Tell Me the Truth About Love: 13 Tales from Couples Therapy

The Examined Life meets Three Women- stories of real couples on the couch from one of Britain’s most experienced relationship therapists.

Love is what gives life meaning, but relationships also present us with the greatest emotional challenges of our lives.

Tell Me the Truth About Love takes us on a journey into one of the most fascinating realms there is- other people’s relationships.

Drawing on over 30 years of working closely with people who have encountered hurdles in their love lives, psychoanalytic therapist and chair of the British Psychoanalytic council Susanna Abse shares poignant, alarming and unforgettable stories that explore how we love, and how we live with those we love.

Abse takes us through six of the challenges most often encountered in the course of a relationship- infidelity, ambition, marriage, children, loneliness, fragility.

We meet couples who have embedded affairs into their relationship yet are in denial about its repercussions; partners who suffer oedipal complexes with the arrival of their first child; and others who are in love, but struggle with the question of what price to pay for their ambition - and how far work can take over from their personal lives.

Whether its knowing when to call time on a relationship versus when to persevere, or how to navigate our changing roles within a single relationship over the course of our lives, Tell Me the Truth About Love explores inspiring true stories that shed light on the human heart - and the strange ways it tries to both embrace life’s greatest mystery, and protect itself from pain.