The Doctor Is Out: What Do I Read Now?

On the docuseries “Couples Therapy,” Dr. Orna Guralnik helps real couples (and one polycule) work through struggles with intimacy, communication and commitment. It can be hard when shrinks go on summer vacation — especially in a summer when each news cycle seems to bring more upsetting developments to process. And it doesn’t help that the fourth season of the cult favorite Showtime docuseries “Couples Therapy” has just wrapped, so even affordable, vicarious therapy is off the table. Without our weekly fix of Dr. Orna Guralnik’s deep nods and cathartic sympathy crying — and with the good doctor’s own much-anticipated book still months off — what are we to do? The series, which started airing in 2019 , did not seem to have the makings of a hit: real couples, sitting on a Brooklyn sofa , telling a therapist their problems. At worst, thought skeptics, it sounded voyeuristic and upsetting; at best, boring and contrived. Long before Annie and Mau were a twinkle in my eye, or I’d wept over Season 2, or I’d had wildly differing feelings about different strangers named Josh, I, too, was one of those people. “Watch it,” said a co-worker. “Nothing you thought will ever be the same.” Forty-five minutes in, I was hooked. There are many reasons “Couples Therapy” has broken through: the happy surprise of seeing our perceptions change, the age-old distraction of other peoples’ problems, the actual applicable advice, Dr. Guralnik’s glossy mane and teeny tiny braids (a major discussion point on message boards). But even if you aren’t a fan of the show, these shoulder-season reads will get you through August with wisdom, schadenfreude, dysfunction, pain and humor — and sometimes all of the above. It’s not a spoiler that most of these couples could use a session or 10. Desperate Characters , by Paula Fox (1970) Otto and Sophie Bentwood are a childless couple in their early 40s living in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn (they’re the gentrifiers). Life seems comfortable — until Sophie is bitten by a feral cat and their carefully ordered existence begins to crumble. There’s even a […]

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