Stephen Grosz: Why So Many Women Wake Up One Day And Want Out Of Their Relationship
episodePreviously titled “Stephen Grosz: Why So Many Women Wake Up One Day And Want Out” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 5, 2026
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Why do so many women wake up wanting to leave their relationships?
This is an R Media podcast. Marie Claire presents You're Gonna Want to Hear This.
She had gone away for the weekend, came home, found a condom in the bathroom. Your marriage is breaking down right now, but this could be a breakthrough. We have an opportunity now to cut all the nonsense, all the lying, the deception, and for the two of you to talk honestly and have a deeper and more loving relationship with each other.
Okay, it's story time. I remember walking out of a couple's counseling session, sitting in my car and thinking, how did we get here? I ticked all the boxes you're meant to tick, the talks, the exercises, the date nights, and it still felt like I'd somehow lost myself along the way. I'm Georgie McCourt, and this is You're Gonna Want to Hear This, the Marie Claire podcast where fun, frankness, and the conversations we didn't know we needed are always in style. By the time I sat down with psychoanalyst Stephen Groves, I thought I'd learned a fair bit about love. I'd done long-term relationships, hard conversations, even a bit of therapy homework. And yet, within minutes of talking to Stephen, I realized there was a lot that I hadn't really understood.
For more than 40 years, he's listened to thousands of people talk about desire, betrayal, resentment, affairs, heartbreak, and the messy human work of trying to love someone without losing yourself in the process. His new book, Love's Labor, asks a very confronting question, and that is, what if love isn't something we simply fall into?
How does emotional labor affect relationships?
What if it's something we work at? Today, Stephen and I talk about the resentment that quietly kills marriages. I know you know what I'm talking about. Why contempt is more dangerous than anger, and why some couples do actually come back stronger after betrayal. And why sometimes we don't leave a relationship because we've stopped loving the other person, but because we've stopped liking who we are inside it. There were more than a few moments that hit so close to home for me, and I think they might for you too. Here's Stephen Groves. Thank you so much for being on the Marie Claire podcast.
I'm really pleased. Thank you. Yeah, I'm very pleased.
Stephen, your book is called Love's Labor. And that, to me, immediately suggests that love isn't something that we simply fall into, but it's something that we actively work at. So tell me what the work of love actually looks like in real day-to-day life.
That's such a good question.
What role does resentment play in relationship breakdowns?
Um, I don't know, when you were growing up, I certainly thought always of love as a feeling. I didn't think of it as work or that it involved a kind of labor. But the longer I do what I do, which is psychoanalyst, I've done this now 40 years, the more I'm aware of that it does require work. In the beginning of my book, I quote Iris Murdoch, and I love what she says. She says, "'Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.'" And then she says, "'Love is the discovery of reality.'" And that's sort of both at the heart of what I think love's about, but also therapy, psychoanalysis, seeing people. I sort of think that's the great task of love and of life, is to try and see ourselves clearly, to be honest about that, and to be honest about our partner.
Your question is about what does that look like every day? And that means it's the hard thing of like sometimes in an argument with someone we love, with our partner, stopping and thinking, do they have a point? Maybe they're right, not me. Trying to see things from their point of view. And sometimes it's quite painful to do.
Why is contempt more dangerous than anger in a relationship?
But that's what I mean by the work of love.
I am so intrigued. When you sit in a consulting room, Do you ever sit with a couple or an individual and just think this relationship will not survive this? Because I always wondered that when I did work. I didn't do, obviously, work with someone like yourself, but I did therapy. But do you ever think they won't survive?
I think in the beginning, I'm just generally curious what's going on.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do so many women wake up wanting to leave their relationships?
0:02–1:45
2
How does emotional labor affect relationships?
1:45–2:49
3
What role does resentment play in relationship breakdowns?
2:49–4:15
4
Why is contempt more dangerous than anger in a relationship?
4:15–5:22
5
What psychological needs drive people to have affairs?
5:22–6:27
6
How do children impact intimacy and desire in relationships?
6:27–7:44
7
Why do people often dislike who they become in their relationships?
7:44–8:59
8
What small daily rituals can improve long-term relationships?
8:59–43:03
Speakers
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