Relationship Therapists Review Issa & Lawrence's Relationship in 'Insecure' | Vanity Fair

roommate syndrome can be really really toxic because with these two living as roommates you can live for roommates for like 10 years but the moment you have an affair and the discovery happens that's when change occurs my name is laura heck i'm a licensed marriage and family therapist certified gottman therapist and co-host of marriage therapy radio i'm zach brittle i'm a certified government therapist in private practice in seattle i am also the co-host of marriage therapy radio with laura heck today we're taking a look at issa rey's insecure on hbo and specifically her character's relationship to her boyfriend lawrence issa and lawrence are in their late 20s they live together and they're in a long-term relationship issa works at a non-profit that benefits young children of color lawrence is unemployed and feeling lost after his startup company fails to take off after her 29th birthday issa starts to question their relationship don't be a dick dating is hard not if she didn't take it so seriously plus her standards are way too high yeah maybe she should lower them like i did wait what the never mind just forget it so here's what you don't see before this scene she spends this time sort of like cruising looking at hotties on the internet so she's already like what we talk about is like cheating cheating occurs in the mind before it actually occurs and so what we don't see is that she's not grumpy she's not like this isn't normal behavior from her this is her already with like a foot out the door literally i mean but she's already been thinking and contemplating maybe there's something else out there maybe the grass is greener on the other side which is why she doesn't let some of these like comments from her boyfriend lawrence roll off of her back why she's a little extra snarky at this point the show does a great job immediately of setting up who the two of these guys are i mean she's obviously dressed to the nines and ready to live her life and he's it's evening right and he's eating a bowl of cereal in his in his sweatpants like so they've already set us up to not feel terribly invested about their connection to one another just like she's not i don't want to just sit on the couch with you for the rest of my life and wait for something to happen what are you talking about nobody's just sitting on the couch i'm almost done with my business plan you know i'm just getting my together you've been getting your together for four years lauren this is so not fair that she's dropping this bomb on her way out the door like the only reason why she's saying it now is that she can relieve her own guilt that she's going to go out there and try and hook up with somebody else like i can see the shock on his face like what where is this coming from because all of this has been in her head and she's been thinking about it and probably stacking up the reasons why she's going to betray her partner and why she needs to go out there and look for somebody else and meanwhile it's just all coming out for the first time and he's he's shocked blown away by all of this well i'm pro-issa here like i think this isn't a surprise right she's not like dropping a bomb on him clearly he's been sitting around like this for us for a while and she's learned that she can't count on him to get what she wants so you know it's interesting because she uses this phrase maybe she should settle like i did they call it settling down for a reason nobody wants to settle down um and so let's see if we can she's trying to raise the bar i think and good for her i'm saying maybe we should get our together separately and see what happens you want to break up with me molly's waiting on me i am going to spend the night at her house and we can talk about this tomorrow hey issa see you later hey it's like she does like the slo-mo walk out of the room like i just dropped a bomb and i'm out see you later deal with that we see a lot of this a lot of people are stonewalling it appears as though they're little more than roommates i mean they're not aligned in value they're not aligned in schedule they're not aligned in fashion you know i mean at least in this scene so and again i think what happens to roommates is they settle and they kind of say you know i don't i don't need or want much more than what i have and she's finding a way to burst that as a therapist watching them i might want to encourage her to find a way to burst that by moving toward her partner or inviting him to something deeper but he doesn't seem ready to accept that invitation he's clearly cast as kind of clueless and kind of selfish and not all that interested in in raising the bar for himself roommate syndrome is this idea of two people who are in an intimate relationship where the assumption is that you you have intimacy but you end up living more like roommates you end up living these parallel lives where like issa has a great job and she has this friend and she's getting ready to go out on a friday night and she's dressed up and meanwhile like her partner they're not doing these things together there's really doesn't seem like there's any sort of conversation aside from the fact that she walks out and she's dressed to the nines and there i mean that part i found to be kind of interesting that that was the first conversation about what are you doing tonight don't you think as a couple you would have already previously had a discussion about like well maybe we could watch a movie or we could do takeout we could go out or whatever it might be but clearly there's not a whole lot of intersection or commonality or agreement as to where they're going which is what she says like what are we doing here there's no real end point and usually that end point is that intersection for two people but their lives have just been running parallel to one another i am so glad this night is over and i got us a present bam who's daniel in this moment i feel so much for him i mean you can just see he's been sitting there waiting for her to come home sitting in the dark telling himself stories about what this relationship with this guy is all about and i can only imagine that his heart is just pounding out of his chest and he's just been sitting in fight or flight until she opens that door i mean every fear that he has he doesn't want it to be true but i think that our instinct is so strong and powerful when you think your partner might be cheating on you or has betrayed you we want our instincts to be wrong and we'll often times try and talk ourselves out of it like we're crazy for having these thoughts why don't we trust our partner but your instincts are often so right does she feel relief or does she feel terror probably a little bit of both but this is where the rubber reads the road what why would you ask me that because i am did you oh right there right there drop in the eyes looking down all of the silence that's brilliant well and how hard is their brain we've been working for the last like 30 seconds 30-45 seconds you know most people when they don't want the truth to come out it's not because they're clean they don't they're trying to clean up after themselves it's because they don't want to hurt their partner i i truly believe that the reason why like in this moment she could have said no no we just kissed and thinking that if she says we just kissed because she's clearly caught like there's no way out of this but i don't want to tell him that we had sex because i i don't want to hurt him and i i believe that that is that human beings just generally don't want to hurt one another and that's why we get the slow drip of truth most people who go into situations like this just like issa did they don't they don't dive in they wade in and so they find themselves more slowly and slowly getting caught up in something that they don't that feels great and that they don't really have a total sense of control over and so when you have to come out of these things most people don't rapidly get out of the get out of it they have to slowly wade out um because they don't they're not equipped frankly i thought we were in this easy stupid man i'm stupid just tell me what i can do and i get the out of here please out he's supposed to work he said get the out of her way no get the out of the way it ain't to talk about this moment right here that that is where so much situational domestic violence occurs is when one person's blocking the other person from getting out and they don't want their partner to leave they're worried that their partner once they leave like they're going to be on the road they're worried about them being gone they want to hash it out they want something and so they end up locking the door and it's the act of getting through the door where often couples who have never been violent toward one another ever have an altercation for the first time do you feel like his uh response is warranted like i'm pro-issa and you're supposed to be because she's the hero of this show but like does she deserve this response this man thought that he could love and trust his partner and it doesn't matter to me if the guy is eating cereal and has been jobless and working on his business plan and the relationship has been stale does does that warrant her going outside of the relationship and having sex with another man like i would be angry [Music] he does at least do a bit of de-escalation for himself he understands what his boundaries are i'm worried for issa at that moment and i'm worried for him that they're gonna cross a line that they probably have never crossed in the relationship and then she stands and blocks his way in front of the door and i'm thinking that right there is risky that is that is a situation that i know that you have heightened emotions you have someone who is clearly emotionally flooded not thinking clearly and now you're blocking his exit when he doesn't feel safe i that to me seems like a pretty um tough situation so it doesn't happen but do i think that he has a right to be angry and raise his voice and be really really flooded 100 if they were in my office right and and they and this happened in my office i don't think the first thing i would say is hey lawrence um i need you to uh you know temp to tone that down a little bit because it's because it's just and i think that's where i think i'm trying to figure out the line between anger and violence yeah it's interesting that you say anger and violence because violence doesn't have to be putting your hands on someone yeah it's hard to say like is there any appropriate way to handle when your partner tells you or you discover for the first time that you have been betrayed uh i don't know there's a lot of different ways that couples handle that and it's interesting because that scene probably was about 45 seconds long but for some couples it could be four and a half hours talking it through yeah and i'm just glad that he got out like that was the remove yourself from the situation was the right move by the way like 30 what is this statistic is it like 30 high 30s percent of all women have affairs on their male partners it's pretty high and and males are in the 40s so um it's not uncommon at all that isa had an affair on her partner sometimes i wonder like do i give up too easily on things i don't know i mean it might be obvious but i did wish you hadn't given up on us so just to sum up there's been a big blowout and now they haven't been together they're dating but nothing serious okay fair enough fairgrounds and a great great question which question the question of what would have happened if we would have stayed together yeah that's actually not what i thought he was going to say because he comes into this with a way different posture than we saw you know earlier and i wondered if it was going to be apologetic like i was wondering what would how it would have been different if i had really paid attention to you like or if i had really stepped stepped up to the plate like would that have changed your behavior because it might not have right she might just be a sex addict or some kind of like serial betrayer we don't we don't think so but like be interesting for him to investigate his part of the part of the equation because the first scene that we saw set us up for the betrayal i mean we knew it was going to happen i'm wondering about his pathway to repair and then she says i wish you hadn't given up on us and so of course it begs the question of well who gave up first and when was the giving up because he might have given up when he settled right and just never got out of his pajamas she might have given up when he when she you know went seeking out this other relationship he might have given up when he left the the uh the apartment why daniel he just popped up and gave me attention during a time when you weren't and it's not an excuse but it just felt good to feel wanted i guess so here's the thing that kind of blows me away is that he seemed surprised that she had all of this going on under the surface and i think it's her responsibility clearly i must not be like pro-issa in this but i think it's her responsibility if she's experiencing pain or discomfort or she's feeling neglected in the relationship or she feels like he's not goal oriented and that's bothersome for her that should have been a conversation way before she starts looking for men on the internet or checking out to see what ex friends are doing it needs to be a conversation and it doesn't seem to me like at least in the show that she gave him the opportunity to talk about those things because if he's still questioning like were things really that bad between us then he was not very aware of where she was at and that's not fair i think what's interesting about the difference between you and me here is like you have a very pro-harmed partner bias like um you're like you're really pro the victim of the betrayal and i don't have i don't think i have that gene i'm not sure why but like i'm really really interested in the comprehensive story the one that began like two years before right the betrayal you know so i i think i remain pro isa but you like wanted to have done all this work that we don't know why it wasn't possible but i appreciate it i just i'm i'm actually having to like really go hmm do i think that's valid of course i think it's valid it just isn't my starting point but i still wanted to be with you not him i just had a moment of weakness no no duh i don't agree a moment of weakness the there were so many steps this i mean we talk about like the slippery slope right affairs don't just all of a sudden happen and i don't think we know when she says i had a moment of weakness that is bull pucky she did not have just a moment it wasn't this one decision that she just all of a sudden made one day there's so much more that led up to this it kind of depends on how long a moment is right a moment could have been a month or two that's true we are recommitted to each other so like some part of you had to want to blow that up no no i was devastated this is the part where i remind them yeah some part of you did want to blow it up because you were deeply dissatisfied and you did not want to be in the thing that you were in and so you blew it up you just chose a pretty bad strategy or actually it's a pretty great strategy because it did it did pivot the relationship it just didn't um do it in a way that sustained it well some part of you wanted to get his attention and wanted him to know just how sad you were how lonely you were how disengaged you felt from him i mean that's oftentimes why affairs are so effective in blowing up the relationship is the rebuild behind it is so magnificent that you create something because of the awareness not that i'm telling people to go out and have affairs if you're in roommate syndrome because it's a sure way to shake up the relationship but you can stay in a good enough relationship for a very long time but it's very difficult to ignore when your partner comes to you and discloses that they've been having an affair nothing i did could snap you out of what you were going through you didn't want to talk you didn't want to go out you didn't want to have sex you didn't you didn't want me lawrence watching you get up and go to work was this daily reminder that i had nowhere to go nothing to do why didn't you tell me that ding ding ding was just thinking the same thing just couldn't and then when everything went down with us it was just easier to blame you then i have to deal with my own so here's an interesting part of what he says there is that i it was just easier to blame you than to deal with my own and that's an important part of recovering and even even though they're not even together i still think it's so important to have the postmortem on a relationship that ended and a relationship that ended based on betrayal to figure out what was what was that i contributed to which could be such a hard place and a place of resistance for a lot of what do we call them the betrayed partner so lawrence to be able to say the harmed partner yeah is how how did i contribute to all of this what was it that led up that made this relationship vulnerable and how did i contribute is just a big question and it seemed like he just wasn't willing to face that in the moment until now after the fact i really wasn't but i'm the now oh for real yeah i told you i changed you missing out what's really cool about this conversation is it it goes back to something that i talk about quite a bit which is the difference between repair and resolve and this is a very reparative conversation and it kind of sets the table for whatever relationship they're going to have next they didn't quite resolve the issues that they had before but at least it gives them a new foundation and a place of agreement where they can now build on build on it perhaps and see what see where their where their friendship goes where their relationship goes but i like that they have a really clear reconnected affinity for one another and respect right this is a very respectful conversation uh it's interesting that you say respect because i think that was the piece that was really missing and also just having a deep amount of contempt i mean issa feeling like she was above lawrence back when he had lost his job and was trying to rebuild and and that year that he took off where she just felt like you weren't moving you weren't progressing the lack of respect there um was really lacking and now it seems like they have grown they've changed you know it's we were talking about this sack of of is it better to sort of take a break grow up individually and see if you can come back together they find that at the base of all of this is this friendship because i can tell that these two have friendship when they smile they laugh they joke and they have this feeling of just respect for one another one thing that insecure gets right especially with these two guys is the the very real sort of slippery slope reality of how relationships fall apart we saw a pretty violent scene that marked the end of the relationship but we're learning that the relationship was ending long before that scene occurred and i think that's that's a really important takeaway i think the other thing that gets right is that you can have respectful conversations that are reparative when you show up when you tell the truth to yourself and to your partner like that can be really healing i think the other part that they get right is watching as people grow so they're in their 20s and we don't have our together in in our 20s and sometimes you have to ask yourself whether or not you are willing to be in a partnership where you allow yours your partner to experience their lowest lows because i'm guessing that lawrence would say that was the lowest low where there was so much self-doubt and when you're married we make this agreement that we're going to be there for one another but there's also this agreement that you are going to create life together and do life together and in their relationship it really seemed like there was nothing happening together it was more just living side by side lawrence in a pit issa succeeding doing well but not feeling like she can pull him out of the pit and i think that relationships are just super messy and you have to question whether or not you're willing to be in that mess with the other person or whether you can separate and become better individuals and maybe potentially come back together which they do

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 98,265

Keywords: insecure, insecure review, relationship therapists, relationship therapists review, relationship therapist review, relationship therapists review insecure, issa and lawrence, issa and lawrence insecure, insecure issa and lawrence, issa and lawrence relationship, vanity fair reviews, insecure relationship, insecure relationships, insecure relationship therapists, insecure breakdown, issa insecure, issa and lawrence review, reviews, relationship therapy, vanity fair

Id: DeYDRZzSeBA

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 08 2020