



‘Should I Marry a Murderer?’ has left audiences stunned but what they saw wasn’t all that bizarre
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In the new Netflix documentary series Should I Marry a Murderer?, Caroline Muirhead, a Scottish forensic pathologist, falls in love with Sandy McKellar, a man who, after proposing, reveals to her that he and his brother have committed a homicide. What follows is baffling: Even after Muirhead turns him in to the police, she returns to his side.
She has spent her career reading evidence of violence; if anyone should have been repelled by her fiancé’s brutality, it was she.Yet she still goes back, with disastrous consequences. In my practice, I have repeatedly witnessed sensible people who, in the thrall of strong attachments, seem to throw their judgement to the wind.
But there will be many watching the documentary who do not have the same frame of reference and will be tempted to dismiss Muirhead’s decision as an outlier.If that is your main takeaway, you will miss an opportunity to see how this psychological dynamic plays out in people’s daily lives.This kind of behaviour is not confined to romance. Our legal, financial and business systems were built on an unexamined assumption: A competent person of sound judgement will be so regardless of personal feelings.
It is why people stubbornly invest emotionally and financially in bad business relationships, or follow charismatic gurus or political leaders, even when the evidence shows it’s harming them.Decades of research, however, have shown that becoming attached to someone else is not just about feeling affection—platonic or romantic. The act actually restructures the perceptual system we use to evaluate the other, often blinding us to risks.
That is not because intimacy makes us dumber. It is because attachment is designed for bonding,
. Read on livemint.com