This paper is about the unconscious ideals couples share, and the dynamic effect of these on their relationships. With the aid of two detailed clinical examples, I examine how the unconscious ideals actually affecting couples' relationships are often quite different from couples' conscious ideas of their ideals, and, in particular, how couples can get fixated in paranoid-schizoid and regressive shared states of mind as a result. I explore the kind of psychological journey couples typically find they have to tread if they are to develop to ideals which are more rational and tolerant, borne of the depressive position. I note how couples' notions of betrayal and forgiveness are quite different according to whether they are relating from the paranoid-schizoid or depressive position.