After 10 years in a relationship and five years living together, David (37) and Sinéad (35) got married a year ago.
When they met, previous relationships had left both feeling bruised, especially Sinéad, although they never talked about this. They didn't know why they weren't getting on and felt ashamed that things weren't working out, after the happiness of their engagement and the excitement of the wedding.
"Occasionally David was going out at night with his friends and staying out until 4am," Sinéad says. "He wasn't answering his text messages, then he'd come home in the middle of the night. I'd have been looking forward to a night in with him and I'd get a text saying he was meeting his pals.
"Later in the night, he'd stop answering my texts. I didn't think he should be acting like a single man."
David couldn't understand why Sinéad was being so "clingy", which really turned him off: "I needed time away for a few drinks and a laugh with the guys. She was like my mother, texting constantly to see what I was up to." David would ignore her textsand Sinéad hated being perceived as "a nag".
Another issue was that Sinéad's family always had lunch together on Sundays. David was expected to attend even though he wanted to spend Sundays alone with Sinéad. He was unable to tell her that he wanted their relationship to take priority over her family now that they were married, partly because he hadn't acknowledged it himself.
The unspoken conflicts reached into the bedroom. Sinéad withdrew sexually because she felt she could no longer trust David. And being regarded as a "nag" isn't sexy.
"Over six sessions of counselling, Sinéad and David began to understand each other better. They learned to be respectful of each others' expectations and feelings," says their counsellor, Lisa O'Hara.
They reached a compromise. David agreed that he would text her when he was planning to come home and Sinéad accepted David's desire to be with her on Sundays, so they decided to limit Sinéad's Sunday family dinners to two Sundays per month.
Sinéad's challenge was to detach from her family to a certain extent, so that they understood that, now she was married, she had her own family with David.
David's challenge was to understand why Sinéad felt so anxious about him staying out late.
In counselling, the couple discovered something that Sinéad herself hadn't consciously acknowledged. Before she met David, Sinéad had been deeply hurt in a relationship with a man she couldn't trust. It was in that damaging relationship that Sinéad had got into behaving in a pattern of clinginess alternating with withdrawal. "She was unconsciously carrying anxiety from that previous relationship and it was colouring her reason," says O'Hara.
David believed that because there was no sex, Sinéad didn't love him any more. Through counselling, he realised that his fear wasn't justified. All that had happened was that "small things had become monsters over time", says O'Hara.
"Sinéad's fears about David weren't actually about him. His behaviour was bringing up these images in her mind. Once they both understood that, and David adjusted his behaviour, the couple got closer," says O'Hara.
The couple's names have been changed.