Here are some things people have said describing “best” times that weren’t very good:

• “At the beginning I loved him very much and I thought we were close, but even then we’d have violent arguments every couple of days that completely drained me and spoiled everything.”

• “Our best time was on our honeymoon. We were happy in a way, but I now realize that all the pleasure came from the activities we did, not from being with each other. It was like having a really great vacation with a stranger.”

• “There was a period when we never fought, but we never spent much time together then or were close either.”

• “For the first couple of years sex was great—it’s how we got together in the first place—but we had nothing else in common and didn’t really care about each other.”

You probably have a pretty clear sense about whether, when things were at their best, they were actually very good or not. For most people whose relationships are iffy now, they were pretty good at one point. But for about ten percent of you, they were actually never very good.

In a moment you’ll see what your answer to question #1 means. But first, let’s put all this in the context of someone who was going through something like what you may be going through now.

Jennifer was thirty-six. She was an attractive woman who acted like she could make quick work of any problem you gave her. When she came to see me she’d been married for eight years. And for the last six she’d been in a constant struggle about whether to stay with her husband or leave him for good.

For all the time and brain power she brought to thinking about what to do—probing every strand and filament of feeling, every nuance of behavior, every hint of what the future might hold—she’d grown less and less clear over the past six years. And it was tearing her up inside.