Marriage is work. Every relationship requires commitment, but this relationship takes a lot for it to be a stable and safe relationship. I deliberately didn’t say happiness because I believe it is a far more complex emotion than we have understood. Happiness is primarily personal and then derived from relationships, and it changes over time and has no sense of permanency.

Sometimes a marriage reaches a point where staying is as challenging as leaving. Especially the kind of marriage where there is no active major conflict, be it abuse, infidelity, or any issue that needs urgent resolution. But it’s more like the marriage starts floating, and both the husband and wife have withdrawn into their shells with no more fight left in them and are silent witnesses of a dead relationship that has no connection whatsoever. Working with such couples is most challenging as a couple’s therapist, and it’s rare that a couple with both partners withdrawn from the marriage and mostly staying together because of factors like children, finances, or social stigma, will even seek therapy. Even if one of the two desires to fight for the marriage, the relationship has hope for rebuilding. But a marriage filled with silence and a couple being together because of children more than any other reason is a marriage on the ventilator, and one or both parties are scared to pull the plug.

But how does one day in and out be in a relationship that feels lifeless and dead and is sheer conflict management without intimacy, closeness, or connection? It’s exhausting and affects the mental and physical health. It’s a marriage where the husband and wife lead separate lives, and the interaction is rooted in common issues related to children, finances, or social commitments that are required to continue the sham of a marriage and that can maintain the false presenting self of a family.

Why do we do that? Why do we stay in dead relationships? Why do we believe we have no choice but to continue in misery? For many people, kids are a big reason why marriage continues. I see it as an inter-generational cultural phenomenon where the older generations continued for children’s sake. They consciously and unconsciously passed the message to the next generation, and it has been internalised and practiced by many unhappy couples. But the reality is that many children whose parents sacrificed their happiness for the children are unhappy adults and suffer from anxiety and depression, and a lot more regarding their life choices.

I don’t think divorce is straightforward or that parents re-marrying is a conflict-free zone. It’s complicated and messy; no child in this world will happily embrace and accept a parent being with someone else. It will create a rupture in your relationship with your child that may or may not get repaired.
So, what’s the choice? Do we continue in dead relationships, and that is a marriage where you are interdependent on another person you have stopped liking? It doesn’t matter who is to be blamed here because marriage takes two, and both are responsible for an arrangement to work or not work, and blaming each other is a mere distraction from one’s role to play.

So, what do you do when at such a point where staying feels as impossible as leaving? The first step is to accept that something might still be done to recover something from the debris, but one is tired and doesn’t want to look anymore. Coming to that realisation is the first step and the most crucial step. Saying out loud and internalising that ‘my marriage is over.’ If one has reached that point, remember that there will always be a shadow of doubt, even when arriving at this conclusion.
Once we accept that, we need to keep the hope alive for ourselves that no matter how old or long we have been in a marriage, we deserve companionship, love, and, more importantly, another chance. We need to accept that our children will grow up and change, and our relationship, like any other one, cannot be the same when our baby had looked up to us with love and trust.
Take one step at a time. Hope. Plan. Move. One day, another chance at life may arrive at your doorstep.

An issue that I have commonly come across in many of my male clients is the shame they experience for not earning enough money in life. They consider themselves as failure for not achieving their goals, espe­cially in comparison to their siblings or friends, and equate their bank balance to success or failure. Some of them may be in the profession of their choice but yet believe that for them to not have done exceptionally well in terms of the money they earn means that they have failed.

What was interesting for me to see was how the profession was associated with monetary suc­cess and not in terms of whether they were able to pursue the career that wanted or not. Many people vol­untarily or involuntarily join the rat race and experience anxiety and distress or undiagnosed depression for los­ing the race. I found many individuals to compare them­selves with their classmates or siblings and the direct comparison came in terms of, ‘he has his own house, cars, money to travel, education and the list goes on.’

There is an inherent shame rooted in a sense of inade­quacy or embarrassment of being less financially strong than his peers. I have been wondering where this shame comes from and I believe it’s intergenerational and is root­ed in the history of the sub-continent with the class di­vides and the strong concept of untouchables and over centuries, its imbedded in our psyches where having less means we will miss out on the exclusivity of life. We will be outside of the privileged circle and it’s the fear of missing out and being ‘untouchable’ that installs this shame.

This shame was further cemented by the social class dif­ferences that continue in our society and get highlighted by things like membership to social clubs where the ‘have nots’ are not allowed to enter. Is it the shame about being less privileged or it’s rooted in the fact that so many life oppor­tunities get missed out because of the class one belongs to and it’s the inferiority complex that develops because of it?

Shame is a powerful emotion tied to our identities and beliefs about ourselves and affects our self-esteem. Brene Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve expe­rienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of con­nection.” It is a complex emotion that evokes a sense of inadequacy that can be triggered by a wide range of life circumstances, from social rejection to personal failure. It can also be triggered by something as job loss or FOMO, the fear of missing out.

Many of us link our professional identity to how finan­cially strong we are and not to our goals. And so rath­er than following our dreams and passion. We run after money and lead dissatisfied lives by aligning our profes­sion to money and not what motivates us. There is a sig­nificant relationship between shame and financial goals and shame has a significant impact on our financial goals. If we experience shame about our financial situation, we may be less likely to talk about our finances, set goals, seek help, or make the changes necessary to achieve them.

Shame also impacts our financial values which are the principles that guide our financial decisions and behav­iors. They are shaped by our upbringing, culture, edu­cation, and personal experiences. Shame can make us choose the wrong things. For example, if we feel ashamed about our financial situation, we might make financial choices that are focused on keeping up appearances rath­er than on building long-term financial security. If our lo­cus of evaluation is external, then others more privileged are dictating our financial choices; for example, making us buy things that we don’t need.

Let’s free ourselves of this shame. Working hard is all that matters and it’s important to set our benchmark of what is considered security in life for us. If you are rent­ing a house and like your life, then don’t pressure your­self to buy one. Life runs in cycles of change and pay more attention to yours and get out of all man-made races.

Get into your race ease into life and be free of any shame that is linked to what you have achieved in life.

He is not the only client who asks me this question. Many clients want me to decide how often they need therapy. They will apologize if they cannot make it to a session for a valid reason. They will ask if ‘they are getting better.’ Most of my clients, despite being the ones to reach out for therapy, at some point in time make me in charge of the therapeutic process. Therapy is a relationship between a client and therapist and there is the psychology of two people in the room, and within the relationship is significant potential for the client’s journey of self-awareness, emotional processing, and transformation. So why does an adult make the therapist in charge of the most important journey of his life?

There are multiple reasons and all are significant and relevant. One reason is that many clients perceive the therapist as a doctor and in a medical model, the doctor tells the patient what he needs to do. When he needs to come for the next appointment and if he is improving based on the patient’s feedback but also the doctor’s assessment sometimes based on physiological testing. I think that within this is also an inherent need in every individual to feel safe and making a trusted authority the caretaker of our well-being makes us feel safe.
Another factor is that the therapist becomes the parent in the room and the client unknowingly assumes a child position and surrenders control to the therapist. The therapist can become the good or the bad parent for the client but a perceived parent nonetheless in the therapy room.

My training makes me aware of these conscious and unconscious dynamics that play out within the therapeutic relationship. My work is to empower the client who has experienced helplessness in his personal life story and acts that out throughout his life be it his professional or personal relationships. I will mostly start a session by asking a client, ‘How do you want to use this time today? What do you like to talk about?’ Many will respond by asking me to take a lead and sometimes I do but again if the client continues therapy, I try to empower him by encouraging him to take ownership of therapy and most importantly to honour himself for his intention to continue the therapeutic process. Therapy is hard work. It’s painful. It’s not a client sitting and venting out his life story like reading out a fascinating story. It is week after week of understanding himself. Challenging himself and unlearning the coping skills he had learned to avoid pain in his life and taking the risk of experiencing emotional pain all once again.

For me, therapy becomes a parallel of the client’s attitude toward life. Do I keep coming in? Is the client asking this question specific to therapy only? It’s a deeper question in my opinion. I hear it as; ‘do I keep committing to life or can I take a break?’ Do I continue to take a risk to embrace and accept the life I have? Can I continue to take personal responsibility or can someone else step in and take it?
What is that commitment? It’s our relationship to life, isn’t it? A personal unique relationship that I need and want to take ownership of. To be fully present and show up for me in every aspect of my life. Understanding myself is a life-long process and continuing to evolve my relationship with life. Yet most of us let others dictate and decide for us if we can make that commitment how we see it.

Some of us are also put in such a position in our relationships that we keep answering this question for others and then are blamed for consequences that are not favourable. Stop answering this question for others. Let them decide how they want to use their time in this world. You and only you need to assume authority in your life. Only you should answer ‘if you can keep coming in’ and be responsible for what that means in your life story and it’s a question that will keep coming up for you. Therefore, do your best to choose today and every day to continue to come into life.