Seen at the Royal Court Theatre, Guess How Much I Love You is a play that explores how love and grief collide and strain even the most connected of couples when devastating loss enters the space between them.
As a couple therapist, I was naturally drawn to the subject. And as a mother, I carried fond memories of reading this book to my children when they were small, so I was intrigued to see how such a tender title would unfold on stage.
We meet a couple whose connection feels positively lively. Their interaction is quick, clever, and sometimes combative in its playfulness. There is humour and flirtation – a kind of relational litheness. And then the ground shifts: devastating news and impossible choices, the kind of decisions no one imagines making. What follows is complex grief in its rawest form.
At times it is utterly gut-wrenching; the pain is visceral. You feel it in your body and in the auditorium – the quiet sobs, the shared stillness, the collective holding of breath. This isn’t something we passively observe; it is something we endure together.
The couple speak the unspeakable. Words are hurled that shock – wishing the other dead in moments of despair, asking if they have reached the bottom yet, accusing one another of coping too well or not at all. These are not casual cruelties. They are grief in protest – pain desperately searching for somewhere to land.
Watching this, I was struck by how familiar this territory is in the therapy room. Grief seeks discharge. It wants relief. It can show up in different ways, turning outward in attack or inward in collapse. What makes this portrayal so powerful is that the couple’s bond is fundamentally strong. Their exchanges are fierce, yet they remain emotionally engaged. The relationship becomes the vessel capable of holding emotions that would otherwise feel unendurable.
The audience is reminded that love is not only about tenderness and ease, but about the capacity to withstand a tapestry of emotions and impossible decisions, and still choose to remain in connection if they dare.
Guess How Much I Love You is not sentimental. It is honest about how grief can threaten to tear people apart, and it quietly honours the strength required to survive it together.
