A passage, that is, a moment when the couple has to reorganise its rules, its boundaries and its way of being together. This framing excuses neither violence nor abuse, but it helps to understand what the crisis is trying to regulate, at which point of the journey it arises, and which options for adjustment — or separation — become relevant.

The concept of the life cycle, mobilised as early as the 1960s and 1970s to think about family transformations and transition crises, offers a tool for clinical contextualisation (Carter & McGoldrick, 1980; Dupont, 2018). It is not a normative script: it is a map that helps identify the developmental tasks at stake and the third parties activated — families of origin, peers, children, work, networks. The essential point is that partners may go through the same stage at different rhythms; a crisis may then express a difficult synchronisation rather than a fundamental incompatibility.

In this perspective, Ivy Daure proposes a grid centred on the conjugal trajectory — meeting, recognition, introductions, commitments, the passage into parenthood, reunion, retirement — to which the interview inspiring this text adds the question of the continuity of the bond after a partner’s death (Daure, 2026). For professionals, the interest is pragmatic: having a language with which to situate a crisis and formulate working hypotheses without reducing it to proof of romantic incompetence.

Clinical markers, stage by stage

1. The meeting: what “makes” an encounter

The meeting opens a space of mutual projection and selection, today often digitally mediated. In session, revisiting what attracted each partner — similarity, fascinating difference, a feeling of safety — makes it possible to identify the couple’s origin story: needs, ideals, vulnerabilities. The point is not to idealise, but to understand what was implicitly promised from the outset (stability, novelty, repair, recognition) and what later becomes a source of conflict when that implicit promise is no longer kept.

2. Recognition: naming the couple, making the contract explicit

The “we” becomes explicit and a relational contract takes shape: exclusivity or not, visibility, the place of former partners, degree of commitment. The typical crises are those of the implicit: one thinks “it goes without saying”, the other that “nothing was ever said”. The intervention often consists in making the contract negotiable: clarifying the rules without turning clarification into a trial, and distinguishing agreement about rules (what is decided) from agreement about emotions (what is felt), which do not arrive at the same pace.

3. Introductions: the entry of the social gaze

Introducing the partner — to friends, family, colleagues, children in blended families — exposes the couple to external evaluation. Conflicts turn on validation, loyalty and fear of judgement. The therapist can map the third parties: who counts, who threatens, who supports, and how the order of introductions reveals alliances and boundaries. Clinically, the issue is not only telling others, but learning to make the couple exist outside the dyadic bubble, without dissolving into the expectations of those around them.

4. Commitments: living together and projecting forward

These decisions inscribe the couple in time: cohabiting or not, buying property, a planned trip, civil partnership or marriage, professional adjustments (Daure, 2026). The crisis often comes from a discrepancy of meaning: proof of love for one, a threat to freedom for the other. Clinical work gains from focusing on the micro-boundaries of everyday life — time alone, money, sexuality, work — rather than on a debate for or against commitment. The useful hypothesis is often: what does each of them risk losing, or gaining, if commitment becomes more concrete?

5. The parental couple: the crisis begins before the child

The passage into parenthood often plays out from the moment it is first considered: desire, refusal, the question of a shared child in a blended family. Ivy Daure describes the risk of escalation around a yes or a no, and the attempt to recruit the therapist as referee (Daure, 2019). This stage is all the more sensitive because, in the contemporary couple, the arrival of a child may constitute a crisis rather than a cement (Neuburger, 2013). Clinical work then aims less at a technical compromise than at understanding the existential needs in tension: filiation, transmission, freedom, security, exhaustion, fear of repeating a family story.

6. Reunion: renegotiating intimacy once life is settled

After years of organisation, the couple has to find each other again differently. Reunion demands active gestures: time as a two, renegotiated sexuality, shared projects. A frequent crisis arises when a structuring third party — a passion, work, a network — replaces relational investment: one withdraws, the other feels alone. The intervention aims to restore rituals and to make attachment needs visible: what, for each of them, creates connection in daily life — presence, words, the body, a project, humour, mutual help?

7. Retirement: availability and a reconfigured everyday

Retirement intensifies shared time and modifies social identity. Differences in rhythm, in the use of domestic space and in needs for solitude become more salient. Therapeutic work can stay very concrete: routines, spaces, activities, social life, in order to recreate internal boundaries compatible with increased availability. A simple clinical marker is to assess whether retirement becomes a sustainable great reunion, or a prolonged exposure to unregulated micro-conflicts.

8. After a death: continuing bonds and loyalties

In the interview, Ivy Daure stresses that the death of a partner does not mechanically erase the couple: rituals, objects, projects and promises can keep a bond alive in the survivor. Work on continuing bonds shows that this continuity can be adaptive rather than pathological (Klass, Silverman, & Nickman, 1996). The clinical marker is flexibility: does the bond help the person live and connect, or does it immobilise? For clinicians, the issue is often to support a form of loyalty that forbids neither joy, nor new bonds, nor the transformation of what the couple means.

What the grid changes in consultation

The grid first makes it possible to situate the crisis. It then makes asymmetries of tempo visible: many conflicts stem from a disagreement about the “when” — making it official, moving in, having children, slowing down — rather than about the “what”, and naming them reduces moralising (Daure, 2019).

Finally, it points towards work on boundaries with third parties: at each stage a third party becomes central — families of origin, former partners, children, work, passions, ageing, illness, retirement. Reading the crisis as a boundary problem, too porous or too rigid, makes it possible to propose more operative interventions: redefining rules, restoring rituals, protecting time as a two, clarifying the place of relatives, supporting symbolic transitions. This stance is consistent with a systemic practice that aims less at deciding who is wrong than at widening the possibilities of choice and of narrative (Neuburger, 2013).

Conclusion

The couple’s life cycle does not explain everything, but it provides a clinical compass. It helps avoid a hasty conclusion — “it is over” — by posing a more operative question: what does this transition demand? The grid proposed by Ivy Daure is particularly useful because it stays close to the pivotal moments couples themselves report, and can be used directly in the session.

References

• Carter, B., & McGoldrick, M. (Eds.). (1980). The family life cycle: A framework for family therapy. Gardner Press.
• Daure, I. (2019). Je veux un enfant : une quête qui fait symptôme dans le couple. Le Journal des psychologues, 369(7), 16-21. https://doi.org/10.3917/jdp.369.0016
• Daure, I. (2026). Faire vivre son couple : traverser ensemble les étapes de la vie de couple. ESF Sciences humaines.
• Dupont, S. (2018). Le cycle de vie familiale : un concept essentiel pour appréhender les familles contemporaines. Thérapie Familiale, 39(2), 169-181. https://doi.org/10.3917/tf.182.0169
• Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Taylor & Francis.
• Neuburger, R. (2013). Thérapie de couple : approche systémique-constructiviste. Cahiers de psychologie clinique, 40(1), 205-216. https://doi.org/10.3917/cpc.040.0205

The interview with Ivy Daure that inspired this text can be watched below, in French.