Information about Bob Buchicchio's book and his speaking schedule is available at www.takingspace.com.

When a couple are struggling to save their marriage, sometimes the best thing to do is to break it apart.

That counter-intuitive notion comes from relationship counselor Bob Buchicchio, who has worked with Vermont couples for nearly 30 years.

Separation — spoken (or shouted) in the same breath as "divorce" — certainly can be the last step before the end of a marriage. But according to Buchicchio, often separation is the saving grace for a relationship that needs a timeout.

It's an idea that is gaining him national attention lately, with invitations to speak at two professional conferences and recognition for his book on the topic.

"One of the biggest myths is that separation always leads to divorce, and it doesn't," says Buchicchio, who hopes to make separation more productive by better defining it. Separation lets couples "hit the pause button before deciding what to do."

For instance, when spouses are constantly fighting – engaged daily in battles over money or parenting or sex – taking some time apart can take the heat off, giving both parties a chance to cool down, gain some perspective and focus on what they can do to improve their relationship, rather than on winning the next fight.

Or in the case of a spouse who is struggling with depression and not able to contribute to family life, a separation can let that person get help from a therapist and focus on getting well again.

But Buchicchio hardly prescribes separation as a one-size-fits-all solution. Taking a break may simply mean separate vacations or sleeping in separate bedrooms, whether to help a couple through a rough patch or allow some time to think before a drastic move.



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Buchicchio, 60, developed his ideas through 37 years spent helping individuals with depression, anxiety disorder and the whole range of issues familiar to those in the field of psychotherapy. He's always been particularly fascinated with couples work, though. His enthusiasm comes through as he talks rapid-fire about love, conflict and commitment from his office in Montpelier.

Buchicchio, who has a master's in social work and is licensed and certified in the field, worked in a mobile Army hospital in South Korea and taught at Vermont College before launching a private practice in 1978. He and his wife, Harriet, who is a social worker in the department of care management at Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin, have raised two children.

Now that he's written a book about separation management, "Taking Space: How to Use Separation to Explore the Future of Your Relationship," his ideas are getting broader attention.

"Separation," writes Buchicchio, "is about the process of strengthening a separate self so you can actually bring more of you to the intimacy you share with your partner."

He has been invited to give presentations about separation management at the Smart Marriages conference in Denver at the end of this month and at the International Transactional Analysis Conference in San Francisco in August. His book, self-published in 2006, was awarded a bronze medal in the category of "sexuality-relationships" from the Independent Publisher Book Awards last month.

Margaret Joyal, director of the Center for Counseling and Psychological Services at Washington County Mental Health Services Inc., notes that there's something different about his approach. "I think the way that Bob is probably bucking the trend or being outside of traditional psychotherapy theory is … he's trying to creatively approach separation as a creative tool for growth either for the couple or the individuals," Joyal says.

"A lot of time I worked with couples who were on the cusp," says Buchicchio. "Usually one partner wants to work on the marriage and the other is resistant to that. They're not quite ready for divorce yet, but they're in that ambivalent nowhere place."

That "ambivalent nowhere place" can be exhausting and unproductive for the couple and for their children, if they have any. Buchicchio realized that many struggling couples who were not yet ready to divorce – and might never be – needed to consider separation. They also needed significant guidance on the many forms separation can take.

Though Buchicchio saw many books about divorce on the market, there were almost none on separation. Indeed, online bookseller Amazon.com currently offers 2,187 titles in its divorce category, but doesn't even have a category for books on marital separation. A detailed search yielded only six books, including Buchicchio's, that appear to focus specifically on separation.

"What a missed opportunity," says Buchicchio. "There's a lot of conflict, a lot of energy, and no way to deal with that in-between state. I needed a problem-solving guide for that group of people."



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Both in private practice and in his book, Buchicchio tries to help couples establish ground rules to make a separation as productive and non-hurtful as possible.

"Taking Space" offers a 10-step guide to separation, starting with crisis and conflict management. "You simply can't make long-term decisions about the direction of a relationship without cooling the fires of conflict first," writes Buchicchio.

This is where he has couples rate their relationship conflict style (from passive to assertive to aggressive); set rules for things like talking and taking timeouts from talking; and learn to become aware of their anger by measuring it against a temperature gauge chart.

The next few steps guide couples through effective communication, defining the goals of separation, and choosing a particular type of separation.

Buchicchio said that while the word "separation" typically evokes the scenario of one partner moving out of the home indefinitely, couples may be better off deciding on a brief split or finding a way to give each other space while living in the same home. Staying with family for a weekend, taking separate vacations or even just sleeping in separate bedrooms are all possibilities.

Couples can also practice "psychological separation," he says. "The heart and soul of it is, something has to change in the way you relate to your partner." Psychological separation "is where the deeper work tends to go on."



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There are probably as many different marital problems as there are marriages, but Buchicchio sees trends among those who come to him for help.

For example, extramarital affairs have been increasing for as long as he's been in practice. "They're big today. Maybe they've always been big, but they're really big now," he says. "Affairs are rampant at this point. We're connecting so much with other people and if you're not happy with your partner, there are other people you can turn to, such as at work or online."

And it's an equal-opportunity offense, he says, with women slowly catching up to men. "Now I get as many women as men having affairs."

Although confidentiality keeps Buchicchio from offering testimonials by any of his former clients, he says many of the couples he's worked with have remained married after a separation.

Still, his concept has also "worked as a blueprint for moving toward divorce if it worked out that way," he says.

Perhaps one of the hottest topics in family counseling today is whether a couple should stay together for the sake of their children, and Buchicchio contributes to this debate. "I hear grown-ups talk about the day their parents told them they were going to divorce. It sticks in their memory more than anything else," says Buchicchio, who points out that in-home separations are easier on children and should be considered before one spouse moves out.

"Timeout is the number one discipline for kids," says Buchicchio, who believes children grasp the concept of a little space apart being good for cooling off. As he puts it: "Mom and Dad are sleeping in separate rooms" is more manageable for children than, "If you could leave Mom, could you leave me?"

He also emphasizes that children need information and should be told a week or a month ahead of time if one partner will be leaving home. "When parents have the least amount of energy to focus on their kids, that's when kids need it the most."