My ex-partner wants to try tuning-fork therapy. Should I tell anyone?

If your ex-partner opts for tuning-fork therapy, you’re probably on different wavelengths, advises Modern Guru.

Q: My partner broke up with me. I suggested couples counselling. She said she has her own supports in place: tuning-fork therapy, numerology and rebirthing. Friends are asking why we’re not attending counselling. Can I tell them about the tuning forks? V.D., Burwood, VIC

A: Tuning-fork therapy is new to me. I looked into it and, apparently, it’s a healing technique that uses vibrating tuning forks to relieve emotional trauma. This may work, except the best way to make a tuning fork vibrate is to whack it really hard on your knee, so, after several sessions, you might be emotionally healed, but you’ll be limping to an orthopaedic surgeon to get a kneecap reconstruction.

Anyway, I’ll start by saying that I’m really sorry to hear that your partner broke up with you, and I can sense you’re hoping to get back together again – but because you suggested trying couples counselling with a trained professional while she’s choosing to absorb the vibrations of a pronged fork, interpret occult number patterns and recreate her own birth by pretending a backyard hot tub is her mother’s birth canal, I wonder if maybe, just maybe, the two of you weren’t the most ideal match to begin with.

Go ahead and tell your friends about the tuning forks, but I bet they’ll say the same thing: that your partner wants out, that you should probably move on, that the two of you are vibrating on different frequencies – you on a steady, concert-pitch A, her on a dissonant, ear-bleeding microtone. Good luck, and let me suggest some alternative fork therapies that might be useful with a tough break up. There’s the ever-reliable food-on-fork therapy. Or the self-preserving fork-over-money-
for-a-nice-holiday therapy. Or the mantra-chanting I’m-totally-forking-over-her therapy, repeated over and over and over again.

guru@goodweekend.com.au

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Danny Katz is a columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He writes the Modern Guru column in the Good Weekend magazine. He is also the author of the books Spit the Dummy, Dork Geek Jew and the Little Lunch series for kids.