Author

Mary

No one who watches The Americans can claim Philip and Elizabeth Jennings — Soviet spies posing as married American suburbanites in the 1980s — are a perfect couple. They have crippling trust issues due to the secretive nature of their work. They routinely have sex with other people as part of their jobs. And they’re not above killing innocent people to maintain their cover.

But just because they’re bad people doesn’t mean they’re a bad couple. If you look beyond all their homicidal cloak and dagger honey trapping, and their frequent lies to their children (who have no idea what their parents do for a living), you’ll see Philip and Elizabeth, “Philizabeth,” possesses many admirable couple qualities. Heck, if Walt and Skyler were this functional during their own suburban criminal activity, Breaking Bad would have ended much differently.

So without endorsing murder, spying, child neglect, and serial infidelity, we submit that Philip and Elizabeth from The Americans are one of the best couples on TV — and they can teach us a lot about marriage. Here are 10 lessons we’ve learned:

1. Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.
Both Elizabeth and Philip frequently have sex with their intelligence assets to pry information from them (Philip has even married one of his sources — Martha, a naive FBI secretary who thinks Philip’s name is “Clark”). Both are fully aware of the other’s extracurricular activities in the service of Mother Russia, but they talk about it only when necessary. In last month’s season premiere, Philip… er, “Clark” spends the night practicing the Kama Sutra with his other wife. After he returns the next morning, Elizabeth simply asks him if he got any usable intel. Philip responds with a simple “no,” and they move on. So the next time you’re tempted to, say, quiz your significant other about her exes, or ask him which one of your friends he’d “Shag, Marry, Kill,” think of Elizabeth and Philip, who know it’s OK to keep some matters on a need-to-know basis. Continue reading 10 Things We Learned About Marriage From ‘The Americans’