Life in transit can be enhancing to the dialogue of a couple. Equally, it can become a threat and create lack of trust. A whole other life takes place while either or both sides of the couple are on separate travel conveyor belts. As familiar to the one travelling as the life in their home, yet unknown to the partner other than by shared vignettes. By plane, train, car, motorbike, bicycle or foot people conduct a parallel life away from their home. Their partner may or may not hear about people encountered fleetingly or daily on the journey. Where to have coffee, buy the daily paper, which seat to go for, which section to sit in, the weather for the rider or walker, becomes a part of groundhog day which can be reassuring and comforting but not shared except in description.

When a couple first meets, these encounters and observations can be intimately shared but as time goes by this sharing can be withdrawn either from a sense that the other is not really interested or from a need to have a part of life kept in a private compartment. It is these changes which need to be watched and taken care of and yet respected with trust that they are a necessary part of the growth of the couple. Having individual lives within the boundaries of trust is part of each person’s sense of self and the anecdotes told and heard can fertilise their ongoing life in an intimate way.

Words by Clare Ireland. www.coupleworks.co.uk