'Outlander' episode 7 proves that it takes more than love to make a marriage work

Spoiler warning: This recap contains plot details for Outlander Season 3, episode 7, titled "Créme de Menthe." To refresh your memory of where we left off, check out our recap of episode 6.

Well, that didn't last long.

If episode 6 was a parallel to Claire and Jamie's wedding night, all breathless anticipation, nerves and lust, episode 7 signals that the honeymoon is most definitely over, and reality has come crashing back in. All those tricky issues that our beloved couple delayed discussing last week -- waiting for an opportune moment that will never come -- are starting to get dredged back up, from Jamie's extracurricular activities, to Young Ian's involvement in his uncle's life, to Claire's hard-to-explain absence.

Last week, we got hints of Jamie's (understandable) jealousy over Frank being the one to live with his wife and raise his daughter, but now, we see that his grief and insecurity has boiled over, making him second-guess his connection with Claire.

And while we had plenty of reminders that 1950s and early '60s attitudes towards women weren't particularly progressive in the first half of the season, Claire is now once again faced with the reality of how 18th century men viewed women -- as either "a madonna or a whore," as she puts it, when Jamie reiterates his disgust for Brianna's period-appropriate bikini.

Young Ian proves to be the catalyst for their disagreement, as Claire questions Jamie's decision to lie to Ian about his son's whereabouts. She makes a pointed comment that Jamie isn't the boy's father and has no idea how it feels to be a worried parent, which is both a little insensitive and not entirely true -- there must be a singular kind of agony in having his children raised by others, unable to have any say in their parenting decisions, and that seems like a position that would come with plenty of worries.

Even if it's not fair of him to treat Young Ian as a surrogate son rather than giving his parents peace of mind, you can clearly see that Jamie's desire springs from a deep well of loss -- that his bonds with Young Ian and Fergus go some small way towards helping ease the pain of everything he's missed out on with his own children.

"We will start to see, with the Young Ian character, Jamie is in many ways a father figure to him," executive producer Maril Davis tells us. "Young Ian is so much more like Jamie than his parents -- he has such a sense of adventure, and I think that relationship we'll start to see is really interesting; that he is kind of stepping in, whether or not that is his area, and how he butts heads with Jenny and Ian."

What's particularly heartbreaking about this exchange, and Jamie's obvious resentment over losing time with Brianna, is that these differences in parenting style and societal expectations are conversations that he and Claire probably imagined they'd be having with each other as they raised their child together, not 20 years after the fact when they're both set in their ways.

Jamie likely wouldn't be so stubborn over Young Ian if he'd had the chance to be involved in his daughter's life, but now these two have to navigate yet another set of differences, since Claire also isn't entitled to crash back into Jamie's life and immediately try and change everything about how he's been operating for years without her. And while her decision to save a man who tried to rape and kill her kind of feels like unnecessary drama for drama's sake, you can't deny that it's also pretty in-character for her.

That awkward dance, testing each other's boundaries and challenging one another when necessary, has always been a hallmark of Claire and Jamie's relationship, and it's one of many reasons why it's so easy to relate to them as a couple. Just because you're in love (and have an awesome sex life), it doesn't guarantee that you'll agree over every decision -- but that foundation of love and respect also ensures that neither of them will quit when the going gets tough. (And let's be honest, there aren't many periods when it isn't tough for these two.)

Either way, it's clear that Claire won't have to handle all the disapproving frowns alone for long -- with Jamie taking Claire and Young Ian back to Lallybroch in episode 8, Jenny will no doubt have plenty to say about her son's activities, her brother's secrecy and her sister-in-law's disappearing act.

Oh, and then there's the small matter of Jamie's exchange with Fergus in the episode's final moments, regarding Jamie's other wife.

Yeah, shit is about to hit the fan.

Outlander airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on Starz.

Watch: 'Outlander' Season 3 is a heartbreaker.