Burke and Marjorie begin marriage counseling

Burke Devore and Marjorie Devore begin marriage counseling after nearly two years of unemployment have turned a shared financial crisis into a crisis of trust and intimacy. The first session opens a space for them to examine what they want from their marriage, but Burke arrives with a private agenda and cannot tell Marjorie what he has done or intends to do. Counseling therefore becomes both a sincere effort to keep the relationship alive and a measure of the secrecy that is pulling it apart.

Marriage Under Pressure

The strain has roots beyond Burke’s job loss. He and Marjorie met in Hartford in 1971, when she was a twenty-year-old college student and he was a twenty-five-year-old Army veteran working as a city bus driver. Their difference in height and build drew jokes from friends, and Marjorie’s friends ribbed her for dating a bus driver. Burke later applied to Green Valley Paper & Pulp, where selling paper became his life’s work. Losing that work threatens not only the household’s income but also the provider identity around which he has organized his place in the family.

By the time Marjorie presses for help, she sees their relationship deteriorating while Burke remains absorbed in his own efforts to recover. She tells him that the damage is already happening: she loves him and wants the marriage to survive, but feels worn down and desperate. Burke assumes that finding another job will restore their security. Marjorie’s fear is that waiting for that change will come too late. His attention is fixed on the employment crisis; her plea makes clear that the marriage itself has become urgent.

The First Counseling Session

At their first appointment, the counselor, Longus Quinlan, spends the fifty-minute hour on preliminary information rather than the intimate disclosures Burke expects. Burke is waiting to hear Marjorie describe her affair and hopes to learn the identity of the other man, but the session does not reach either subject. Instead, they discuss their circumstances and identify Burke’s nearly two years out of work as an apparent source of their difficulties.

Quinlan presents counseling not as a quick repair supplied by an expert, but as a process of helping the couple discover what they want and what resources they already possess. He cautions that they may assume they want their former life back without knowing whether that is truly what they want. Burke recognizes that this approach leaves open the possibility that ending the marriage could become the outcome the couple actually seeks. He is skeptical of the counselor, yet agrees to continue.

They arrange to meet every Tuesday at the same hour. Their insurance will cover the sessions for a while, after which they must pay the twenty-percent deductible themselves. On leaving, Burke compares the appointment to job interviews he has experienced. Marjorie embraces and kisses him warmly, but the contact lasts only an instant before they both pull away. The brief return of closeness does not resolve the distance between them.

What the Sessions Bring into View

In a later session, Marjorie describes how she initially treated Burke’s unemployment as a temporary test of partnership. She began economizing and hoped to prove herself a supportive wife, expecting the crisis to pass. As it continued, Burke became increasingly silent and closed off rather than admitting how serious the situation had become. She interprets his secrecy as part of an effort to remain the perfect provider and protector, even as that effort leaves her shut out and sometimes makes his expression seem hostile to her.

Marjorie also explains that her withdrawal from paid work was shaped by their earlier family choices. She had worked for an insurance company after college, earned a promotion and a raise, and could have stayed in the job market, but left when Burke wanted to marry and have a family. Years later, as she considered working again, Burke bought a home computer ostensibly for the family and encouraged her to learn it; she understood the gesture as a way of telling her that her skills were outdated. In fact, she had been doing billing on a dentist’s computer and learning more on her own, a source of capability and satisfaction she felt unable to share with Burke.

Her account turns the unemployment crisis into a conflict over autonomy as well as money. Marjorie notes that she cannot easily return to full-time work after years outside the labor market, while Burke continues to expect the same kind of job he lost. The two cannot talk openly about how bad their circumstances are or what might happen next. His attempt to protect the household by maintaining the provider role instead reinforces the wall between them.

Repair and Secrecy

Burke eventually explains in counseling that he feels he has nobody to rely on but himself and apologizes for becoming distant and cold. Marjorie answers that he is not alone and that he has her. His admission briefly names the isolation at the center of his conduct, but does not make their understandings of the crisis equal: she offers partnership, while he continues to treat the struggle as something he must manage alone.

The counseling’s central irony is that Burke wants to preserve the marriage while withholding the truth he believes Marjorie could not bear to know. Sitting with her, he realizes that she would never look at him the same way if she knew what he had done, was doing, and planned to do. The sessions can help them articulate unemployment, fear, and resentment, but they cannot address the concealed actions shaping Burke’s choices. Their scheduled meetings and fleeting tenderness offer a possible route toward renewed communication; his secrecy keeps that possibility suspended.