Whether it's the story of Bluebeard or the Sudanese tale of "Nyanbol" - marriages in fairy tales tend to dissolve even during the honeymoon. The insatiable desires of Ilsebill, the wife of the Grimm Brothers' fisher, not only disrupt married life, they end up destroying it. Married couples in fairy tales live through the extremes of symbiosis and dissociation, compulsion and freedom. Yet there are examples of successful partnerships - couples that are able to live out their happiness with one another. Maria Kraft shows us on the basis of 12 fairy tales with six different relationship patterns how it all works - and how we can profit therapeutically from such observations.