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The latest season of one of my favourite shows, Couples Therapy, has just been added to iPlayer. For those of you unfamiliar with it, each season of the show follows four couples in therapy with the remarkable New York psychologist and psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik. Each of these couples is at a crisis point in their relationship.
A common theme is that each of the individuals in the couple is wanting something from the other that they’re not getting. They want their partner to understand and meet their needs, but they’re reluctant to commit to do that for their partner if it impedes their own freedom, often to seek fulfilment from others outside the relationship.
You end up rooting for the couples in the show. Often they have trauma or tragedy in their past, which affects their ability properly to commit. They cling on to the agency that they may have been deprived of as a child because of the neglect of others. They are enormously emotionally articulate but need the help of Dr Guralnik to find solutions to the destructive power of their freedom on the man or woman they love. They appear unmoored. Their freedom is that of a ship adrift on the ocean without captain or crew to shepherd it safely to port.
The Bible speaks of freedom very positively. It was for freedom that Christ has set us free, Paul writes (Galatians 5:1). But he instructs married couples to submit freely to each other out of reverence for Christ, to use their freedom not to advance their own interests but to serve the other – in effect, freely to give up their freedom. In Ephesians 5:21–33 Paul instructs every husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it.
That’s a big ask. Fortunately, I’m not called to die on a cross. But I am called to do last night’s washing up without expecting a medal. Relationships are built on mutual reciprocity, outloving the other without a ledger.
I freely gave up my own freedom 30 years ago last July. All that I am I give to you, I promised to my wife. I will love and cherish you, whatever state we find ourselves in. I will forsake all others and be faithful to you for as long as we both shall live. I was free, then I wasn’t. It seemed like a good deal then, and it still does today.
Simon Martin
Simon volunteers at LICC after 30 years of working in the law (finished) and 30 years of marriage (ongoing).
I haven’t watched this series (although my wife and I have experienced therapy together in another context). But coincidentally, I saw this article in the Guardian yesterday, which is a spin off from the series, featuring a long conversation between a former participant on the show (Christine – a Palestinian) and the therapist, Orla (who is an Israeli Jew). They both live in New York, have very different perspectives on the Israel/Palestine issue but are deeply committed friends. The conversation speaks for itself – it is long, honest, painful and transformative, for both Orla and Christine, and also for me – which reminds me very much of the theology of the Cross.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/13/israel-palestine-7-october-gaza-orna-guralnik
the call is for a deeper understanding of the other, a willingness to be hurt by our deeper understanding, and for “relentless curiosity” to REALLY understand the others lived experience.