Podcast Review: Where Should We Begin? – Donor daddy

'I've heard of many lies in my forty years of working with couples,' opens Esther Perel in this episode of her hit podcast, 'Where Should We Begin?'. What she doesn't go on to say, but her tone implies, is that she hasn't heard one like this before.

'Where Should We Begin?', which turns six this year, has a cult following. Perel, a Belgian psychotherapist, has built a considerable brand off the back of it – she's given TED talks, has her own card game, and was recently interviewed by Dua Lipa for the singer's podcast on inspirational thinkers.

The series features one-off couples therapy sessions between Perel and listeners that apply to be guests on the show in a format that resembles the equally popular documentary series Couples Therapy. Perel's guidance to the couples and her commentary provides fascinating insights into the workings of therapy and relationships from a psychoanalytic perspective, with a level of intimacy that can feel both engrossing and voyeuristic. In the recent episode, Donor Daddy, this sentiment is particularly strong.

The guests, a husband and wife, have recently had their lives upended by the reveal of a secret. Eleven years ago, the husband was asked by their mutual friends, a lesbian couple, to be a sperm donor for them on the understanding that he would not be involved as a father figure and would not claim parental rights. Despite feeling 'uneasy about the situation' he agrees but hides it from his wife, at one point lying about not knowing the resulting twins' donor's identity. Later on, after declining to donate again to these friends, they fall out and contact is cut. This lesbian couple eventually divorce.

In the present, the twins born from the donation are told by one of their mothers that the donor is their 'daddy' without his consent. She then contacts the donor's wife to reveal the twins' paternity and asks her to 'do the right thing' and take a more active role in the twins' life, along with her husband. At the time of the recording the news is extremely fresh, and we hear the couple, who now also have their own children, discuss what to do with their relationship, while their reactions are still raw.

To say that all parties are unhappy with the outcome of the donation is an understatement. The husband believes that his friends' expectations of him are completely different to their agreement. His wife, who has Ehlers Danlos syndrome and depends on him as a carer, made it explicit at the beginning of the relationship that she would not want her partner to have biological children with someone else.

The lesbian couple he donated to are clearly unsatisfied and have behaved deeply inappropriately at points, leaving the couple speaking to Perel feeling ambushed – as just one example, we are told that the children's mother has shown the twins the donor's Instagram profile to make the children 'feel let down about not being included' in his life.

But it is hard not to be sceptical about how Perel's guests present the other couple, which can sometimes seem cartoonish. Indeed, due to the psychoanalytic aspect of the show, we hear that the husband has a maladaptive habit of telling lies to protect his marriage (he was having an affair with another woman at the time he agreed to donate sperm to his friends).

Donor Daddy was striking to me compared to other episodes for dealing with such a fraught and ambiguous ongoing situation involving an unrepresented party. Exes and in-laws are often discussed, but rarely with the potential for such enormous ramifications on the present. It is not the scope of the podcast to explore ethical debates or to understand what 'really' happened, and Perel does her part and makes it clear to the guests that they need legal advice. Her insights about their relationship are also astute and illuminating. She takes a complicated relationship, that has a power imbalance due to the husband's role as a carer and long history of betrayals and dissects it in a way that is absorbing without feeling judgemental to either guest.

Still, for the format to fully work, you need to be able to forget that the couple are being recorded. Here, it screams at you and feels salacious at times.

It is hard to imagine who involved in this episode will actually gain from it in the long term, as interesting as it is to listen to. Obviously not the lesbian couple, who have been described as manipulative and inappropriate parents to over 100,000 listeners. Nor the twins, who can now hear their biological father explain that he does not want a relationship with them yet feels like he should have one out of guilt. Will it even really help the guests down the line when they experience the potential repercussions?

While the concept of free sessions with a therapist as content raises questions, especially in the USA where access to it is even more of a financial privilege, I would personally say that the podcast in general works. What you get is not exactly real therapy, but something positive and close to it that the listener can learn a lot from. It seemed to me like this episode was a rare error in judgement on the part of Perel in an otherwise excellent series. It's certainly an arresting listen, but I would recommend starting with another episode for a better representation of the series as a whole.