After a first romantic experience and some years living together, new marriages need to achieve a certain degree of independence within a relation of mutual complicity. Sociologists have used the concept of symmetrical marriage to refer to this new situation in which both members of the couple tend to share similar economic status, as women adopt new professional roles.
I have portrayed couples while they are drinking, as a visual representation of opposed though closely related concepts: joy and sadness; survival and decadence. A woman and a man display hieratic attitudes and robotic manners in daily scenes. They are slowly consuming the life to the last drop, but only in small sips.
The series also includes twenty brief interviews with wives that have been married for ten years or longer. They all have answered the same question: What is the secret of a long term relationship?.
