Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Friendship Therapy bite size in which we think about

the episode we had on Monday and from a therapist's point of view, well what we might all like to take away from it,

what are the insights, the light bulb moments,

that when you look at it through a therapeutic lens,

we all get to benefit from the story of Victoria and Helen. Now Victoria and Helen's story was a very interesting one because this was the one about platonic friendship. It was the one where we had two women in their 30s, early 30s,

both of whom have dated previously and both of whom have come to an understanding that actually they fulfill the role of a life partner for each other.

Platonically, but they have a view that they are doing life together

they are platonic life partners and it's working very well for them

but they get some pushback

they get some questions they get some challenge from the people around them and it became a really

interesting conversation as to why. So let's think about why and from my

perspective I'm really interested in the why, because I found myself in the conversation with Victoria and Helen trying to do exactly what they described as the kind of bane of their relationship which was to box them.

I found myself looking just like they find other people looking for a way to understand, for a way to understand them, for a way to categorise them, for a way to make them relative to some other social norm that we can use to benchmark them or I guess to make something unknown

more known? Well, of course this peaks my curiosity because the book that I published in April,

What Am I Missing, was all about blind spots and how to make unknowns, knowns. Because it's the unknowns knowns because it's the unknowns that are really going to trip us up in the end.

So as I begin this bite-size episode I bring a very open mind to my unknowns. I'm hoping maybe I'll actually

discover what's in my blind spot as I unpack and process some of the therapy that was within that conversation.

What is it I'm missing that means I found myself at least counter-transferentially drawn into

this idea of boxing to women who know their own minds and are very

content and don't need a box. I also want to think a bit about modern marriage in the context of this bite-size episode because

there was something about the way Victoria and Helen spoke to each other and to me that made me think about modern marriage as a concept therapeutically in terms of what we're looking for from life partners now and how that's changed over well decades at least and what that might mean for us all now

So this was something about I think debunking some myths about

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