"Just nod if you can hear me; is there anyone at home?"

Since reading Couples, I have found the narrative vibrant and interesting. This seaside Massachusetts town named Tarbox holds some nostalgia and warm feelings for me. I appreciate Updike’s images of nice homes and nice people. However, beneath the surface are people searching for answers to questions that religion and faith used to answer for them. However, being a new generation of individuals and humanists, the answers that satisfied their parents do not hold for them. Set in 1962, this novel is Updike’s attempt to explain where and how the sexual revolution started. Updike describes the lives of ten couples, all well to do people living in beautiful homes and driving expensive cars. The couples can be confusing to follow because the dialogue moves quickly and there is sometimes little mention of who is speaking to whom, especially when it comes to scenes of them in bed. So, here is the list of the married couples at the beginning of the novel:

Marcia & Harold Smith

Janet & Frank Appleby

Georgene & Freddy Thorne

Irene & Ben Saltz

Carol & Eddie Constantine

Angela & Piet Hanema

Foxy & Ken Whitman

Bernadette & John Ong

Terry & Matt Gallagher

Bea & Roger Guerin

Also, here are the affairs early on:

Marcia Smith & Frank Appleby

Janet Appleby & Harold Smith

Georgene Thorne & Piet Hanema

Ben Saltz & Carol Constantine

Irene Saltz & Eddie Constantine

In Updike’s reckoning, these people in rural Massachusetts wanted religion; they wanted something larger than themselves in their lives. They were looking for more than just their own counsel. However, the options were limited. Being modern people they did not want the orthodoxy and dogma of the Catholic church, and the Congregational church was too light and easy on the soul. They wanted the middle ground, a non-orthodox church that made them accountable for their actions. If they had only lived a few centuries before, the Puritan church would have been more than happy to show them the way. Unfortunately for them, and their spouses, Massachusetts is a religious wasteland. Catholicism is too heavy and the Tarbox Congregational church too focused on making money and preserving the shell of a dying faith. Having no spiritual source of comfort, they turn to each other. Forming a new religious identity based on sex and sleeping around, it does not satisfy their souls but only deepens the chasm between their minds and their lives. Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb would be a fair assessment of how these people feel during their affairs. The comfort and intimacy provides a temporary shield which protects them from the emptiness they feel in marriage and suburban living.

Because of this vacuum of tangible faith, and their belief in a "Post-Pill Paradise" (the first tablet contraceptive Enovid was cleared by the US FDA in 1961) affairs are what pique their interest and this disenfranchisement from the societal norm makes them a social elect. Those lucky few who have affairs and live within that construct are set apart, living as couples in all shapes and forms. Married or sleeping around, these people live life as couples, constantly searching for in each other what they should find in thelselves.