There is an arresting scene in this episode when on off couple Tom and Shiv are at a party. Suddenly, everyone fades into the background. Shiv tells Tom that he never really got beyond the surface. That he never really had any tangible impact on her. That her true love was the one before him. All of this back and forth feels charged. She teases him about his attraction and desire to other women in the room.

Shiv then introduces a game. "Bitey". The rules are that you have bite the other person. The one who says stop first loses. This game plays on aggression. How much can pain can we inflict on another ? How much aggression can we display? How much can we use another for our gratification? What are our limits ? How much do we experience pain? How much do we empathise with the pain of the other?

The psychoanalyst Robert Stoller said

"In the absence of special physiological factors and putting aside the obvious effects from the direct stimulation of erotic body parts, it is hostility - the desire, overt or hidden, to harm another person - that enhances sexual excitement. The absence of hostility leads to sexual indifference and hostility. (1979)"

There is no lack of aggression between Shiv and Tom. Shiv initiates this aggressive game and finds to her surprise that Tom is able to both tolerate pain (her bite on his arm) and inflict pain that tips her over what she can bear (his bite on her arm).

The psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg could be writing about this scene when he says

"Erotic desire includes a sense that the object is both offering and withholding itself, and sexual penetration or engulfing the object is a violation of the others boundaries. In this sense, transgression involves aggression against the object as well, aggression that is exciting in its pleasurable gratification, reverberating with the capacity to experience pleasure in pain, and projecting the capacity onto the other. The aggression is also pleasurable because it is contained by a loving relationship"

Kernberg, 1995

This public foreplay leads them to the bedroom where they have sex. They both, fully clothed, report on it being very "nice." The game of bitey has led to mutual satisfaction. Unusually, there is no irony flickering across their faces. They then talk about other taboo subjects such as love, money and ambition. They talk about jewellery, watches, suits and other objects that make them feel good about themselves. They talk about their aggressive drives, but within a loving context.

What is key here is not the bite in itself. That would be just painful. It would be a turn off and possibly an assault. What the game of "bitey" is about is how aggression and love are interwoven in the dynamic of any given couple.

Hewison says

"Where aggression is missing, erotic satisfaction is stunted or impossible. Where aggression is used in the the service of love, to get through to someone, to connect deliberately (and rapturously) breaching the boundaries of personal space and body surface in sex, relationship has the potential to deepened through mutual satisfying erotic needs. Where aggression is paramount, eroticism is curtailed and becomes routine; connection between the couple is limited to acts and roles, boundaries (emotional and physical ) are turned into objects to be used, or used by, and love dies

(Hewison, 2009)

I don't agree that Shiv and Tom are monsters. Sure you wouldn't find some of their lines on a valentine's card. But in truth, perhaps these characters, and their couple relationship, is more accurate in its portrayal of love and hate in a living relationship. These fictional characters provide us a screen, a space, to explore aspects of ourselves.

I am grateful to couple psychoanalyst Mary Morgan's : A Couple State of Mind (p 143-144) for her exploration of aggression and these quotations