This Seven Year Switch couple may not want to return to their original marriages by the time this season is over.
The show, from the creators of the hit series Married at First Sight, takes four couples who are unhappy in their marriages and switches them up, allowing everyone to see what it would be like if their marriage actually was over. In Tuesday’s season premiere of the Lifetime series, viewers met the four couples looking for a radical change-up — Bobby and Rosslyn, Tony and Angela, Charles and Kenya, and Diane and Reece — watching as they said goodbye to their spouses and hello to their switch spouses.
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All of the meetings went well, with most of the couples remarking on how attractive their new spouse is, but when Diane and Bobby first locked eyes, there was instant chemistry.
“I’m way more attracted to her than I’m supposed to be at this point,” Bobby told the cameras.
Diane felt likewise. “I find him very sexy, very attractive,” she confessed.
Based on the previews for the rest of the season, this spark could turn into a destructive flame. But as the show’s relationship expert, Charles J. Orlando, told PopCulture.com exclusively ahead of the premiere, that’s not the intended consequence of switch therapy.
“It’s not an excuse to have an affair,” he said. “Now could they make a stupid decision and do something behind their partner’s back? Break boundaries? Cheat? Have an affair? Of course! People make decisions every day. But we’re not trying to make them do this. What we’re doing is giving them an opportunity to see what life would be like if their marriage continues to break down, if they don’t look at rebuilding their skill sets and if they’re not listening to their switch partners. They may walk away with less than they started, or they may give into temptation, but that’s not the goal.”
Orlando added that no matter how tangled and twisted these relationships may seem at the start of this therapy, the couples’ issues boil down to communication, honesty, transparency and effort.
What switch therapy provides is a “safe training ground to get out of their negative patterns and start using the skills they either don’t have or forgot about.”
But Orlando and Dr. Jessica Griffin aren’t keeping couples together who ultimately would be best parting ways.
“The last thing that we would want would be to attempt to reconnect a couple that’s not healthy, that’s not on the same path together.” Orlando said. “We are not advocates of divorce, we’re also not advocates of marriage. We’re advocates of happiness and connection in relationships.”
Which couples will find their way back to one another? And will new couples form in the switch therapy homes?
Seven Year Switch (produced by Kinetic Content) airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
Photo credit: Lifetime
