The author describes the destructive effect of two individuals' dyadic internal object relationships on their marriage. In a combined, concurrent couple and individual therapy, she recognizes the prevalence of need-gratifying primitive dyads and sees the destructive effect that they have on the couple's hopes for intimate relating. The therapist becomes the object of desire to which the preference for dyadic relating attaches, interprets that this reliance on dyadic functioning with each other as parent substitutes stems from lost loves of childhood, and works through with the partners until they are functioning as a mature couple of equals capable of holding, containment, interpretation of conflict and personal integration.