Three in a marriage is fine – if one's the referee

The nightmare is this: you wake up one day and the words have gone. There is not a story to be told, not an idea in your head. At that moment, the question will arise how, as a writer without words, you will earn a living. Working alone and without a boss over a period of years, as any freelance will know, renders one temperamentally unsuitable for most normal, regular jobs.

The nightmare is this: you wake up one day and the words have gone. There is not a story to be told, not an idea in your head. At that moment, the question will arise how, as a writer without words, you will earn a living. Working alone and without a boss over a period of years, as any freelance will know, renders one temperamentally unsuitable for most normal, regular jobs.

Now there is an option. In America, a new profession has been created that seems certain to catch on here before too long: people are hiring what they call "marital referees" or " a third force". In some circles, the usual pre-nuptial agreements have included a clause binding signatories to the employment of a joint personal counsellor to act as a "third force" in the event of the relationship hitting trouble.

The actor couple Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe pioneered the trend when they married back in 1999. More recently, Halle Berry, whose marriage to Eric Benet is said to be going through something of a sticky patch on account of his having been putting himself about a bit, has come to a similar agreement with him.

It seems a terribly good idea. Many married couples slip into the habit of using the audience of a mutual friend to say things to one another that had remained unsaid when they were alone (alone, you can walk out, lose your temper, act as childishly as you like). But friends have their limits. They get bored with your tedious little crises. They may know, or like, one of you better than the other, so that their judgement is tainted. If they are another married couple, your row can set off a grim chain reaction in their own relationship.

Using a professional counsellor to act as a personal third force, lurking around the home, will also pose problems. It is fine to read the wise and gentle words of some expert in matters of the human heart, quite another to have Oliver James settling down to a pizza with you, or Anna Raeburn stepping out of the bedroom cupboard to offer advice on tough love and technique.

So the perfect marital referee – someone to visit occasionally, stay in the small room and generally offer on-the spot marital guidance – would seem to be an ordinary Joe or Joanna who has taken a fair share of knocks in the game of life and is now happy to help younger players. Just as former footballers make excellent referees, so the formerly married will have the experience to know the difference between a clumsy tackle and a cynical professional foul, will know where honest banter ends and outright dissent begins.

For the truth is that marriage is a complicated business and very often, by the time its more difficult and important lessons are learnt, it is too late to put them into effect. Positions have become entrenched, patterns of behaviour – a joint conspiracy of unkindness, insensitivity, emotional manipulation, tit-for-tat – have been repeated so frequently that they have become part of the relationship like barbed wire trapped deep in the trunk of a growing tree.

Sensible marital referees will stamp their authority on the game at an early stage. They will crack down on problem areas which seem marginal until it is too late – money, for example. Using a joint bank account for all finances, a certain area of potential discord in the future, would be strongly discouraged. An openness, combined with a degree of formality about who is paying for what, would be a basic ground rule. The more enterprising of third forces would point up the startling importance of meals in a partnership. Even if neither of them is particularly enthusiastic about cooking, the couple would be encouraged to see food as a weirdly powerful emotional focus.

The current rage for adultery will inevitably cause disciplinary problems and attitudes to it will vary among marital referees. A few hard-liners will take a brisk "one-shag-and-you're-off" approach but, as any football fan will know, a game can be destroyed by too much discipline. A more sensitive line would be to recognise the pressures of the modern game and use the yellow rather than the red card.

It would be an important part of a third force to prevent couples becoming welded by habit into a stale domestic unit that functions only for the progress of the family, the children and the home. Couples would be encouraged to meet each other away from home and to try to see in each other the exciting, unpredictable stranger with whom they first fell in love.

After some hideous row, young couples would be shown that peace may only be a lull in hostilities if the subtext to what has happened is not discussed. Years later, feelings that were never expressed will emerge, distorted and magnified by years of silence.

It will be a tough job, that of marital referee, but satisfying in its way.

terblacker@aol.com