ADRIFT IN RELATIONSHIP:

When John and Marry were engaged, they spent hundreds of hours and thousands of shillings preparing for their marriage ceremony. But neither spent much time preparing to make their marriage work.

Bliss turned to burden as they struggled through everything from how to handle finances to how to spend a Saturday afternoon. They had no idea when they married that crisis after crisis would come their way—a lost job, poor health, a financial setback, and the loss of their parents. Now they are both lonely, and although neither has told the other, secretly they wonder if their marriage is going to make it.

As it did for these married couples, isolation starts when husband and wife slowly drift apart in ways they don't even recognize at first. Signs of isolation include the following:

1. A feeling that your spouse isn't hearing you and doesn't want to understand.

2. An attitude of, "Who cares?" "Why try?" "Tomorrow we'll talk about it—let's just get some sleep."

3. A feeling of being unable to please or meet the expectations of your spouse.

4. A sense that he's detached from you.

5. A feeling that she's going her own way.

6. A refusal to cope with what's really wrong: "That's your problem, not mine."

7. A feeling that keeping the peace by avoiding the conflict is better than the pain of dealing with reality.

Every day each partner in a marriage makes choices that result in oneness or in isolation. Make the right choices and you will know love, warmth, acceptance and the freedom of true intimacy and genuine oneness as man and wife. Make the wrong choices and you will know the quiet desperation of living together but never really touching one another deeply.