In front of the stage

And the actors finally brought the performance to a close (1). For a little over an hour, Arturo Bonin and Susana Cart showed us, impeccably, what was happening to a couple when, after twenty-five years of marriage and two years of divorce, they met again at the wake of a couple of gay friends. The allusions to their past life, between amused reproaches and tender reminiscences, made up a verbal exchange that fascinated this therapist – who now finds himself in the curious situation of sharing the commentaries he had the pleasure of elaborating on the spot with those who, perhaps, did not see Hasta que la vida nos separe, by Martín Diez. We shall inevitably forget a good deal of what we said and, conversely, it is quite possible that ideas we did not have that day will come to us today. For, beyond the games of memory, different contexts engender different developments. Let us see what comes of it.

Love and falling in love

To begin with, Alberto and Silvia once formed a couple. As we have said elsewhere, we no longer think of the couple today as an undifferentiated totality, but as the relation of two human beings engaged in a dance, each in search of confirmation in the gaze of another. That validation must be given in a particular dialogue, one which not only justifies the choice but promises its continuity and its exclusivity. On stage, the couple allude to the moment of their first meeting: a young man who stumbles with his bicycle while gazing at a young woman coming home from the shops. That is where falling in love arises, that privileged instant of the unexpected choice.

The distinction between falling in love and loving is a classic one.

Plato said that we seek in the other what we ourselves lack, in a movement towards an illusory completeness. But he also said, once, that what attracts us in the other are the particularities we suppose to be consonant with those we attribute to ourselves. Either we seek from lack, or we choose from specularity.

We suppose, for our part, that falling in love has to do with the finding of differences, and love with the encounter of similarities. Perhaps love is not the point of departure, but the point of arrival of what falling in love had once announced. Perhaps couples should ask themselves once: are we living, or have we lived, in such a way that we can gain access to love?

When we speak of differences, we distinguish the recognition of what is different in the other – an enriching discovery, which must be respected – from the difference that is experienced as the desertion of something one had imagined out of one’s own need.

Alberto and Silvia seem anchored more in the differences than in the similarities that might bring them together. Alberto, if we are to believe Silvia’s description, has always been a sort of beast dressed in silk. And Silvia was something like a delicate, romantic little lady, in Alberto’s memory. And one wonders: why does a romantic woman choose a beast dressed in silk? Perhaps, in this case, in order to be initiated into the secrets of tumultuous love, of ardent passion, of permissive fervour. But the beast, for his part, desires the silk the romantic brings him: the possibility of the illusion he cannot manage to give shape to, the romance his life lacks. And out of that initial desire for what one does not have – a desire neither acknowledged nor even registered –, each chooses the other, more eager to acquire what they do not possess than to give what they have in excess. And the aspiration, neither declared nor satisfied, turns into reproach: why does the other not give what they possess and seemed to promise?

This unsatisfied appetite then freezes into a quarrelsome dissatisfaction: Alberto no longer makes love to Silvia in unexpected places, the living-room carpet, the kitchen or some other makeshift spot. And Silvia reads her novels alone, which open up a world of fantasy to her. These two beings, as often happens, have forged the other, at least in part, out of the illusion to which their emptinesses have driven them. For in the choice of a partner, as we said above, it is our needs, our unconscious appetites, that make us hallucinate the other: they are no longer who they are, but who we invent. This stage is followed by the corresponding dis-illusion, with its disturbing suspicion of betrayal: although they could have been the one they showed themselves to be, the other decides to be that other one, different. If the couple succeeds, this inescapable stage will be followed by another, of dis-covery, of exteriorisation of other aspects that mutual urgencies kept hidden.

The families of origin. The vicissitudes of sexuality

But that is not the case of Alberto and Silvia. At least not entirely, since they stayed together for twenty-five years. Why did they not reach that other phase? Here we think of the mandates of the families of origin. For Alberto’s father, Silvia was a suspect Marxist who was not suitable for his son. And for Silvia’s family, Alberto was the son of a fascist Italian whom she had to flee. And both of them did the same thing: they defied the family mandate and married, but they submitted to those mandates and separated. For in order to unite with the strangeness of the other, he and she must move away from a family bond which, at that moment, enters into crisis.

This new relation will be vicarious of another, earlier one, from which it derives its imbalance and whose alteration it provokes. It may be pertinent, for therapists, to seek to know whether the new bond has called the previous one into question, or whether some limitation has sought its satisfaction in the potential couple.

Partial submission to family prescriptions appears in slightly transgressive conducts, as a stimulating ingredient of the relation. This can be seen very clearly in sexuality. Until the birth of the children, sexuality was impetuous and passionate. With the arrival of the children, that sexuality died down, became less frequent, lost its vigour. Why did that happen? In this couple, sexuality had a transgressive, exciting aspect. When Silvia deduces that their two gay friends died in a car accident while abandoning themselves to sexual pleasure, she is enthralled by that death in the midst of passion. Before, she and Alberto used to make love anywhere, with a mischievous spontaneity. But the birth of the children legitimises sexuality; it gives it an air of social everydayness, of official permissiveness, of announced habit that clouds the imagination. The playful act, tinged with a malicious immodesty, is replaced by a predictable and almost obligatory practice. Neither the beast dressed in silk nor the incurable romantic survives that metamorphosis!

And the two of them, disenchanted, become entangled in an interminable pseudo-dialogue, a repeated duel of parallel monologues, frozen in reproach and demand, where each listens to the other only in order to contradict and reject them. At one moment in this exchange, Silvia reproaches her husband for a trip they took to Europe, during which they visited an incalculable number of cities without lingering in any of them. Might this be an indirect way of speaking of a hurried sexuality, without the slowness necessary to shared pleasure? And Alberto, in his turn, remembers the flat he acquired thanks to the notorious law 1050. They too are subject to a 1050: to a debt impossible to repay, but which keeps them in the obstinate illusion of an unattainable restitution. Never will the other be the one each of them desired out of a barely acknowledged lack; never will one of them be able to make the other yield, to oblige them to acknowledge their error – but the hope of a victory they will never obtain keeps them united in an interminable colloquy.

The language of love, that of conflict and dialogue

We have distinguished, in the past, the language of love, the language of conflict and enlightening dialogue.

The language of love

We said then that, in the conversation of love, old words sound new: “I love you, I desire you, I miss you, I seek you” may be old words, but they sound like inaugurations to the ears of whoever listens to them. Those voices, addressed to the beloved in intimacy, are first times for a singular situation. They are heard with delight and answered with analogous messages, which likewise induce pleasure. Listening is placed at the service of intensifying the propitious emotions, and the answer tends towards maintaining the state of enjoyment. The escalation leads to the tangible answer of the kiss and the caress, up to the dialogue of the bodies that culminates in shared physical pleasure. The repetition of the cycle intensifies the bond.

The language of conflict

In conflict, words, worn out by sterile obstinacy, are renewed in repeated demand, permanent complaint or tenacious resentment. The answer freezes into a recidivist discourse of defence and attack, withered by a selective deafness to what the other says. Listening is placed at the service of argumentation, and the final desire is the defeat of the other. The escalation leads to the appearance of verbal or physical violence, and the repetition of the cycle adds no variety.

True dialogue

In true dialogue, the story proposed by one of the members is listened to with curiosity and receives in return a discourse that involves some unprecedented alternative. And one does not answer with an already deteriorated discourse: one answers the alternative that has just arisen, which permanently inaugurates new paths. This ideal dialogue always opens onto new knowledge, and its escalation leads to a greater knowledge of the other and, complementarily, of each one’s own self.

Consequently, the absence of a true dialogue has barred this couple from access to a project, to a shared undertaking in a desired future. For a project does not consist in filling a void – as, in this case, the countless purchases that ended in an absurd telescope. A project consists in advancing on what has been obtained. One does not only seek what is lacking: one anticipates what completes.

The therapist’s moment?

There are, however, two moments in Alberto and Silvia’s conversation that I should like to save from oblivion.

At one point, the couple draw imperceptibly closer, with a certain tenderness and something of their old love, which makes a physical rapprochement almost predictable. At that instant there appears something like the temptation to restore the former relation, the one that was desired; to go back, towards an amorous emotional situation. That can be dangerous. Nostalgia is not a good argument for reunion. One does not enter the future walking backwards. If one yields to the seductive emotion of “becoming again what we have been”, one will almost inescapably end up returning to “being what we are”. Silvia and Alberto avoid that danger and draw apart out of caution.

And in another sequence, while husband and wife hurl abuse at one another, evoking what time has made of each of them, Alberto abruptly steps out of the script and praises Silvia. She, who had already begun the aggressive discourse, breaks off, astonished, and does not hear the sarcasm with which Alberto continues his commentary – said this time to himself, as though he were protecting her for a moment from his acid words. If the couple had been able to continue along that road, what would the dialogue to come look like?

We do not know, but this scene recalls another, analogous one, in a sister work of the theatre: Dangerous Corner, by J. B. Priestley, where a word, heard or not heard, modifies the whole of the rest of the story.

And one last commentary. Would Alberto and Silvia consult a therapist? At what moment? This question leads us to the final scene.

Silvia and Alberto introduce themselves to one another as two strangers, supposedly freed from their history, accepting and revealing to the other their present ages and the children they have, replacing that old adolescent encounter with this one, turned henceforth towards the future. Will they be able to reach it together? It would please me to be able to embark with them on that possible adventure, as their couple therapist.