Benussi Blog

You’re back from holiday and it’s been good in parts but fraught in others. You and your spouse wanted to do different things, snapped at each other too much and didn’t rediscover the romance you’d hoped you might.

On the other hand, you both enjoyed watching the kids have fun; you enjoyed some pleasant-enough evenings on the balcony with a glass of wine and, all in all, it was okay.

The trouble is, you wanted it to be so much more than okay. After a difficult year trying to make the family finances add up, worrying you might lose your job and struggling with mid-life blues, you hoped the long-anticipated summer getaway would put the fizz back into your marriage.

Now that it hasn’t, it must mean the relationship is over, right?

Wrong. Or probably wrong. We all know life is far from perfect, yet somehow we expect our relationships to be perfect. If they’re not, there’s a tendency to imagine they’re a failure.

But that’s not the case. Many people – especially those who have been married a long time – recognise that a relationship is either going to go through rocky patches or not be as fabulous as it promised to be in the early days.

The actor Jeremy Irons, who this week gave a slightly controversial interview to the Radio Times, has previously described his relationship with his wife of 33 years, fellow thespian Sinead Cusack, as “dysfunctional”, saying: “Sinead and I have had difficult times. Every marriage does because people are impossible. I’m impossible, my wife’s impossible, life’s impossible”.

He has also said: “No marriage is what it seems. I will say that it is very difficult to be everything to one person.”

The actress Gwyneth Paltrow, meanwhile, has also admitted to difficulties in her seven-and-a-half-year marriage to musician Chris Martin. In a magazine interview last week, she described it as not always being rosy.

“Sometimes it’s hard being with someone for a long time,” she said. “We go through periods that aren’t all rosy. I always say, life is long and you never know what’s going to happen.”

It’s good to hear celebrities admit to problems in their relationships whilst sticking with them. All too often, stars are either utterly and blissfully in love or running off to the divorce courts. Having a couple of down-to-earth actors confess that all in the garden isn’t rosy but they’re prepared to keep on gardening is helpful.

So if your holiday wasn’t a runaway success, but neither was it a disaster, feel grateful rather than dissatisfied. And resolve to work hard at your relationship so that next year’s vacation is better.