Are Therapy Shows Helping Marriages or Exposing Them?
When a couple like Choi Soo-jong and Ha Hee-ra—famous for being Korea’s model married pair—step into the world of marital conflict on TV, eyebrows are raised. In the new tvN reality-docu show We’re Not Lovebirds, the beloved pair portray struggling couples and introduce audiences to an experimental form of televised couple therapy. The show is marketed as entertainment, but its goal runs deeper: to shine a light on issues that many couples hide behind closed doors.
Rewriting Therapy for the Screen
The show is set to premiere on June 30, 2025, and focuses on dramatized reenactments based on real submissions from couples dealing with serious relationship challenges—financial stress, resentment, communication breakdowns. At its heart is something called "Mirror Drama Therapy,” a concept where couples act out one another’s perspective to foster empathy. The concept is theatrical, but the pain it reveals can be brutally honest.
Imagine reenacting a fight with your spouse—only this time, you’re playing them, and they’re playing you. That’s the core exercise in this series, and it adds a surreal but emotionally powerful twist to the process of understanding each other. When done well, it can help couples dig deeper into their own blind spots. When done poorly—or sensationalized for ratings—it risks trivializing real emotional wounds.
Why It’s Striking a Chord
In a media landscape where marriage is often idealized or conveniently skipped over, We’re Not Lovebirds confronts the messiness head-on. Instead of glossy date nights or manufactured drama, the show leans into discomfort. It draws its strength from authenticity—not in being perfectly objective, but in making the viewer say, "Hey, that could be us."
Seeing household-name celebrities like Choi and Ha portray deeply flawed, even reckless partners adds to the show’s power. Viewers who’ve only seen them as the perfect couple now have to navigate the dissonance of watching them fight, lie, and fumble—both convincingly and purposefully—through someone else's marriage.
Some episodes deal with relatable but often unspoken issues: emotional labor imbalance, parenting disagreements, or secrecy over debt. These are topics that many marriage counseling sessions never make public. Yet here they are, dramatized and debated in primetime.
Reality or Performance?
Of course, any show that claims to deal with truth has to grapple with what it's sacrificing for engagement. Some viewers are already raising concerns—chief among them, privacy. Even if identities are hidden, the reenactments may be recognizable to people in the couple’s life. Others criticize the possibility of manufactured drama: what if an argument gets stretched or rewritten to heighten tension?
In that case, does the show actually help anyone? While it may aim to spark empathy, it also runs the risk of reshaping public perception of marriage to something more negative or hopeless. Nobody wants to feel like their intimate struggles are just fodder for spectacle.
There's also the danger of commercializing pain. Is the show ultimately more invested in healing or ratings? The fine line between helping and exploiting is often invisible to viewers.
Public Reactions: A Divided Audience
The Internet is torn—some netizens praise the show’s honesty and applaud it for breaking the "Instagram-perfect marriage" myth. Others feel discomfort watching something so private played out on TV. On Reddit-style forums and Korean equivalents like Naver Cafe, hashtags like #MirrorDrama and #NotYourTypicalCouple have sparked lively debates. Some therapists even argue that the show could foster breakthroughs in couples therapy representation—but only if it emphasizes follow-up care or psychological accuracy.
Meanwhile, fans of the celebrity couple are applauding their bravery while expressing confusion. "It was weird watching Choi yell like that," one comment read. "But in a way, it made me realize that even perfect-seeming couples are just like us."
A New Genre, or a New Risk?
As couple therapy reality shows gain popularity, this one adds something uniquely Korean—and uniquely global: a culture of suppressed expression meeting public vulnerability. The format is open to critical praise and ethical critique alike. If this show sets the bar for others to follow, it will need to continue balancing entertainment with educational and emotional depth.
While We’re Not Lovebirds offers the opportunity to destigmatize marital conflict and promote emotional dialogue, it also bears an obligation not to sensationalize suffering. For couples watching at home, the most meaningful outcome would not be shock or tears—but a conversation. Maybe even change.
Final Thoughts
This show isn’t promising fairy-tale endings. Instead, it invites couples—and audiences—to step into each other’s shoes, even in the most uncomfortable moments. That alone makes it both promising and problematic. Whether it becomes a therapeutic breakthrough or cable TV curiosity will depend on how responsibly it continues to walk the line between empathy and exposure.
