I work a lot with metaphors in my practice.

Metaphors give people a language for understanding and describing their pain-points.

And this takes them deeper into their own processing, and freedom.

I often speak to couples about how their love and connection is a bit like a mound of rock. In the passing of time, this rock incurs various blows and blasts. Stress, moodiness, disconnection, dishonesty, complacency. Each bashes away at the integrity of the stone.  And at some point, one blow might prove to be fatal, hitting on a weak point, rendering the rock a pile of dust. The truth is that people can tolerate a lot. And then they tolerate nothing. And the distance between ‘a lot’ and ‘nothing’ can be surprisingly short.

It's a myth that relationship therapy centres on communication, tools and skills for dealing with strife, love languages, and the like. A couple is fortunate to get to that place, with a therapist.

In truth, the bulk of relationship work (at least initially) involves helping the couple navigate what is actually possible for them.

The early questions, in therapy, centre on whether they still both want to be together… If it’s healthy to… And if it isn’t healthy, can health be restored. And so, before we jump right into a process of healing the relationship, it can be useful for each partner to take a step back and to consider where they stand in relation to the union, and whether they have appetite to invest any further in it.

A metaphor that I use in my ‘Hold/Fold’ program is the casino slot machine. A hardened gambler might sit in front of a slot machine and put lots of money into that machine in the belief that it will eventually pay out, be worth it, and fulfil his dreams. The fantasy is that, with just a few more spins, the thing will light up like a Christmas tree, and with fanfare and celebration, they’ll cash in and find themselves on a beach in Bali.

But what usually happens in casinos, as we all know, is that you get to the end of your money and the machine is asking for more. You cannot continue unless you put more into that machine.

And so what do you do? Do you walk away and say, “You know what? I've had enough, I'm done. I cannot invest anything more in this. I just have to accept that that was a sunk cost, that it was wasted time, wasted energy, wasted money, and it's done”?. Does one need to accept that, costly as the exercise was, there’s nothing left, and any further investment would compound the situation even more.

Or you go off to the begging bowl or draw from your credit card, to invest further, believing that just one more spin will render a jackpot result.

The answer to this question isn’t simple.  The metaphor fails in that the wisdom seems to be to walk away (because gambling is fraught, and the house always wins).

But relationships are not slot machines, and love is not gambling. The analogy just gives us one angle to contemplate, and if it resonates for a person, then the resonance probably suggests that they’re ready to stop over-investing in a dead end.

But (and I speak more about this in ‘Hold/Fold’) I’m usually a proponent of each relationship making one last concerted effort to remedy the bond, before calling it a day. What I find is that, over time, one person will have really TRIED, while the other rests on their laurels. And then roles might change, and the other may make dramatic effort.

But seldom have both parties pulled in the same direction, at the same time, with the same intention. When the decision is taken to do this, real relationship therap begins, and a program of healing, growth and skill can be implemented.

This can be enormously useful and transformational.