We talk couples therapy—the good, the bad, and the unequal.
We look at sexism in the therapy room, consider how therapists try to save us from patriarchal socialization, and talk about the divorce stigma that shows up in the ever-popular belief that marriage is hard work. We ask: How does couples therapy challenge inequality in straight relationships—and how does it enable and excuse it?
Along the way, we discover the maybe not-so-surprising origins of marital counseling in white supremacy and eugenics, the field’s mid-twentieth century makeover, and the 90s-era therapy boom, which collided head-on with the woefully overdue criminalization of marital rape, giving us the “love languages” and “appointment sex” trends we know today.
After the paywall, we also share some very different, and very personal, couples therapy success stories—one that ended in divorce, and another in marital growth.
Show highlights include…
01:30 Couples therapy in pop culture—from Dying for Sex to Dr. Orna
5:40 Tabloid headlines about celebrities, like Barack and Michelle Obama, in couples therapy
10:30 The social and economic capital of being married
13:10 Meet the father of marriage counseling, a eugenicist
16:01 Marriage counseling evolved with the sexual revolution… or did it?
18:02 The 90s therapy boom and the criminalization of marital rape
20:20 John Gottman on wives’ “sour” faces and “divorce prediction”
24:05 Love languages and appointment sex
26:35 What is couples therapy for and how do we define it as a success?
26:00 Tracy on the widespread belief that marriage is joyless and punishing
27:18 Amanda on divorced women becoming an outlet for married people’s miseries
32:20 Women in straight marriages complaining about their partners with naturalizing language vs. women taking on the work of healing men’s patriarchal trauma: a memoir
34:40 Tracy asks: is couples therapy just a way of making the economic trap of marriage more survivable?
36:00 Divorce stigma
40:08 Reproduction of unequal power dynamics in the therapy room
41:50 Why couples stay in unequal relationships even when they believe in equality
43:45 Tracy and Amanda role play a couple in therapy lol
46:40 Questions for therapists to ask straight men in couples therapy
50:06 The moral quandary for therapists working with heterosexual married couples
56:34 Couples therapy as a powder keg
57:35 Amanda and Tracy go deep on their own experiences with couples therapy
Tell us ALL about your experiences with couples therapy in the comments.