Every night my boyfriend and I have been sitting on the sofa and hungrily watching strangers break up. Couples Therapy is a docu-series filmed in the New York office of elegant psychoanalyst Dr Orna Guralnik as she deftly sieves the lumps out of four relationships. Once you have got over the bogglement at the idea that these couples have agreed to be so vulnerable in front of this many cameras, knowing every eye-roll and revelation will be seen by millions (including their dads, bosses and exes), you can relax into the radical entertainment. And some time after that, perhaps in bed, or when flossing your teeth, questions might appear. Questions like, “Do I interrupt like she does?” and, “Could that guy not perhaps take his awful denim cap off inside?” and, “How can any of us hope to understand each other when we can’t even understand ourselves?”
The structure of a couple is one I am familiar with and fascinated by. Why (I ask myself fondly, 18 years into a relationship that could not be more traditional if it wore a blazer and drank real ale) do we choose this partnership, generation after generation, morning after morning? Two strangers leaning against each other like two cards trying to make a shelter. I think often of the tree that grew around a bike, evolving into something monsterish and beautiful that would never ride again. When the bike was left chained there in 1914, the tree treated it like a wound, scarring and scabbing itself around the frame – now the bike is more than 7ft from the ground, and the tree a living metaphor for every long-term relationship on this bended, burning earth. I like it, I suppose. Is that enough?
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