María Álvarez de las Asturias is a wife, mother, legal professional and professor. Her experience accompanying marriages throughout their stages and her work, first as Defender of the Bond and currently as a judge in the Ecclesiastical Court of Madrid, have made her an authoritative voice in all matters relating to healthy dynamics within the couple.
The accompaniment is a support for married couples at any stage of their lives. It is starting to become an essential resource, considering that there are more and more messages bombarding couples with the mantra of "it's easy to break the bond and start over somewhere else". In the face of this, accompaniment wants to bring a message of hope and the struggle for marriage.
To learn more about this work, María Álvarez de las Asturias explains what this resource consists of, clarifies some myths and shows that communication is one of the best tools couples have to solve their problems.
What does accompaniment consist of, and what is the key to this work?
-In recent years we have come to the term "accompaniment", which is broad and encompasses care for anyone who needs help in their personal and family relationships.
It is a non-clinical help, because there are many personal, couple and family difficulties that do not have a clinical root and, therefore, do not need medical treatment. Counseling is a good combination with other types of help, which can be clinical, legal or spiritual. It is very important in accompaniment that we professionals work in collaboration: we are dealing with people, not with clients or sources of income. We cannot "appropriate the case", because we do not "see cases", we attend to people.
This form of non-clinical accompaniment arises because many people ask for it as circumstances have changed.
Fifty years ago, difficulties were solved with the advice of family and friends. We lived at a different pace, generally closer to each other, but today we no longer have that family and social protection. People are very lonely and do not know where to turn.
In the accompaniment, the person you go to offers you a guarantee, because of the person he/she is and the training he/she has, that he/she has the capacity to understand the difficulty you are experiencing and the capacity, if not to solve that difficulty, then to help you find the professional who can help you.
What are the myths and realities about accompaniment in marriage?
-The first thing is to make it clear that it is difficult for us to ask for help. No one likes to admit that they have a difficulty. Nor do we like to talk about the problems we have.
One of the great myths that should be clarified is that the help offered from the accompaniment is not for the moment in which one has already decided to separate. That is to say, a couple's difficulty arises at a given moment and, from that moment until one makes the decision to separate, there is an enormous space of time in which it is necessary to act, precisely to avoid a rupture.
I always suggest that if a couple is at a point where they notice a rift or that the relationship is starting to feel heavy, and they can't solve it by themselves, they should ask for help. This disagreement can be solved to strengthen the relationship. But if this misunderstanding is not closed, the couple will easily take parallel paths that are then divergent.
What is the need for accompaniment to be professionalized?
-As I was saying, on the one hand, the loneliness of people has had a great influence due to geographical dispersion and also because of the pace of life we lead. On the other hand, families often no longer share the same values and principles as before. This is also influenced by the social environment, which for more than twenty years has gone from appreciating the family and marriage to devaluing and attacking them.
Because of all this, married couples encounter difficulties in their lives and find it more difficult to find someone who has the same vision as they do. Hence the need for a professional accompaniment that can respond to the requests of couples who do not find the help they need in their immediate environment.
What is the first thing to consider when dealing with a crisis in marriage?
-The first thing to know is that crises are a natural part of a relationship. If you start a relationship of any kind, with the intention and firm desire to last in time, this relationship will go through crises, because crises are changes. The love relationship that does not grow, dies.
Growth implies change, and change is a crisis. Changes in circumstances force us to reposition ourselves, but we have to lose our fear of the word "crisis", because we tend to think that it is equivalent to thoughts of separation and they are not the same thing.
There are crises that have a negative origin, but others come from something positive, such as the birth of a child or a promotion at work. Knowing this, we can say that, in principle, crises can be solved with good communication.
An unresolved crisis is what can lead to a separation. If we are not able to resolve a crisis, it is good to set a time limit, not too long. If at the end of that determined time we continue dragging the difficulty, it is necessary to ask for help to solve it.
What happens when one of the partners in the marriage does want to have an accompaniment but the other has reservations?
-The perfect way is for both to come to the accompaniment but, as "the best is the enemy of the good", in case one of the two does not want to, at least through the one who does come, it is possible to try to improve the relationship. However, it is always better to listen to both versions. It is also true that it often happens that the spouse who is reluctant opens up to the possibility of accompaniment when he or she sees that the other person makes changes that positively affect the relationship.
I also believe that the fact that the accompaniment is not clinical care is an advantage that eliminates barriers. Along with this, I think that this non-clinical accompaniment is often a good way for the person who needs clinical treatment to realize that it would be good to ask for it.
What sense does it make to dedicate oneself to accompaniment and for this system to exist at a time when there is so much fear of commitment and we have become accustomed to divorce and separation?
-It makes all the sense in the world because what society is proposing to us is causing immense suffering in a multitude of people.
No one marries to fail. No one wants to do poorly in their family and what we find is that when you announce the possibility of working to improve a relationship, most people do want to take that chance.
Our work makes sense and arises at the request of people who do not find in their family and social environment the support they need to carry out their commitment and their union of love.
What is the difference between clinical and non-clinical accompaniment?
-It is necessary to begin by clarifying that all accompaniment, even if it means having a coffee with a person and listening to him or her, is therapeutic, because it helps to alleviate worry or suffering. But not all accompaniment is clinical. The difference between accompaniment and clinical care is that there are difficulties in relationships (difficulties in communication, or in relationships with in-laws) that do not originate in a pathology; and, in these cases, physicians have little chance of solving them.
On the other hand, if one of the members of the couple or family needs clinical care, it is good that the rest of the family can count on accompaniment to live through that situation, since the pathology of one has repercussions on the relationships of all.
Any form of loving, non-judgmental, non-critical listening to another person is accompaniment. We can all do this to some extent. But when the difficulty begins to be great, it is advisable to turn to a professional with training in the field of your concern.
In my case, my legal-canonical training and my training in grief and emotional wounding, together with my experience with engaged couples, give me a higher qualification than that of a well-meaning friend.
In accompaniment, when you tell a prepared person what is happening to you, it is easier to determine the real importance of the problem. When you have a difficulty and it is going around in your head, it is normal for it to "get into a ball". At that time, it is difficult to see the problem objectively. By expressing and bringing out from inside what is bothering us, the difficulty begins to be seen with the importance it has and it is a first step to healing.
How do you accompany a married couple that has been together for 50 years, with its defects, routines and virtues already so marked that they make it difficult to change?
-These marriages also have crises, such as that of the empty nestfor example. With that particular stage there are people who say that if you have empty nest syndrome is because your marriage is not going well, but this is barbaric. This is the age when your children usually become independent. Even if you don't have children, both partners are getting older and probably see the end of their working lives already on the horizon. You're already at an age that you're not going to double, which means you're starting to live the second part of your life. Therefore, things that you didn't think about before are now coming to light.
The previous generation, who took care of you and were the ones you could turn to, is no longer there or is starting to need your care. Suddenly, you find yourself in the front row. Others come to you, but it's hard for you to find someone to turn to.
It is completely normal that, in this situation, there is an existential crisis. If you have lived the way you wanted to live, it is easier to solve this crisis and face those vices or problems that hinder the relationship. If the couple is still willing to maintain the commitment that unites them, it is easier for them to find a way to face the crisis and adapt to the new circumstances of their life.
The dangerous difficulty arises when one or both partners, at some point in the relationship after the wedding, have the impression that they are not living the life they wanted to live. This is when the existential crisis arrives, which many place around the age of fifty, but which can occur at any time. If they are dissatisfied with the life they are leading, many decide to slam the door and leave. If this point is reached, it is difficult to solve. It is a problem that can only be prevented: prevention is based on taking care of that union of love every day, renewing the marital commitment. In other words, the sudden death of the marriage, that slam the door and walk awayThe reason for this is that it has not been said in real time what was beginning to be uncomfortable in the marriage.
That is why we have to be very careful with communication and tell each other the things that weigh on the relationship. We must tell each other what we like, what we find difficult, our illusions and the changes we would like to see or make.
Communication is necessary to take care of our relationship and to make sure that the life we lead together suits us. This does not mean that we can do everything we would like to do; but by talking about all that (what we like, what we find difficult, the illusions and the changes we would like to make) we do what is possible and we avoid throwing in each other's faces the things that we have jointly decided are not possible or that we should postpone.
Is there a point in the accompaniment when one realizes that for that marriage the only recourse left is separation? What does one do then?
-It is important to point out that in accompaniment we do not make decisions for other people. We help the person who comes to the accompaniment to raise and put on the table the things he/she needs to clarify in order to make the decisions that seem appropriate to him/her.
In accompaniment we support people who do not feel capable of making decisions on their own at that moment, but we do not make decisions for them.
There are couples who, from the companion's point of view, could make it through. But you can't make that decision for them if in the end they decide to separate. We have to respect people's freedom, that's the first thing.
As professionals of accompaniment, it is also necessary to accompany in separation and breakups. Without judging, because it is a situation that can be traumatic and criticism adds suffering to a moment that is already painful in itself.
