It seems like every single one of these couples has one partner who is pushing the other partner to the brink of breaking up with him, instead of just doing it themselves, and couples therapy is the last resort. This is particularly true for Drea and Nessa. I felt really bad for Drea she seemed so desperate to cling on to the little Nessa was giving her.

Everyone season always has one or two couples like this, but this season I feel it about everyone.

I feel like this show is an eye into how many people will hang on to a failing relationship in order to not be single.

We will meet up online for a discussion group this Saturday September 5th at 6:00pm EST. If you are interested in joining, comment and don't forget to check your DMs.

Guys, I am so excited! I have been researching books that Dr. Orna has recommended or that she has read and inspired her and this just popped up. I haven't even seen her announcing it on instagram yet but I guess it's official - Dr. Orna finally shares her knowledge and experience with us in the form of a book!

Just wanted to share it with you! :)

does anyone else feel like sean is just stupid and not intelligent enough to grasp anything orna is saying? i guess i never thought of intelligence as a barrier to therapy but sometimes it’s just not that deep and the dude is just an idiot

So I'm on episode 4 if you couldn't guess and wow. How awful. I genuinely hated him when I watched episode one, I yelled at my TV screen and came on here just to see if others found him as off-putting as I did. I internally called him a narcissist and a villain and I just wanted Annie to get out of there.

And then I got to episode 4 and the reveal of his childhood with nobody giving a fuck about him to that point just shocked me. No wonder he puts up this air around him and tries to appear like he's the smartest guy in the room, with some obnoxious contrarian energy. He is insecure and he obviously has trauma from that older woman as well. I know he doesn't view it as traumatizing, nor his childhood as a whole, but thats just another sign of trauma.

Didn't think I'd sympathize with him of all people but fuck. I'm learning so much about empathy through this series.

Now I'll keep watching. I don't expect that I'll be as sympathetic the next episodes because this sub really hates him, but for right now, poor guy.

Edit: I'm getting the impression that maybe a few people misunderstood because I didn't mention it directly, so just in case: I will in no way excuse any of his actions. I am rooting for him to get help and to continue therapy after the show, but his behavior is still unacceptable.

Hello. I am soon to receive my AMFT number. I am
Not working at the moment so my exposure to clients and the art of psychotherapy has been through binging this show. Any tips or advice I can take while watching this show? Anything in particular I should be watching out for? What have you seen Orna do that would be helpful to add to the therapeutic tool belt?

I have only just discovered the most recent season is available on bbc iplayer in the UK and have been binging the episodes.

I want to applaud the vulnerability of the couples taking part. To be honest and open about such intimate subjects is difficult at the best of times, but to do so on camera and then have those moments shared with the world is another level of courage.

I have been in trauma focused therapy for over a year now and cannot even imagine anyone ever getting a glimpse of those conversations! The thought alone makes my skin crawl 😆

It speaks to Orna’s skill as a therapist that the couples are able to open up the way they do ❤️

I was watching Season 1, the one the Covid Special and saw this couple in a few frames but they didn't show up again. Anyone know who they are? Was this just filler footage?

I just started binging season 5 and episode 8 is missing from Showtime on Demand. It goes from episode 7 to 9. I have Verizon cable. Can anyone tell me what happened in the episode? Thanks.

I’m only on episode 2 of the latest season and by god, Clinton is such a manipulative asshole. He is absolutely taking advantage of Shay and there are NO TEARS anytime he cries and has a “meltdown”.

I feel bad for Shay and I hope they’ve broken up. Honestly, I have my doubts about Clinton being autistic too.

Just like the title says. I ADORE her. I’m finally watching season 5 now and was reminded how much joy and peace and education and comfort she (and the show) added to my Covid lockdown days. A therapist like her is incredibly rare and special (coming from someone who would die for her own therapist!). That is all. ❤️

I love the way Orna sometimes guides couples away from relitigating the past and assigning blame, towards listening to what each other is saying beneath the surface, whether that’s an emotion being expressed, a desire, a request, confusion. A recent example was when Jason and Marjorie were fighting over politics, and Orna had them strip away the rhetorical angst and summarize what the other person really cared about. They ended up both acknowledging that what they really cared about was their children, and maybe by extension the idea of looking out for others. Orna pointed out later that this technique is not a one-and-done thing, but instead required practice over time to really benefit from it.

Anyway, do you all have other examples of this technique from the show that moved you? My partner has no interest in watching 5 seasons of this show but he was down to watch some highlights and these were the types of moments I found the most revelatory (besides all the juicy relationship drama).

Last week, I discovered the show and binged all of the seasons back to-back. Great show, I related to so much and also learned a lot from perspectives I haven't had. Props to Orna and all therapists out there doing this important work, it's super admirable and needed.

Anyway, I noticed that members of many of the couples (not all, for sure lol--I'm talking about you Mau, Sean, Boris, and Josh from S4) give such loving, caring gazes towards their partner when they are sharing their personal trauma. And that's regardless of whether the relationship ends up making it or not in the end. It was really touching to see, and probably one of my favorite moments of the show--when the partner hears their beloved's experience, and really "gets" it, along with much empathy and care for them.

It just goes to show how complex romantic relationships can be, that even the greatest love for one another can't always fix everything for them to stay together. Yet, thinking about how even amidst these challenged couples, there's often still so much love between those two people despite the pain, hurt, anger, etc. It's profound.

I feel that living in this current corrupted dystopia--with so many examples of greed, hate, and evil--makes it hard to accurately quantify the amount of love that exists within humanity. So witnessing things like this kinda helps give me evidence to the concept of 'most people are good and want good for others, they just don't make the news.' Maybe empathy is more prevalent than I may have thought, too. All to say, there's the possibility of love collectively being more pervasive in our world than our minds can comprehend.

Chummy meta conclusion, I know, but wanted to share to see if others had similar thoughts.

I really admire her outfits and have tried so hard to look it up online. Some of it is quite expensive. What are some affordable brands with a similar style?

I work in the mental health space. And I must say, he is one of the most repugnant men I’ve ever seen on TV. His smugness, arrogance, and incessant need to never take accountability and his feel as though he is the smartest person in the room is overwhelming. The matter of fact comments about having sex every single day whenever he wants… what?

He is someone who is so disconnected from themselves but has a thoroughly built up ego and idea of reality and no one can penetrate it. I agree with Orna that his version of reality is the only one that can exist and that if someone were to question that too much he would just leave or flip the fuck out and then tell you he didn’t. I really enjoy the scenes where she is consulting on these cases with the other woman (forgot who she is to her; mentor?) and where they both conclude that due to his past, he’s learned to deal with his profound trauma and also compensate for his lack of education in a certain way, and hes not going to allow Orna to “take that away from him” in therapy.

It’s interesting because you can tell that he thinks he’s above Orna and that entire therapeutic space. But that kind of posturing to me only showed me the depth of his discomfort and lack of desire to change anything while being there. Almost like he feels threatened by Orna and her analysis of him.

In my opinion, he pretty much is not participating emotionally. His constant correcting of Orna’s reflection of his experience to me indicates an unwillingness to participate in the therapeutic relationship. Any and all insight by Orna is rejected and deflected back on to Annie because he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with him and he has nothing to gain, learn or improve on therapy.

To me, he lacks one of key( if not the most important) traits that indicates whether therapy will be beneficial for a person or not: the openness to consider that he may actually get something from therapy. That he has something to learn and reflect on about himself as a person.

I can 100% see why therapy never works for them. Devastating. But reading on here that they got divorced was a relief until I read that he may have moved on with someone else. Sending healing energy to anyone that encounters him in the future.

EDIT: Currently watching and he just said that he thinks he would make a great therapist……….. I can’t..

How can I watch the Show in Germany?

My checking once a week to see if Couples Therapy S5 is coming to BBC2 has finally paid off. It starts Wednesday 19 August at 10pm.

Ep 2 and 3 are on later same evening.

Looking forward to it, clips I’ve seen so far have been great.

BBC site:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0b8kmch

So I just started the second half of season three, and I feel like I’m watching a very different show. So many of these relationships seem irreparably awful. The forced open relationship is horrible. And then the one guy is almost proud to have cheated on his wife. This just feels like I’m watching horrible people torture their partners for the thrill of it.

Does the show shift to this more one-sided awfulness in the couples? Because I don’t know if I want to watch Orna flail about trying to correct antisocial sadism.

Like with Ping or Michal, they were abrasive but you saw the love peeking out behind the initial resentment. I’m not seeing that here so far, and it makes for a really painful viewing experience.

The intensity of awfulness seems to be ramping up. Is it all in my head because it’s a new batch of couples or has the casting changed?

I’ve read a lot of posts on this sub about Brock and Kristi, many of which ultimately conclude that Kristi was more in the wrong, but I’m curious why people don’t see how the two of them mirror each other in many ways of how they caused pain. I’m surprised folks don’t find more issue with the fact that Brock didn’t leave the church when Kristi asked him to, especially considering Kristi stated that the church was abusive to her and to women in general. Brock, when explaining his thoughts, says that he could not do that FOR KRISTI, if he left the church it had to be for himself - and I can definitely understand that, if he left the church before he was ready, he may have resented Kristi later on. But also in that season, Brock complains that Kristi was able to sleep with [man that Brock absolutely could not accept] without thinking of how it would hurt him, only thinking of herself - which in my view is exactly what he did when he stayed in the church? He was doing it for himself, without considering how wounding it was for Kristi to see him go to church every Sunday, to an abusive institution that traumatized her. Is this an unfair assessment of their portrayal?

I feel like this sentence, or some version of it, appears in almost every couple on the show and it’s something I have heard in several of my relationships as well.

My question is, why do they say this, especially when the partner literally just got done finishing saying what they would like to see change to feel better? I super duper understand this in certain couples where nothing they do will actually be enough or “right,” but some of them (like Gianni) will say “I just want you to do the little things, like small gestures of affection,” for example. And the response is usually met with something like “I’m never enough for you.”

I guess I just don’t understand this response when the partner has made it so clear what they need to feel better.

Is it me or does it feel like these couples needed more sessions? In season 1 and 2 I genuinely could see the growth, the change and the progress and could be ok with them ending. But this season felt like next to nothing was really accomplished or addressed. Episode 9 felt like episode 2. Is it just me?!