Working at Ultimately Staying Together --- Separately

Will absence make Ted's heart grow Fonda? Ted Turner and Jane Fonda announced Tuesday they were separating, even though they were "committed to the long-term success" of their marriage. The move might seem paradoxical --- living apart in order to stay together.

      But many marriage therapists say that under the right conditions, a trial separation can provide a cooling-off period that allows both partners to see their problems more clearly instead of letting those difficulties propel them into divorce.

      Charles Nord of the Institute for Marital and Family Therapy in Dunwoody said couples can increase their chances of staying together if they agree to participate in joint and individual therapy sessions during their separation.

      "The whole idea behind a separation is not just to come back to the relationship, but to come back to the relationship a changed person," Nord said. "It depends on their willingness to want to change, of course, but an objective third party can certainly help them do that."

      Paula and Leo Gorelkin are a husband-and-wife team who counsel married couples at Partners for Personal and Relationship Empowerment in Tucker. They tell their patients to use separations not as vacations, but as opportunities to spend more time resolving their conflicts.

      "It may not seem that way at first, but a separation can bring a couple even closer," said Leo, whose wife of 35 years often finishes his sentences.

      "It's good for them to step back into their neutral corners," said Paula. "Instead of having them come out fighting, they come out working harder at their relationship."

      Carrell Dammann, a clinical psychologist at Open House in Buckhead, said trial separations can work, but there's also an inherent risk that the bonds developed during the course of the marriage will disintegrate while the spouses are apart.

      "My experience has been that most people make a decision within a six-month period, and most times that decision is to get a divorce," Dammann said. "In a lot of cases, the separation is just an excuse to delay making a decision."

      A common mistake that separated couples sometimes make is to split without working out the ground rules that will guide their behavior.

      An obvious example is deciding whether they can date outside the marriage.

      "If you don't do that, there is a tendency to drift into Lone Ranger habits," said Bill Nichols of Athens, editor of the Contemporary and Family Therapy Journal.

      While the break-up-to-make-up strategy has become a widely accepted tool for therapists working with troubled marriages, Carl Johnson rarely recommends it for couples he sees in his Atlanta practice.

      "I think it can be a bad idea," said Johnson, who is also director for the Georgia Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. "If you don't get along with your family, the reflex reaction is to move as far away as possible. People confuse physical distance with psychological distance.

      "What really happens is that you freeze-frame the relationship, and during the period you're apart, you're not making any progress."

      In most cases he urges couples to reconcile their differences while they are still living in the same household.

      "Nearly every decision in a marriage should be negotiated between both partners," he said. "The only exception is whether or not they want to stay together. That decision has to be made inside your own heart."