Centre for Research on Families and Relationships

The secret pathways of relationality: uncoupling beyond the couple

by Kaveri Qureshi and Zubaida Metlo
‘What a foamy mixture a couple is. Even if the relationship shatters and ends, it continues to act in secret pathways, it doesn’t die, it doesn’t want to die’. So observes Olga, the protagonist in Elena Ferrante’s crushing novel The days of abandonment. Olga’s observations come from within the scene of her unravelling