Shumita Basu, Narrating: Hey there. Before we get into today's episode, I have a quick request. If you love this show, please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts and rate and review us. It's one of those things that helps other people find our show, plus we like hearing what you're enjoying and want more of. It is so quick to do, and my team and I really appreciate it.
So, thank you. Let's get to the show.
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Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, what we can learn from couples therapy.
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[CHILL MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: Couples who end up together on the couch in a therapist's office will often give a reason why they're there. Infidelity. Fights. "We're here to solve this problem." But a good couple's therapist will tell you every couple can stand to learn something from going to therapy together.
Orna Guralnik: People often have a preliminary kind of anxiety about getting to know more about themselves or about their partner, but when it really happens, it's a very meaningful, gratifying experience.
That's Dr. Orna Guralnik. She's a psychoanalyst, which means she pays particularly close attention to a person's internal world, how past experiences may be unconsciously impacting or motivating them.
Guralnik: Those are those a-ha moments that we look for both in individual and in couples work. Like, oh my god, now I understand something that I had some feeling about. There was a hunch, but oh, now it makes sense.
Basu, Narrating: What's different is, she's doing this kind of inner-world work in an office rigged with cameras. It's the main setting we see in the "Showtime" series called "Couples Therapy," which follows several real-life couples as they hash out their conflicts, their traumas, their anxieties with Orna as their guide. Here's an exchange between a couple and Orna from the show.
[START COUPLES THERAPY ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Sean: If she wants to talk about her feelings, by all means. But we're like … what, are we talking about particulars?
Erica: No.
Orna Guralnik: Why not? What's the problem with letting it unfold here so I can understand what the two of you are struggling with?
[END COUPLES THERAPY ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Basu, Narrating: I should say, I have watched every single episode of this show with my husband. And if you've seen it too, you'll know that there is something really gripping about watching Orna work, the way that she gently prompts people to examine their instincts, to listen to their partners, and to do some really hard self-discovery. Things can get pretty intense. And as a viewer, it makes you appreciate how challenging relationships can be and how much effort people are willing to put in when they really care about the other person.
At the same time though, and Orna will be the first person to tell you this, success in couples therapy does not necessarily mean staying together.
Guralnik: Generally, if the couple wants to stay together, I will try to help them, but the conditions of staying together should include a real capacity to love each other. I mean, if loving each other includes not staying together because that is a more loving thing to do, I will support that.
Basu, Narrating: New episodes of season three of "Couples Therapy" are out now. So, I figured it's a good time to talk with the person in the room we learn the least about, Orna, to try to understand her process and to ask her to share some advice that could apply to lots of relationships, not just the people sitting on her couch.
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Guralnik: The first thing couples say most of the time when they start seeing me is, "We have problems communicating." Now, what does that mean is not always clear. I mean, it is often that they're talking and they're not hearing each other, they're talking across each other, misunderstanding, projecting and all of that. So, there are some basic skills that help people talk better. You know, active listening, making sure you're saying back to your partner what you heard, separating out what it means to listen and what it means to talk, which literally come from different parts of the brain. And people mix those up a lot. They think they're listening, but they're actually talking, or while they're supposedly listening, they're kind of forming their next sentence. So, just creating a little bit of space between those two modalities can be very helpful. And then helping people regulate their emotional range. So, when people are too shut down or too worked up, they can't properly communicate or listen. So, emotional regulation is part of the puzzle. But the truth is that often people have trouble communicating because there are reasons why they don't wanna hear each other. There are things their partner might be saying that are too difficult to hear. Sometimes there are serious differences between people that they're afraid to tackle or they don't know how to tackle. And then there's the question of what I often call the political underpinnings of what's going on there. How do people think they should resolve problems? Are they really working with a certain kind of democratic, egalitarian model in mind? Or do they expect things to get resolved ultimately by some autocratic measure? Like, is bullying the way or is democracy the way? And that's not to be taken for granted.
Basu: Maybe I'm assuming here, but I feel like probably a lot of couples, they go in there sort of armed with a narrative. Individually, they each have their own narrative. Right? Maybe even the goal of winning. How do you go about sort of identifying the narratives people come in with and even disarming them of their narratives?
Guralnik: I would say that probably if I had to describe my process of working with that, it would be first to really listen carefully to each person's narrative and in a way understand each person in their own terms. And by doing that, both I'm getting to know each person and what matters to them and what is bothersome to them and where their pain point is, but I'm also modeling to each of them what it means to listen to another person in their own language rather than immediately find a way to kind of jostle with it. It changes the dynamic when people feel just listened to and heard on their own terms. Something immediately changes. Like there's a certain kind of softening that happens and then modeling that to each other. But eventually, it usually is time to kind of try to get in there and see what can move about these narratives. Because for people, it doesn't usually feel like a narrative. It feels like a truth, just the truth, the obvious truth. And they feel like the therapist is there to just see the truth and tell their partner that's the truth. So, if we get to the point where each of the couple actually has the experience that they're attached to a narrative, then half of the work is done because then it gets interesting.
Basu: I thought maybe we could talk about one couple, Sean and Erica, and I'm gonna be careful here not to reveal too many spoilers. But they are working through a few challenges in their relationship, including infidelity. But one thing that's really challenging to watch at times is the way that Sean frames what's happening between them and how they're talking. So, let's listen to a moment from their first session.
[START COUPLES THERAPY ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Sean: If she wants to talk about her feelings, by all means. But we're like … what, are we talking about particulars?
Erica: No.
Orna Guralnik: Why not? What's the problem with letting it unfold here so I can understand what the two of you are struggling with?
Sean: Every time we get into an argument, the catalyst is her wanting to talk about it some more. And after two and half months of her making accusations of me cheating and cheating and cheating and cheating and cheating and me responding, "I'm not cheating on you. I'm not having an affair on you. There is nobody else."
Erica: He made me feel like I was crazy.
Guralnik: Mm-hmm.
Sean: So, then she said …
Erica: In my feeling.
Sean: … "I feel like you're gaslighting me." And then she asked me the appropriate question, "Have you ever stepped out on me?" And I said, "Yes."
[END COUPLES THERAPY ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Basu: Orna, what is going on here?
Guralnik: Okay. You picked one of those, like one of the trickiest moments for me in this season.
Guralnik: That was a really difficult one. What is happening here? It's a moment where there's kind of more of me, in my own experience, more of me kind of struggling than I usually feel because Erica is operating from a particular discourse. She's like a wife that has been cheated on, and she wants to get to the bottom of it. And she also wants somewhere between accountability and revenge. And then there's Sean who is frightened by the impact of what he's done. And he's kind of desperately trying to thread the needle by narrating it so that it's somehow plausible that what he's done is somehow okay because he doesn't wanna lose her and he doesn't wanna be the bad guy. So, he's trying to kind of generate some kind of narrative that will not be simply, "Yeah, I cheated on you and lied." And then there's me having a lot of trouble with that method and trying to kind of stick to more facts and be more honest about our motivations versus try to preserve things at the expense of truth. The reason I'm struggling is because not everyone sees the truth as the primary and most important ingredient. And I'm not saying that cynically, I'm saying that really. I mean, sometimes truth is not the top ingredient. That is difficult for me personally. But I was trying to keep in mind that there are reasons Sean is operating this way. Like, I'm not … you know, we're not in court.
Basu: Oh, I know.
Basu: It's interesting that you say that truth plays this role in the politics of a marriage, but maybe not the most important role. Is that something that, as a couple if, if they agree that it's not the most important ingredient, they can still weather it?
Guralnik: Yeah. People have different methods of what they do with truth. It's really interesting. I mean, I know what's important to me personally, both in a relationship and when I'm working with other people, but people differ on this. We can talk specifically about infidelities or non-monogamy, and people have different approaches to that, but other truths too. I mean, people don't always wanna know everything. Some people find it offensive to know certain things. I think one of the important things is for couples to figure that out with each other and to be in some sort of agreement on their comfort with truth and how much truth is good medicine for them, and how much truth becomes toxic.
[GENTLE MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: Watching the show, there are so many moments where you see two people talking past each other. Armor up, sticking to their story, just not communicating effectively. It's such a common conflict.
When we asked you, our listeners, to tell us about your relationship takeaways from therapy, a lot of you told us it all comes down to the way we choose to communicate with each other.
Listener 1: She said, "You say things to each other that only a parent would say to a child."
Listener 2: It's not that he can't hear me, it's just that he doesn't care.
Listener 3: Open communication is difficult but completely necessary.
Listener 4: We have to find common ground so that we can really understand each other's language.
Listener 5: It only works if both parties are willing.
Basu, Narrating: Another big theme that came up in your voicemails was what Orna was just saying earlier: understanding that your version of the story isn't necessarily the truth. It's just one version.
One caller, Kimberly, described for us the powerful way that her therapist helped her and her partner reframe things.
Kimberly: The therapist asked us to think about taking the top off of your home and describe for me what the scene looks like. And as my husband and I began to share our lens or the view at which we were seeing the disagreement we were having in relation to taking the top off and seeing it play out in our house had a dramatic effect on us. It created for us this sense of sheer, "Oh my gosh, this is how we're behaving."
Another caller, Logan, told us he definitely went into therapy armed with a narrative. It ended up being a real wake-up call in his marriage.
Logan: When I went to couple's therapy, I thought, "Oh wow, this is a great opportunity for me to show that whatever problems we're having are my wife's problems, not mine." And after about the fourth time of my couples therapists showing that it was actually me that was the problem, it was a real wake-up call. And I had to do my own work.
Basu, Narrating: Bringing a therapist into the process can help you untangle your narratives. Orna says, it can be helpful to check your thinking and reflect on where it's coming from, in any partnership.
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Guralnik: The thing that irks you the most about your partner, if you could take it as a thought experiment and ask yourself, "If that's not really only about my partner, what else is this about? If this thing that is driving me crazy is not only about my partner, what else?" Childhood, other kind of inner issues that are getting kind of projected onto the partner.
Basu: You know, I watch the series with my husband. One thing that we'll often say, we'll turn to each other and be like, "Oh, yeah, now Orna is really doing her thing. She's kicking into gear." And that's usually around the time when you're asking someone to tell you about their childhood. And I know that that's a bit of a therapy cliche, maybe, that people think they know about. The "Oh, I'm gonna have to talk about my childhood. Everything is my parents' fault." You know, these things might be sort of tropes of therapy. But I find that those conversations end up being very, very fruitful when you ask people about their childhoods. And it turns out a lot of us are holding onto a lot of our childhood narratives.
Guralnik: There are times in therapy when you can ask a patient or a couple to talk about their childhood, and it's sort of, it does feel like a cliche. It's sort of dead in the water. When it works is when something about what's happening right now, let's say between a couple, and childhood is sort of sitting on each other. There's some kind of super imposition or a certain early … what we call "object relations," like an early relationship with someone important is kind of resonating with what's happening right now. And when it's happening in the room, then is the right moment to go into childhood. And then it won't feel like a therapy cliche, then it will feel like a deepening of what's happening right now when there's like a real resonance, like a harmony between something early and something of now. And then you feel it, you feel it in the room, and I assume that's when you watching it will feel like now it makes sense. And childhood matters. I mean, one of the important things that psychoanalytic theory brought is the idea that very early patterns set the stage for predictions and how people think about the rest of their lives.
Basu: Mm. Let's talk about another couple that I think some of some of these ideas also relate to, and that's Nadine and Christine. And they came to you, in part, because they were trying to figure out how to transition as the two of them, as a couple, to polyamory. So, let's listen to a clip from them.
[START COUPLES THERAPY ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Christine: So, we are here because Nadine has … we need to transition into polyamory. Nadine is oriented as polyamorous.
Orna Guralnik: Sorry, "we need to"?
Christine: Well, not need to. Well, there is a need in the sense of our relationship will not continue if we don't. There's a lot of love in the relationship, of course, but I think we need to get to a place where we are both comfortable in a relationship dynamic that works for both of us.
Guralnik: I'm kind of tempted to break it down immediately. I'm jumping right in. So …
Christine: Please. Go, go. Yeah.
Guralnik: I'm just curious about this use of "need to." It sounds like the hope is that it will solve something, but what will it solve? Why does the relationship need it?
[END COUPLES THERAPY ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Basu: Okay, lots to talk about with this couple. But maybe first you can talk about this idea of polyamory, and I imagine more people are coming into therapists' offices wanting to talk about exploring non-monogamous romantic relationships and what that could mean for them.
Guralnik: Yeah. It's very interesting to me what's going on around ethical non-monogamy, polyamory, all these variations on possible new structures to a relationship. It's an experiment right now that I think, as a culture, the younger generation is taking very seriously. And as a therapist, as their couples therapist, I'm in a way studying it with each couple. So, the things I try to think about with couples is: What do each of them want? What is the contract they have in mind? How are they organizing the new pieces of the relational puzzle? And then what's happening in the relationship that, as I was talking with Nadine and Christine about, what is the non-monogamy addressing? And it's different for different couples. For some people, it might be that actually something about their relationship is not satisfying or problematic or threatening, and this is kind of a way to introduce something in that will change things up.
Basu: Mm. You know, another thing that I'm hearing in that clip with Nadine and Christine is an ultimatum of sorts. We need to do this or else the relationship must end. What do ultimatums do to our relationships and how do you coach couples through thinking through ultimatums?
Guralnik: Generally, ultimatums are not a good idea. When I was saying earlier that couples sometimes teeter between a more democratic way of resolving difference and a more autocratic, ultimatums are often kind of autocratic measures. Like my way or the highway.
Basu: Yeah. Literally. Yeah.
Guralnik: Right. Which is an autocratic way to resolve a difference. And generally, I try to pull people back from these kind of ultimatum brinks and help them get to a more creative place where they can understand each other's needs and motivations and not feel like they need to resolve things with what we call "a do or done to" kind of resolution, either/or. All that said, sometimes an ultimatum is actually a really good thing to do when people keep things in a very wishy-washy, like refusing to really address something way. Sometimes an ultimatum is the only way to sort of break the seal and see what's really going on. "Okay. Are we having a baby or not?"
Basu: Oh, interesting.
Guralnik: This is an example, but ultimately, the pregnancy needs to be decided on, or the clock is ticking, or …
Basu: It's an "are you serious about this" ultimatum, kind of thing?
Guralnik: Yeah. Yeah.
Basu: What happened over the course of your relationship with Christine and Nadine. I mean, Christine is originally from Palestine, and she talks about growing up in the West Bank, and you are Israeli. And you have this moment in the first episode where you both sort of talk about your identities. Of course, she's talking much more about her experience. But it seems like that becomes a very big part of the dynamic. It's not an elephant in the room, but it's in the room with all three of you. Can you talk a little bit about that and what was revealed to you through that experience?
Guralnik: Yeah. First of all, it was profoundly moving for me to be working with them. And talk about like truth. I mean, they're so committed to speak their truth that it was just a delight to work with them, no matter how hard it got. It was just really a delight to see two young people really kind of sit on the edge of things and really work out the true issues between the two of them. Really a lesson in humanity. And then our relationship, Christine being from Palestine, Nadine having half Lebanese origins. It's sort of the whole Israeli-Palestinian-Arab kind of relationship in the room with us. So, for me, just the capacity to create a respectful, loving dialogue with people that, by the coordinates of what's going on geographically in Palestine-Israel, is super problematic. Just the ability to kind of, in a way, create our own mini utopian universe where we can respect and understand each other and care and hear each other's story was a small act of hope and resistance. It's deeply meaningful for me.
Basu: And it sounds like it was for them as well.
Guralnik: Yeah. I hope so.
Basu: This made me think of something that I've definitely thought about when looking for a therapist is just how much does shared identity factor into your considerations when you're thinking about looking for a therapist or even your perspective as a therapist working with couples. How important is it to have a shared understanding, shared experience, shared perspective?
Guralnik: Yeah. Always an interesting question. And it can come up around questions of big identity categories, like ethnic identities, racial identities, religious identities, but it also goes more smaller categories of like similar and dissimilar. I actually think that interesting things happen when you have a therapist who doesn't have the same identity categories as you, as long as the therapist is curious and open and can know when they reach the limits of their understanding. There's a lot of interesting things that happen when one needs to articulate things rather than assume they're shared. It's a chance for people to revisit their own assumptions about identity that otherwise they don't even think about. I know that when I moved back to the States and was looking for an analyst, it was actually important for me to have an analyst that is not Israeli and not Jewish. So that I get to revisit and look at all of those markers as to like, wait, what part of me is that? And what does it mean to me? Rather than just assume.
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Basu, Narrating: So, to sum up what we've heard from Orna so far: Good therapy takes deep listening and a commitment to doing the work. You need to recognize that you're carrying a narrative, not the absolute truth. You need to decide how much the truth actually matters to both of you. Ultimatums should be used sparingly. And sometimes, making sure that your therapist is different from you can get you to do some important self-reflection.
The last thing I asked Orna was, when do you know it's time to end couples therapy? Are you ever really done?
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Guralnik: Yeah, definitely. Couples therapy is usually not a very long process. How do couples know? When there's like a change in the dynamic, when the dynamic is not combative or not stubborn, but it takes on a more kind of mutual quality. That's the best indicator. Often when couples sort of, in a way, know what I would say that they've kind of internalized my tools and they feel like they can apply it. They don't necessarily need me to do it over and over with them.
Basu: Mm. They have an inner Orna they've been able to cultivate.
Guralnik: Yeah. People often say to me that they "Orna" the problem. [CHUCKLES] It's funny. But those are the main tools. When the dynamic shifts from like a "do or done to" or either/or kind of dynamic and there's like an infusion of more curiosity and mutuality, I mean, then my job is done.
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Basu, Narrating: You can watch "Couples Therapy" on "Showtime." We'll include a link for you on our show notes page. And thank you to everybody who sent in voice memos about your experiences in therapy. We really appreciate you sharing such thoughtful, personal stories with us.
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