I feel like there are a few conflicting issues in this space:
* A lot of couples will come with the mindset that they may have a lot of problems but are determined to save the relationship, so some of it is customer service (like when an individual's therapist is too validating of someone's faults)
* "You'd be better off apart", besides provoking a reaction, is the kind of insight people really need to arrive at themselves, and many may find prompts in that direction too subtle
* There are probably a lot of couples therapists who out of cultural conservatism or habit or whatever genuinely do think their client is the relationship, or act like it even if they wouldn't phrase it that way. I have no idea if that's the majority
The article was interesting, but I still don't get how you determine who is winning the relationship in couple therapy.
Well, they didn't get into the whole points score-keeping system. The winner is whoever figures out how to wear the referee uniform.
I won family therapy with my mom when the therapist said "Okay, Messily has been very clear about what she wants and needs and how you could move forward. I don't think it makes sense for us to keep meeting as a group right now. Messily's Mom, are you interested in pursuing individual therapy to help you decide how you'd like to respond?"
She wasn't, the end.
As the child of a psychiatrist, I am--probably excessively--not a fan of talking therapy in general. Obviously it works for plenty of people and more power to them, y'all do you, but the ubiquitous active listening therapist voice just makes me start scanning the room for exits. Pretty sure I've said here before that my experience with couples counseling is that it's very useful for peacefully and equitably winding down an untenable relationship if both sides still care about each other and aren't out for blood. I have yet to see it save any relationships among my friends (though maybe the successes just don't talk about it).
It definitely doesn't work if you're skeptical of the premise.
9: It's like astrology, seances and Christianity that way.
I feel like maybe I should put "Try out therapy " on my bucket list. The only thing on the bucket list now is "Try horchata". For those keeping score I already tried bubble tea (l liked the tea but not the bubbles), and visited Ann Arbor by myself (was a fun nostalgia experience).
One time I did suggest couples therapy to my wife, but she has tried therapy a few times and has soured on the whole concept.
15: No! I described it to her, and she was repulsed.
My son is now boiling strawberries, I think. I'm going by the scent.
What is the boiling point of strawberries?
Huh. I thought I was unusual in finding bubble tea to be repugnant.
Anyway, cooked strawberries aren't bad.
Maybe bubble tuna is more your thing.
Horchata is really delicious.
I liked the sign last weekend: "Drink your horchata warm - NO ICE!"
Today is for sorting and declutterring every item that is going into my bedroom, and I have to say, today sucks a LOT.
I've tried on roughly 50 million items of clothing and have a big Purge pile and also a big Time Capsule pile. wah.
It sounds gross, but the guy who made it gave it a four out of five, so you know it must be good.
He carbonated it and then mixed it with mayo to make tuna salad. Which he spread on Wonder bread.
That's the bread you use when you wonder why you're making bad choices.
26 holding out until I see what Chef Reactions gives it
Could you carbonate mayonnaise I wonder? Using carbonated mayonnaise instead of tuna water would resolve the wateriness problem, and it would also have more diverse applications.
I just bought these fizzy root beer candy/cookie garbage snacks at Trader Joe's, and they weren't good. They're basically root beer flavored pop rocks embedded in vanilla oreos, covered in chocolate. They were overwhelmingly sweet, and more disappointingly, not nearly fizzy enough! I want my root beer candy like my tuna mayonnaise sandwich -- SUPER FIZZY.
I didn't have the sound on, but it sounded like it was Jamie Oliver in the video.
When I was in college one of the chemistry kids got kicked out of his dorm for borrowing a pressure reactor and trying to carbonate vodka.
They were selling Selena Gomez headphone-flavored oreos at HEB the other day.
34: They never ever saw a soda water.
36 I don't think they'd be flavored like her headphones if that were the case
(Presidenital hasn't been so much a thing lately, has it?)
That Substack seems precision engineered to hit my insecurities. No such thing as ethical hetero relationships under patriarchy, I guess.
I think talk therapy helped me when I was depressed and unsatisfied with my social life in my 20s, but lifestyle changes helped more. But I think the most important of the lifestyle changes I made was moving 500 miles away, so I'm not sure how generally applicable that is.
Bob Dylan showed how to find happiness. Change your name and leave the midwest.
Could you carbonate mayonnaise I wonder?
This is why people are boycotting Soda Stream.
Is it time to have it out about misusing the phrase "military-industrial complex" again?
marriage therapy industrial complex
This one is especially irritating because the meaning of the original has been lost. Eisenhower was worried about the relationship between two things - the military, and industry. The defence (specifically, aerospace) industry was leading the military around by the nose out of self interest, the military was fostering an over-powerful defence industry, and the two of them were ganging up to influence politics together. So what's the industry the marriage therapy is forming a sinister complex with? There isn't one! In fact, if this usage makes sense at all, it's accusing the marriage therapy of being in cahoots with itself. You could just delete the two words, or if you need a noun, you could say "the marriage therapy industry" or "the marriage therapy business". The "industrial complex" is redundant and tautologous as well as being pompous and a cliché, and in as much as it means anything it's just a cheap way to insinuate that something is bad without justifying yourself. The original "thing-industrial complex" calque was the wedding-industrial complex, which was silly but did actually preserve meaning, as the idea was that the institution of weddings and the businesses that sell you expensive stuff for them were ganging up in the name of profit. But this is slop.
And of course the complex is laughably feeble relative to the thing it's being compared with. It always is. Do we really think couples therapists are a lobby as powerful as General Dynamics in the era of Curtis LeMay's SAC? Are they likely to undermine democracy, warp the priorities of science, or risk nuclear war out of self-interest? At this point I think the phrase should just be abandoned as essentially nobody uses it in a way that conveys any meaning.
I am also concerned that the Substack recommendation engine has learned that the calque is a predictive signal that Heebie will probably read it, so she's going to eventually be completely drowned in complex-related slop.
Are you saying that it's not actually that complex?
I am developing a complex about it, yes.
I really like talk therapy, but I'm not so clear on whether it really helps me, or if it's just something that I find enjoyable.
40 makes sense. But therapy can help you figure out what changes you could make.
The apostrophe in this thread title undoes me.
49: I keep staring at it, but I'm too dim to know what to do about it.
The correct orthography, per the linked article, is "Showtime's Couples Therapy."
41: You must consider Bob Dylan happy.
14: "In Spain, [horchata] is made with soaked, ground, and sweetened tiger nuts."
Laydeez.
47: you could take a vitamin. Maybe a B-complex.
54. It would never occur to me to consider Bob Dylan happy. He's not a miserable bastard like some rock stars, but neither does he present as happy by any recognisable criterion.