The Invite

Directed by Olivia Wilde, screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones

"The Invite" is quickly gaining buzz, and after seeing it this weekend, it's clear to me why. There is a high level of discomfort in witnessing a very honest portrayal of relational tension, something often attempted but rarely portrayed with real accuracy. The theater I was in kept shifting from gasps to laughter and one moment of notable collective quiet.

To get this tension right, Olivia Wilde collaborated with famed therapist Esther Perel, our modern-day saint of relational therapy. In an interview with the New York Times, Perel said,

"Relationships are breathing, living organisms that constantly adapt between continuity and change. Stability and novelty. Familiarity and surprise. Security and freedom. All the time. And that's what makes them so fascinating."

It is fun to note this alongside the previous Rebecca Solnit post, both visionaries I revere, both pointing us toward a lens that views previously static entities as dynamic ones.

Spoiler here: the film has an open ending. We are unsure where the characters' relationships will lead them after this evening, but Penelope Cruz's character makes a very Perel-coded statement that a current relationship is dead, those involved will have to enter into a new one, and that this can either be done with new partners or with one another.

A relationship is not an arrival point. Nietzsche is famously referenced for having compared a marriage to a long conversation. That idea, which is essentially this entire film, is what I want to highlight. This concept, while informed by Perel's voice, is one I trace back to James Hollis and his book, The Middle Passage. The book is rooted in Jungian themes and can get a little esoteric at times, but I reference it frequently because the concepts show up so consistently in sessions.

The middle passage is the transition from the first to the second adulthood (midlife crisis is a more colloquial term), and if we are evolving on all fronts, this involves a transition from the first to the second marriage, with new partners or as Hollis illustrates, with the same. Hollis devotes real attention to this transition, and I imagine his theory may be a pillar of influence for Perel.

"The unwavering truth of the psyche is: change or wither into resentment; grow or die within…marriage at midlife is often so contaminated by resentment that the possibilities for renewal are fatally compromised."

It is not unusual for couples to arrive in therapy where one or even both parties is thinking: we are here to fix them (pointing enthusiastically), I'm fine. But the ones who let the old relationship die and begin anew possess the bravery to turn inwards, excavating themselves as the primary mission. As Hollis writes,

"All relationships, therefore, are symptomatic of the state of our inner life, and no relationship can be any better than our relationship to our own unconscious."

The first relationship, the first version of any long partnership, is built on false pretenses. Not because of overt dishonesty, but because so much projection must fall away before two people can see each other (and themselves), and that falling away takes time and often hardship. We cling to these projections and stories at both conscious and unconscious levels, they do not fall away easily. After that painful collapse begins the building and sustaining of the second marriage the success of which hinges on rigorously honest communication. For many, this is a daunting endeavor.

So, we psych ourselves out by believing that reinvention is something that happens to other people, in other relationships. When the truth is it’s ordinary, even inevitable, work unless we choose to aquiesse to a hollowed relational shell or continue to pursue the first marriage over and over again with different partners (both of which happen frequently).

It's possible the film will leave some folks riddled with discomfort. The confrontation that something has come to an end is typically avoided at all costs in our culture that equates endings with failures. Our role as clinicians is to normalize this death and to foster creative imagining for what may come after.