet. No raised voices, nothing to point at, just one person steadily getting smaller.

So the volume of the bad moments tells you little. What tells you more is what happens around them.

Four better tests

Repair. After the row, what happens? In relationships that work, there is a route back. Someone reaches out, not always the same someone. The thing that was said gets named and taken back, or at least softened. The repair is not perfect, but it happens, and it happens from both sides over time. In relationships that are not working, repair is one-directional: one person always does it, or it never comes, or the row is simply dropped and lives on as the next one.

Mutual adjustment. Over a year, has each of you changed something because of the other? Changed, not promised. The direction of adjustment is one of the clearest signs there is. Healthy couples bend towards each other, unevenly and grudgingly but in both directions. Where only one person bends, what you have is a difficult person and someone accommodating them, rather than a difficult relationship.

Whether complaints are allowed. Can you say "that hurt" or "I need this to be different" and have it land as information rather than as an attack? In a sound relationship, a complaint might get a defensive first response and a better second one. In one that is not working, the complaint itself becomes the problem: you are too sensitive, you always do this, now look what you've started. Over time you stop raising things, and the quiet that follows gets mistaken for peace.

Whether both people's needs count. Not equally in every moment, since nobody manages that, but over months. When your needs and your partner's collide, is there a conversation about whose gives way this time, or is it already settled? If you can predict the outcome of every collision before it happens, and the answer is always the same person, that is the pattern.

Sort these

Each card below describes something a couple might say about themselves. Choose the side you think it belongs on, then see how the people who do this work would usually read it. You will disagree with some of ours. That is fine: the point is to practise the tests.

We argue about money most months, and it gets loud. Usually one of us comes back an hour later and says sorry, and we work out what to do.

We don't really argue. I just learned a while ago that it is easier not to bring things up.

I told my partner that something they said really hurt. They got defensive, then came back the next day and said they'd been thinking about it.

Whenever I raise something, the conversation ends up being about what I did wrong.

We have very different ideas about how tidy the house should be and it drives us both mad.

Over the last few years I've changed how I dress, who I see and what I do at weekends. I can't think of anything they've changed for me.

After our worst row, neither of us spoke for two days. Then we both apologised and talked about what had set it off.

When my partner is upset, everything stops until it is sorted. When I am upset, I'm told it's not a good time.

We've had a brutal year (a death, a job loss) and we've snapped at each other more than ever. But we still check in at the end of the day.

My partner apologises every time, and means it, and then it happens again within a few weeks.

Where the line actually sits

You may have noticed that the "not working" cards do not describe anything dramatic. Nobody is hit. Nobody is screamed at. That is deliberate. The difference between hard and not working is rarely visible in a single scene. It is visible in the shape of a year: who adjusts, who repairs, who is allowed to complain, whose needs settle the argument.

If, applying the four tests, your relationship comes out as hard but healthy, that is useful. It does not mean stay: some hard-but-healthy relationships still end because the people in them want different lives, and the module on mismatch is written for that. It does mean that the ordinary tools (talking, time, a counsellor) have a fair chance of working.

If it comes out as not working, the next question is why, and the Pattern modules after this one take the main shapes in turn: immaturity, dependency, your partner's wellbeing, control, and plain mismatch. They feel different from inside and they call for different responses.

What this is not

This is not a diagnosis of your relationship from ten cards. You know things about your year that no exercise can hold. It is also not a claim that "not working" means "over". Relationships that are not working sometimes start to, when the person who has been doing all the bending stops, and the other person notices and changes. Whether that is likely in yours is what the Change lens is for.

One caution. If any of the "not working" cards came with fear attached (if you cannot raise things because of what might happen, rather than because it is not worth it) then this is a Safety question rather than a Pattern one, and the first module is where to go.

Update your profile

Having read this, look again at these questions. Answer for how things are now, over the last few months rather than the last few days.

This exercise updates your profile (Pattern). You can change your answers later.