When a Sex Tape Revelation Becomes a Path to Relationship Closure
"You made a sex tape?!" Susannah stared at her husband Ron, her mouth hanging open in disbelief. Ron looked down, his cheeks flushing crimson. "It was right after college," he mumbled, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "I was experimenting. No big deal."
As a couples therapist specializing in what I call breakup therapy, I encounter many relationships at their breaking point. Susannah and Ron had arrived at my office not to save their marriage, but to end it with as little bitterness as possible. My approach represents a counterintuitive path: rather than focusing on separate futures, we examine the relationship's entire timeline together.
The Breakup Therapy Method: Looking Backward to Move Forward
Breakup therapy represents a short-term treatment I developed specifically for couples seeking divorce without lingering resentment. The process involves structured examination of their relationship's beginning, middle, and end through exercises that explore both gratitude and resentment. The work culminates with the couple crafting a shared narrative about their union—literally writing down the story of what worked and what ultimately didn't—then signing it together.
This method helps resolve unanswered questions that often trap couples in cycles of recrimination, preventing them from moving forward. The approach was born from my own painful divorce experience, when I found myself plagued by relentless questions: "What was I thinking?" "Why didn't I see that red flag?" "What's wrong with me—I'm a therapist and should have known."
Everything changed when my own therapist asked a different question: "Who was I when I decided to marry?" This simple reframing stopped my internal feedback loop. Marriages, I realized, can be as much about identity as about union. With professional guidance, I crafted a coherent story about what function my marriage had served, allowing me to take responsibility for my choices with compassion rather than anger.
The Unraveling of Susannah and Ron's Marriage
Ron and Susannah proved challenging subjects initially. During our first session, Ron compared me to "a medical examiner doing autopsies on dead relationships" and complained that my "scalpel hurts." He questioned whether I understood humiliation, to which I responded softly, "I have a teenager."
"This feels stupid," Ron declared on another occasion. "She's done, I accept that. What is there to say? This feels like horseshit."
Susannah threw up her hands. "See what I'm working with here?" she said, shifting away from Ron on the couch. "I knew he wouldn't take this seriously."
"No, he's right," I interjected. "If you truly accept and understand her decision, Ron, then this is horseshit. But is that true?" His silence provided all the answer needed.
Over subsequent sessions, we mapped their relationship's trajectory: how they fell in love ("It just made sense, we fit"), the birth of their three children ("The unit held us together"), and their gradual disconnection ("We were ships in the night for as long as I can remember, but then one day I woke up and just wanted more from life"). We traced patterns across three houses, two cross-country moves, and their children's departure from home—a decades-long saga.
The Sex Tape Revelation: A Turning Point
Then, during our fourth session, Ron mentioned the sex tape. "Something about this is landing hard on you," I observed to Susannah, whose mouth remained agape. "Why?"
"Yeah, why?" Ron echoed.
Susannah paused, looking out the window. "It's that you... you tried something that—I don't know—was out there... bold and different." A tear welled in her eye. "It's not you. You're not brave! Or, at least you haven't been with me, not in all these years together."
She began crying as Ron and I exchanged glances. "All this time, I decided you just couldn't try new things," she managed after a while. "I gave up."
Ron raised his palms in exasperation. "What is happening?"
"But if you can do that..." Susannah continued. "What was it? Did I just not ask? Did I build my life around a lie?" She looked lost. "Was it that you never really loved me enough?" Turning back to Ron, she banged her fist on the couch. "I did ask! I asked you to look at porn together when we stopped having sex, to take classes with me, to go on that whale-watching tour... You just ignored me!"
This time, I held my tongue. "Is that a thing?" she asked, turning to me. "That you can reach the end of a relationship and not even have known what was possible?"
"I made that tape 30 years ago!" Ron blurted. "She's upset over something I did when I was a totally different person!"
The Therapeutic Breakthrough
This represented the impasse I encounter in most breakup therapy—the moment when two people realize that despite thinking they know each other well, there are things they don't know or have lost track of. My role involves helping them hold that bitter realization, then guiding them toward forgiveness or reconciliation—if not with each other, then with what happened to them.
"It was 30 years ago, Ron," I said. "But you aren't a different person. You're the same person, and she's wondering why you couldn't have been that with her."
Turning to Susannah, I continued: "You have a right to be hurt, but were you truly honest with him? Did you give him the space and safety and encouragement to be that person? Do you think you both can forgive each other for what you weren't?"
Three weeks passed before they returned to my office, having canceled two sessions. "I was stirred and moved by what happened here last time," Susannah began. "When we left, I thought: Maybe there's enough left between us?" Ron's eyes remained downcast. "But I realized I can't," she said. "I just can't open up that part of me with him anymore. I want... I need this divorce."
I nodded. "Ron? How do you feel?"
"I can see where we are... I'm not fighting it." His voice broke. "I'm just really sad."
The Calm After the Storm
Often, some kind of shock must penetrate the accumulated layers of anger, resentment, and disappointment to illuminate a relationship's cracks—some avoided or unspoken truth. In this case, an ancient transgressive act revealed how little they truly knew each other and how misaligned they'd become.
Susannah moved closer to Ron on the couch, lacing her fingers with his. "You guys seem calmer—closer," I observed. "Tell me what you are feeling."
I recognized that calm after the storm from personal experience. Years after my own divorce, during a long car ride after dropping our daughter at camp, I suddenly remembered my therapist's question: Who was I when I decided to get married? For two hours, my ex-husband and I discussed that question and everything else, realizing how lonely we'd been—two Israelis who, instead of understanding why we'd both chosen to leave our homeland, had clung to each other and a shared language. Soon, we were laughing as we hadn't since our marriage's early days.
"So, where do we go from here?" Ron asked during their final session.
"In my experience, when a marriage ends, a different relationship can sometimes be created," I explained. "That's up to you. All endings are sad, but not all endings have to leave you broken. There's an opportunity here to get to know each other in a different way. And..." I leaned forward, making eye contact with each of them "...to know yourselves better."
The Generative Power of Breakup Therapy
After they left, I sat quietly in my chair, remembering that moment in my therapist's office when I realized I'd been using marriage to escape a question I'd been avoiding, and what relief came from finally facing it. When a decades-old sex tape unlocks two people's grief, it's less about the end of the road than about roads never taken—the versions of a marriage they never attempted.
This represents both a sad and generative moment. Susannah and Ron came to me to bury their marriage. Instead, they discovered a way to know each other—perhaps for the first time in years—even as they said goodbye.
Note: Names and some details have been changed to protect the identities of the individuals appearing in this essay. Sarah Gundle, Psy.D., is a psychologist in private practice and an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center. She is currently writing a book about breakups.
