Any newly therapized couple will tell you “everybody should go to therapy.”
Orna Guralnik doesn’t agree. The New York-based psychoanalyst and host of the show “Couples Therapy” says many partnerships don’t need professional guidance — at least, until they do.
“I don’t think people should wait forever,” she says. “I think if they’re getting stuck in something, they should go. But if you’re not having trouble and you feel like the communication is easy, you don’t need a therapist.”
For the couples Guralnik counsels on her show, the communication is not easy. Each episode shows her attempting to dislodge clients from toxic holding patterns. Even though every conflict is hyper-personal, they also reveal universal truths about how class, gender and money affect partnerships.
CNBC Make It talked to Guralnik about what she is seeing in her sessions right now, how to improve communication and, what, if anything, still surprises her.
CNBC Make It: I read your New York Times piece about how social and political movements are showing up in your sessions with clients. What world events are you seeing couples discuss now?
Guralnik: The whole Israel, Palestine topic. That’s a huge issue for couples, and it goes way beyond Israel and Palestine for people, right? It’s about how to think about colonialism, how to think about nation states, how to think about history. Where does history start?
And with the pandemic came the topic of class. It became a lot more an object of thought for couples.
There was so much new language around who gets hit harder by the pandemic as it relates to class. And people started understanding that privilege seeps into all these other areas of your life other than whether you can pay your rent or not.
So couples had a language to address that between them. What does it mean if you come from a family that took certain things for granted versus not? How does that play out between the two of you?
Do you think the conversation about class is bigger now than it has been in the past?
I think class is something that’s always in the conversation, but it moves. Sometimes it moves into the background. It’s more repressed. Sometimes it’s more prominent.
The combination of capitalism and a particular type of neoliberalism that we’ve all been seeped in and a certain consumer mentality has, for a while, obfuscated, or hid the question of class. People have not been thinking about class, and I think it kind of came back in a new form, in a more nuanced and interesting form, into the consciousness of individuals.
And I do think the pandemic had a lot to do with it. Seeing, literally, who dies in larger numbers and why.
Do you think the trope that men have a harder time earning less money than women in heterosexual couples is still true?
Yes, it does still ring true.
Have you seen a woman feel bad about making less money than her male partner?
Yeah. It’s a different kind of upset.
For men, it is emasculating. It has something to do with their gender. For women, they just want the benefits, the power, the freedom that being a top earner in the relationship affords. It sort of hits in a different place.
One of the biggest challenges couples face is escalating conflict. How can you stop a fight from getting too nasty?
Say nothing, just don’t take the bait and try to stick to what matters. When people just say things out of frustration and anger and say rude things, most of the time it’s just noise.
What about a person who has the opposite problem, where they just don’t respond or shut down during a conflict? How can you deal with that?
When I work with couples, I try to understand what happened that the conversation didn’t continue. If I make a good interpretation, then it provokes them to talk to me more. If my interpretation sucks, they shut down.
If the partner is shutting down, something about what you’re doing is not working. So, don’t keep doing the same thing. Try to figure out what will produce an environment and a conversation that both of you are going to want to participate in.
What is the No. 1 lesson you want people to take away from your show?
Don’t buy into your immediate biases. Start questioning and looking for ways in which you’re deluding yourself. Look for deeper truths.
We are all more alike than different and you can find your kind of empathic way into understanding the situation. Don’t look to split and villainize.
Does anything surprise you anymore?
Personal life stories — you can’t make stuff up. It’s amazing what people go through. No one is the same.
The kind of surprises that I like the most are a kind of phoenix rising out of the ashes. You’ve been hurt or damaged or traumatized, and you’re coming up with these incredible resources to live a decent life despite being traumatized, despite having nothing, despite having all the justifications in the world to act poorly. They still do well, or they still choose the right thing.
I mean, I love seeing that about people, the good spirit that can come out of people. It’s awfully surprising.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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