Betrayal, Power, and the Emotional Physics of Vengeance

Some wives wait.
Some wives burn down the house.

When Agamemnon returned from the Trojan War, he expected a hero’s welcome.

Instead, he got a bath, a robe with no armholes, and a blade in his chest—courtesy of Clytemnestra, his long-abandoned wife.

The details vary across tellings, but the gist remains: this wasn’t a crime of passion. It was a slow-cooked act of rage, ritual, and moral precision.

And if you think it’s just a Greek tragedy, you haven’t sat in a couples therapy room with someone who’s been quietly collecting betrayal data for a decade.

When Betrayal Becomes Identity

Why the Wisest Man in Athens Would Have Been a Great Couples Therapist

Let’s begin with a simple truth: most arguments between couples are not about content. They’re about context, tone, memory, and the secret, unmet longing buried beneath your third complaint about the dishwasher.

Now imagine if instead of reacting, your partner leaned in with curiosity and said,

“What do you mean by that?”
“How do you know it’s true?”
“Could it also mean something else?”

Congratulations—you’re now dating Socrates. Or at least someone using his method: relentless inquiry without rage.

"What drunkenness doesn’t do, love does: Priscus and Verus have become gladiators."
— Martial, Epigrams 1.14

Before TikTok therapy explainers, before the Gottmans, even before Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding, a jaded Roman named Martial was already diagnosing your relationship problems.

In this single-line epigram, Martial skewers two noblemen, Priscus and Verus, who voluntarily became gladiators. Not because they were desperate.

Not because they were forced. But because they were in love—with status, with pride, and maybe, if we squint, with each other.

Martial doesn’t write sonnets. He writes surgical strikes. He understood that love, when infected by narcissism, doesn’t soften us. It makes us theatrical. It makes us willing to bleed for an audience.

Sound familiar?

A Couples Therapy Allegory About What Interrupts Dinner (and Love)

Once upon a myth, Jason assembled a crew of slightly unhinged heroes, exiles, and professional risk-takers to sail across the world in search of the Golden Fleece—a shimmering, possibly magic sheep’s skin that everyone agreed would solve all their problems.

Because that’s what ancient quests are for: fixing whatever’s not working inside of you with something bright and far away.

So they built a ship, named it The Argo, and rowed toward meaning.

You’ve seen this before. Just replace the boat with a minivan, the fleece with a mortgage, and the crew with your extended family at Thanksgiving.

Rome, 80 CE.

The Colosseum groaned with anticipation. It was the first day of the inaugural games under the new emperor, Titus.

Marble seats baked under a Roman sun. Senators and slaves, patricians and plebs, all leaned forward to witness blood sport—the sacred theater of domination and death.

Two gladiators entered the arena: Priscus and Verus.

Well-matched. Well-trained. Well-aware that in Rome, the only way out of the arena was through the body of your opponent—or in pieces.

But something happened that day that shocked even the Emperor.

New science says the moments when your kid leaves you speechless—or just deeply proud—aren’t just feel-good fluff. They’re emotional bedrock. And they may be doing more for your well-being than another mindfulness app.

What If the Most Meaningful Part of Parenting Isn’t What You Do, But What You Feel?

Let’s be honest: parenting often feels like logistics with love sprinkled on top—laundry, permission slips, snack negotiations, and a vague hope that your child doesn’t grow up to host a podcast about how you ruined their life.

But a fascinating new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science (Chee, Shimshock, & Le, 2025) suggests that two specific emotions—pride and awe—might be doing far more than we realized. Not only do they brighten the often-exhausting parenting journey, but they’re deeply correlated with long-term psychological well-being.

If you’ve ever caught yourself laughing at a tired old joke between you and your partner, you’re not regressing—you’re demonstrating a neurological and emotional hallmark of secure attachment.

It turns out, stable couples aren’t defined by newness, but by repetition—and how that repetition is infused with meaning (Gottman & Silver, 1999).

These well-worn bits of private humor form what couples therapist John Gottman calls "shared meaning systems."

Weekends are the promised land of adult life: 48-ish hours when you can finally stop pretending that your boss’s “quick question” is anything but a psychic hex.

If you’re partnered, weekends should be when you reconnect with the person you pledged eternal devotion to—or at least agreed to share a Netflix password with.

But many couples spend these golden hours dodging each other in a haze of errands, digital distractions, and existential fatigue.

As a psychologist who studies couples (and lives with one), I can confirm: happy couples aren’t happier because they’re better people. They’ve just hacked the system. Here’s how.

Expecting parents are no strangers to the myth that playing Mozart for your baby might boost their IQ.

But now, researchers have taken a more scientifically rigorous step toward understanding what actually happens inside the womb when music is played.

A new study published in Chaos (yes, that’s really the journal's name) suggests that classical music might help regulate fetal heart rhythms—offering early clues into how the developing nervous system responds to sensory input.

This isn't about turning your fetus into a concert pianist before birth.

It's about how music may gently shape the autonomic nervous system—the part of the body that manages automatic functions like heartbeat and stress regulation—even before a child takes their first breath.

Ever listen to a song and suddenly remember a moment that didn’t quite happen that way?

Maybe your break-up feels more tragic with Adele in the background—or your childhood picnic seems oddly cheerful, thanks to the Bee Gees.

According to new research published in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, there may be a neuroscientific reason for this. Music, it turns out, doesn’t just accompany our memories—it can reshape them.

Let’s walk through the study that reveals just how sneaky music can be in our memory reconsolidation process—and why this matters for therapists, educators, marketers, and basically anyone with a Spotify account and a human brain.

Some of the most important moments in parenting don’t happen during vacations or milestone birthdays.

They happen in the split-second exchange of a glance during conflict.

A new study published in Development and Psychopathology reveals that how a parent responds nonverbally to their daughter during emotional conversations may quietly shape her mental health — even her risk for suicidal thoughts — in the months to come.

It turns out that not making eye contact, or failing to reciprocate a smile during heated discussions, can matter more than any lecture or advice ever could.

A face is never just a face. At least, not to your brain.

A new study in Brain Imaging and Behavior reveals that our judgments of attractiveness are shaped not just by facial features, but by the stories we attach to them.

When you learn something about a person — say, they’re a university professor, a couples therapist, a street sweeper, have depression, or lean left politically — that information subtly (or not-so-subtly) rewires your brain’s evaluation of their attractiveness.

Not only does your rating change, but your brain’s circuitry shifts too, lighting up regions that process language and meaning rather than just faces.

And yes, all of this can happen even if the person in the photo doesn’t actually exist.