Be Chalant: The Mess of Loving Long-Term

In this live episode of Skin and Soul: Beyond the Pale, I’m joined by Dr. Bruce Chalmer and Judy Alexander, the married co-hosts of Couples Therapy in Seven Words. Bruce is a psychologist and couples therapist who has spent more than 30 years sitting with couples at the edge of rupture, betrayal, longing, distance, and repair. His work circles around what he calls The Passion Paradox: the tension between stability and intimacy. The very things that make love feel safe can sometimes drain the risk, aliveness, and erotic charge out of it. And then there is Judy: teacher, principal, co-host, translator of theory into real life, and author, under the name Laria Zylber, of The Blue Tent: Erotic Tales from the Bible, a work of biblical erotica that reimagines ancient stories through desire, flesh, female voice, and what she calls sexual midrash.  This conversation may move through couples therapy, sex, faith, long-term love, betrayal, romance, erotic storytelling, and what happens when two people still love each other but can no longer find the heat, honesty, or courage to reach across the table. Because romance is not dead. But it does ask something of us.