Normally we don’t consider the “mania,” as Plato called it, of love sufficiently dangerous to require therapy. But any escapes from reality would benefit from a degree of self-awareness. The love state is not a good place for making decisions. This kind of love fogs the mind and inspires irrational behavior. When it turns dark, especially, as in serious jealousy, it can be truly dangerous.

When I have done couples therapy in the past, on occasion I asked one partner to sit in a chair off to the side while I worked with the dreams and life stories of the other. My idea was that the people did not really know each other. Maybe by listening to each other and exploring their psyches they might have more empathy and a deeper appreciation for what the other was dealing with. As couples share their lives, they may come to think that they really know the other well. But that kind of intimacy can be misleading. Familiarity is not knowledge, and, in fact, it may be a block to really knowing the partner as a separate person. Some distance is necessary, hence my practice of attending to one person at a time. I encourage the one partner to be a close observer, perhaps gaining some empathy for the other. By listening to the soul I mean hearing the story that can’t be told.

But the struggle to become a person and to have a genuine relationship can hold people together, perhaps more effectively than a desire for happiness and unbroken togetherness. I’m not saying that a relationship should be painful but that the happiness sought for might be deep and complex, not superficial and simplistic. Therapists who aim at simple happiness for a couple in their care may either feel frustrated eventually or misguide the couple toward an ideal of superficial togetherness.

I think I came closer in this session than in many of the previous ones to encouraging the kind of shift I am after for my patients. It did not come through my explanation of the concept of conceit but from the surprise of suggesting that Zach simply be a friend to his friend. The element of surprise was important. Startled by my comment, Zach had a glimpse of another way of relating. It made sense to him in the moment, not just conceptually but personally. The Zen poem connotes a similar feeling, returning by an unused path. Could that also be mindfulness, coming back via an intrinsic but unfamiliar resource to find the unexpected? But when I read the poem to Zach at a later date, instead of hearing “violets,” he heard the final word as “violence.” A Freudian slip, we might conclude.

I try to talk to Violette about how this could be good, about how the concept of what is ideal might be getting in the way of what is true, and possibly good enough. In the back of my mind are earlier discussions we have had about how her desire to please might be getting in the way of her own enjoyment. “You are going deeper into your own space,” I suggest. “Your husband can get the runoff. That will be nourishing for him. He can appreciate you as other and you will feel affirmed.” Violette is not necessarily having it. “Still, it’s not ideal,” she replies. But then she reflects upon some earlier relationships with actors who had more embodied her sense of the ideal. She had tended to submerge herself in those relationships, privileging their talents over her own, and had ended up feeling used and unappreciated. “I might not be so happy in the ideal,” she admits. “This is real,” I repeat. “Grappling with the real is the way to go.