Fannish 5: Five Canon Couples Who Could Benefit From Therapy
1) Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele from Fifty Shades of Grey.
This relationship is NOT healthy. BDSM is supposed to be safe, sane and consensual for both parties, and what's going on with these two definitely isn't consensual. Ana is so ignorant that she initially thought of conventional penis-in-vagina sex as "perverted" and who was horrified by reading this Wikipedia article involving BDSM. This is not a girl who is informed enough to consent to anything...and she's so uncomfortable with the idea of talking or even thinking about sex that she's unlikely to become informed.
As for Grey, the man needs to learn that threatening to beat and rape a woman for not allowing him to finger-fuck her in front of his parents (Chapter 20), raping a woman as punishment for saying no to a relationship (Chapter 12) or for rolling her eyes at him (Chapter 16), beating her as punishment when she has begged him not to (Chapter 16), cross-country stalking (Chapter 23), and breaking and entering on multiple occasions are not sexy--THEY ARE CRIMES. Ana has not signed a contract consenting to any of this.
He could also use some help in accepting that he was sexually molested as a teenager, rather than Stockholm-ly clinging to the idea that being molested helped him in some way. And as for seeking out young women who physically resemble his dead crack whore mother so that he can beat them and fuck them--there's an Oedipus complex...and there's then this.
2) Petyr Baelish and Lysa Tully (a.k.a. Lady Arryn) from A Song of Ice and Fire and A Game of Thrones (TV).
Where to start? Well, how about the fact that he's deeply fixated on Lysa's older sister, Catelyn, as well as Catelyn's oldest daughter, Sansa (who looks like she's well on her way to becoming a Replacement Goldfish)? Or the fact that he wasn't considered an appropriate groom for Catelyn because his family is insufficiently rich or noble...which he still resents?
As for Lysa, the lady doesn't have issues, she has subscriptions: she got pregnant by Petyr as a teen, was unwittingly fed an abortifacient on her father's orders, was married off to an old man who needed a young and fertile wife, suffered a host of miscarriages and stillbirths, has had some form of psychological breakdown which left her paranoid and unstable, and is obsessed with her one surviving child, a frail boy who suffers from grand mal epilepsy and who was breast-fed until he was seven. Let me repeat that. SEVEN. Did I mention that she's as fixated on Petyr as he is on her sister and niece?
3) Dream of the Endless (Morpheus) and Nala from The Sandman.
All of Morpheus's relationships could benefit from therapy, but this is the worst of them. Morpheus needs help dealing with rejection, because condemning a woman to Hell for 10,000 years because she doesn't want to pursue a relationship? Really not a sign of true love. And after all the suffering that Nala endured as the result of that command...well, the poor woman could probably use some therapy just to cope with the trauma.
4) Sarah Beauhall and Katie from Black Blade Blues.
Sarah and Katie are actually the healthiest couple I've mentioned so far, but they've still got issues. Sarah is a semi-closeted ex-Christian blacksmith/props person who's having a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that she is a lesbian, while Katie tends to interpret "I'm having difficulty accepting my sexuality" as "You're ashamed of me and don't want to commit." The fact that Katie and her brother know more than most people about magical and mythical things existing in real life while Sarah is the complete skeptic just makes things harder.
5) Harry Dresden and Anastasia Luccio from The Dresden Files bookverse.
This is a VERY messed-up relationship, thanks to Luccio a) being forcibly evicted from her body and being stuffed into a new one, b) preferring women, according to another character who knew her in her youth and c) being mind-controlled by a third party into being in a relationship with Harry. Harry, for his part, could use some help coping with having had an abusive mentor/adoptive father who tried to control Harry's mind and did control the mind of Harry's adoptive sister/girlfriend, having killed that mentor, thinking that he'd murdered his incestuous girlfriend, being gang-raped by Red Court vampires (who have narcotic saliva that forces anyone bitten to be compliant) and acknowledging the fact that he's strongly attracted to men as well as women. It's amazing that these two are still friends; they have enough problems to keep a therapist busy for centuries.
This relationship is NOT healthy. BDSM is supposed to be safe, sane and consensual for both parties, and what's going on with these two definitely isn't consensual. Ana is so ignorant that she initially thought of conventional penis-in-vagina sex as "perverted" and who was horrified by reading this Wikipedia article involving BDSM. This is not a girl who is informed enough to consent to anything...and she's so uncomfortable with the idea of talking or even thinking about sex that she's unlikely to become informed.
As for Grey, the man needs to learn that threatening to beat and rape a woman for not allowing him to finger-fuck her in front of his parents (Chapter 20), raping a woman as punishment for saying no to a relationship (Chapter 12) or for rolling her eyes at him (Chapter 16), beating her as punishment when she has begged him not to (Chapter 16), cross-country stalking (Chapter 23), and breaking and entering on multiple occasions are not sexy--THEY ARE CRIMES. Ana has not signed a contract consenting to any of this.
He could also use some help in accepting that he was sexually molested as a teenager, rather than Stockholm-ly clinging to the idea that being molested helped him in some way. And as for seeking out young women who physically resemble his dead crack whore mother so that he can beat them and fuck them--there's an Oedipus complex...and there's then this.
2) Petyr Baelish and Lysa Tully (a.k.a. Lady Arryn) from A Song of Ice and Fire and A Game of Thrones (TV).
Where to start? Well, how about the fact that he's deeply fixated on Lysa's older sister, Catelyn, as well as Catelyn's oldest daughter, Sansa (who looks like she's well on her way to becoming a Replacement Goldfish)? Or the fact that he wasn't considered an appropriate groom for Catelyn because his family is insufficiently rich or noble...which he still resents?
As for Lysa, the lady doesn't have issues, she has subscriptions: she got pregnant by Petyr as a teen, was unwittingly fed an abortifacient on her father's orders, was married off to an old man who needed a young and fertile wife, suffered a host of miscarriages and stillbirths, has had some form of psychological breakdown which left her paranoid and unstable, and is obsessed with her one surviving child, a frail boy who suffers from grand mal epilepsy and who was breast-fed until he was seven. Let me repeat that. SEVEN. Did I mention that she's as fixated on Petyr as he is on her sister and niece?
3) Dream of the Endless (Morpheus) and Nala from The Sandman.
All of Morpheus's relationships could benefit from therapy, but this is the worst of them. Morpheus needs help dealing with rejection, because condemning a woman to Hell for 10,000 years because she doesn't want to pursue a relationship? Really not a sign of true love. And after all the suffering that Nala endured as the result of that command...well, the poor woman could probably use some therapy just to cope with the trauma.
4) Sarah Beauhall and Katie from Black Blade Blues.
Sarah and Katie are actually the healthiest couple I've mentioned so far, but they've still got issues. Sarah is a semi-closeted ex-Christian blacksmith/props person who's having a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that she is a lesbian, while Katie tends to interpret "I'm having difficulty accepting my sexuality" as "You're ashamed of me and don't want to commit." The fact that Katie and her brother know more than most people about magical and mythical things existing in real life while Sarah is the complete skeptic just makes things harder.
5) Harry Dresden and Anastasia Luccio from The Dresden Files bookverse.
This is a VERY messed-up relationship, thanks to Luccio a) being forcibly evicted from her body and being stuffed into a new one, b) preferring women, according to another character who knew her in her youth and c) being mind-controlled by a third party into being in a relationship with Harry. Harry, for his part, could use some help coping with having had an abusive mentor/adoptive father who tried to control Harry's mind and did control the mind of Harry's adoptive sister/girlfriend, having killed that mentor, thinking that he'd murdered his incestuous girlfriend, being gang-raped by Red Court vampires (who have narcotic saliva that forces anyone bitten to be compliant) and acknowledging the fact that he's strongly attracted to men as well as women. It's amazing that these two are still friends; they have enough problems to keep a therapist busy for centuries.