“You made a sex tape?!”
Susannah turned to her husband, Ron, mouth agape. He looked down, his cheeks reddening.
“It was right after college. I was experimenting,” he mumbled, twisting in his seat. “No big deal.”
As a couples therapist, I am always looking for how to mend the frayed edges of a relationship, but Susannah and Ron were different: They had come to my office to end their marriage.
I practice what I call breakup therapy — a short-term treatment I developed for couples who want to end their relationships without bitterness. The premise is counterintuitive: Instead of looking forward toward separate futures, we look backward at the relationship itself. It’s structured to look at the beginning, middle and end of their time together with exercises that focus on both their gratitude as well as their resentment.
