How we stay together: 'Thinking what you might lose sometimes gets you through'

Names: Susanne and Brett Coulstock
Years together: 13
Occupations: Downshifters

“At the start, we were so naive,” says Susanne Coulstock. “It was like, ‘We’re building a nest together.’”

In 2011, she and husband Brett set out to build a self-sufficient, off-grid, passive-solar straw bale eco-farmhouse on a small organic farm in Western Australia. “If you’ve watched Grand Designs, we were typically like that. All starry-eyed at first and then came the reality of the daily grind. Then came the ‘Oh my God. Why did we ever do this? What made us think we could do this?’”

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Neither had the skills or experience – they taught themselves how to do many things – and they had to learn to play to their individual strengths: “I will read three times as much as I need before I start something and Brett just wants to dive in and make mistakes,” says Sue. “For the tasks where we couldn’t work together because I wanted to prepare and he didn’t, we just ended up splitting up tasks. So, for example, I did all of the tiling, where it’s really important that you actually read [up and] you don’t make mistakes.”

And yet, over five years and on a shoestring budget, they did it. They are both very proud of their home, Red Moon Sanctuary: “When it’s done, you can enjoy the glow of having done it,” says Brett. “But it’s like mountain climbing. It’s a long, hard slog to the top, and you enjoy the view from the top. It’s the getting there which is the hard part. [And] of course, if you do something challenging with another person, usually that does strengthen your relationship.”

The couple have been together for 13 years and have gone through plenty of ups and downs, but have remained strong. They met early in 2007 on an online dating site. Intrigued by her profile, Brett pinged Sue. He didn’t expect to hear back from her because she’d stated that she was only interested in university graduates – and he had a diploma in multimedia. Sue quickly jumps in: “It was pretty snobby to say ‘university educated’ but he’s more educated because he self-educates more than most university people that I ever spend time with. And it was just because I really wanted to date someone who reads.” They laugh and he still teases her about it, but they do share a love of reading, nature and science.

Soon they graduated from lengthy emails to long phone calls. It was a gentle courtship – deliberately so for Sue, who’d had a difficult childhood and romantic history. “[With] online dating, you could sift [through] a lot of things that you perhaps wouldn’t be able to sift out if you were falling for the wrong kind of person in the real world. So I made sure that I was speaking to someone who had the right kind of ethics and wasn’t going to be a repeat of my family patterns that I had from childhood.”

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At the time, he was in Perth and she was in Albany so they were 400km apart. Finally they agreed to meet: “Sue invited me down for a long weekend, and it was very clear there was a spare room – and a dog,” says Brett. He took a four-hour bus ride down to meet her in a cafe in Albany. Initially it was a bit odd, says Sue. “You’ve got this text entity and this disembodied voice, and suddenly he’s there. But that took about half an hour to get past the weirdness of that and then that was fine, once we’d reconciled that the disembodied voice came with a body.”

Their connection was as strong as it had been online. “It was really nice to speak to someone who wasn’t pushing his own barrow. He was as interested in working out who I was as he was in telling me who he was,” she remembers. There was a spark between them, although initially it was more of a “best-friend-I-hadn’t-met-yet spark”, says Sue. She was guarded and Brett was happy to accept that: “If that’s all it was going to be, that would’ve been fine because I like Sue, she’s fun to converse with, and she’s good to have as a friend.”

Over the next few months, they’d often spend weekends together, walking and cycling. Gradually their commitment deepened. “We were basically spending a long time in each other’s company, not saying a lot – talking a lot, but not saying a lot. And, after a while, I said, ‘Sue, I think I’ve got feelings for you.’”

In November 2007, after doing one of their favourite climbs up Mount Toolbrunup in the Stirling Ranges, Brett proposed. Sue was thrilled: “[I] floated all the way back down the mountain.” In February 2008, they had a small wedding, followed by a low-key reception with friends. “We had the best food because everyone brought really nice stuff that they’d homemade. And people said to us, “Why can’t weddings be more like this?” says Sue.

As happy as they were, there was a shadow hanging over them. Sue had a very dysfunctional childhood and a difficult relationship with her family. There’d also been tension with other family members over the wedding, which led to ongoing conflict between the couple.

They tried counselling with little success, so it came down to doing the hard work themselves. “It became a DIY thing,” says Sue. “I worked on my own stuff, and then I tried using humour to present some situations to Brett – and humour always works.” What kept her going in tough times was remembering that her husband had her best interests at heart. “For me, it was getting really sad about what was going to be lost if we didn’t make our way through, and what we were going to lose. This was my best friend and I didn’t want to lose him.”

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Brett agrees: “Even at the worst times, I still see Sue as a wonderful person.” Their relationship has layers, he explains. “There was this substrate that was always pretty good. It was just there was complexity and frustrations and things on top of that, and it was dealing with that stuff that was challenging.”

A few years later, Sue was forced to deal with her childhood trauma and diagnosed with complex PTSD. It took her two years to work through it, with Brett’s assistance. “[He was] always telling me to take my time, take my space, it didn’t matter that there were things sitting on the to-do list, they could wait, the top priority was getting me through this. He was there at the end of each weekday, listening, comforting, encouraging me to go on walks with him, and never wavered in his support and kindness through that entire time.”

These days they both feel calmer, more content and secure in their relationship. “We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I support Sue, Sue supports me. I’ll do things she doesn’t like to do; she’ll do things I don’t like to do. And we have great fun and adventures, which we always did have,” says Brett. “There’s always stresses and pressures in life but I don’t feel that my relationship with Sue is one of them.

Sue agrees: “When you look at the person without the rose-tinted glasses, and you can love them as much and more, then you know that you are on to something.”

One of their strengths is the way they challenge each other, says Brett. “I watch things that I never would have watched. I listen to things I never would have listened to. I’ve gone places I never would have been.” It also helps to keep a playful attitude, including having inside jokes. “If I took a little moment of us out of context, nobody would have any idea what we were talking about but that would capture the relationship because it’s playful, it’s knowing, and it’s built on years of trust and shared experiences.”

There’s much to be gained from getting to know someone so intimately over a long time, says Sue. “People talk as if monogamy is this millstone, and yet it’s the most liberating thing [because] you’re not constantly having to look out for your next relationship or one that works. It’s a privilege to really get to know another person who you actually like – and to support that person, to be supported by that person.” She adds: “It’s not always an easy ride. You shouldn’t think that it should have to be, because things that are worth it are worth putting your understanding, time and your effort into. And he certainly is.”

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