Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes

by William Bridges

2. Arrange temporary structures. When I had my house remodeled a few years ago, for several weeks I tolerated a living room wall made of plastic and canvas. That temporary construction was ugly, but it provided me with the protection I needed to go on living in a space that was being transformed. So it is with transitional situations in the world of relationships: You will need to work out ways of going on while the inner work is being done. This may involve working out a temporary way to make decisions; it may involve agreements about how to allocate responsibilities until something more permanent can be devised; or it may simply involve an inner resolve to accept a given situation as temporary and to transfer some energy to finding a replacement for it.