There seems to be a particular interest in the vulnerable(covert) narcissists who are especially good at pretending to care and are frequently taken for nice, sweet, positive, and genuinely caring. It’s only after establishing a relationship with a person that they begin to show their true colors. Yet, they are the hardest to leave because they are extra confusing - showing you care when you are down but tearing you down whenever you feel a little stronger. I will address them in a separate post.

Next week I will talk about what it takes to leave a relationship with a highly narcissistic person. On average, it takes 7 attempts to do so before a victim of narcissistic abuse finally does it. So this isn’t simply a pack-your-bags decision.

While adults may be able to avoid these relationships, children born into them are not so lucky. They grow up with narcissistic parents as their first role models, their first blueprint for relationships, and most importantly, their first self-concept. It turns out that it matters who is the narcissist in the family - the mother or the father. Furthermore, boys and girls have different relationships with their mothers and fathers.

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Next week, in Part 2 of this 3-part series on narcissistic abuse, I will discuss children growing up with narcissistic parents. Don’t miss this!

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Everyone’s ex is a narcissist these days, and people constantly blame their problems as adults on supposedly narcissistic parents. While it is true that in the age of selfies and “me first” attitude, we all seem to be acquiring more narcissistic qualities, those who have actually lived with very highly narcissistic parents or partners roll their eyes at the rest of us, saying, “Hold my beer.”

Narcissistic abuse is pernicious, sneaky, and incredibly destabilizing and disorienting, and because of it, extremely hard to detect and extricate yourself from. By definition, it makes you question your own perception of reality and erodes your self-reliance and confidence, so how are you ever going to know that what you are experiencing is the machinations of a narcissistic person?

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Next week, I start a 3-week series on Narcissistic Abuse. Don’t miss it.

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A Pew Research survey from October 2025 found that 75% of US adults have read at least part of one book in the last 12 months. Eight percent read exactly one. Book clubs attract fewer people. Audiobooks and e-books are becoming widely used, while physical book readership is declining. More educated people, as well as more white people, read more books. People under 50 and Asians are more likely to use audiobooks and e-books. Women outread men. And about 25% of Americans just don’t read.

You might think, “Who cares? We’ve got YouTube and social media.” But reading seems to have a fascinating relationship with brain development, critical thinking, creativity, and more. Humans are the only species on the planet that have invented reading, and our brains have reorganized to do it. It’s got to be worth something to just give it up.

Some scientists argue that people who read more score higher on “Openness to new experiences” in the Big Five personality traits. In real life, that shows up as intellectual curiosity, an appetite for novelty, tolerance for complexity, imagination, and an interest in ideas.

It’s hard to say whether intellectually curious people got that way from reading books, or whether they read books because they are that way. It’s probably not worth trying to figure out which is the chicken and which is the egg. Education, childhood environment, vocabulary, parental modeling, income, and access to books also affect the probability of becoming a reader. In turn, reading compounds the initial differences.

Importantly, these readers may be getting a leg up over non-readers. Compare verbal knowledge between readers and non-readers, and you see, on average, a difference in eloquence, expression, and ability to convey not only information but also feelings and complex ideas. I found a meta-analysis on PubMed from 2024, claiming that “reading fiction led to significant small-sized cognitive benefits,” meaning lifetime fiction exposure correlated with better cognitive outcomes. It wasn’t remotely enough to say “readers are smarter,” but it is a meaningful population-level association that’s likely to increase as more people stop reading.

“…effects were greatest for verbal abilities, followed by general cognitive abilities and empathy/mentalizing/outgroup judgments. “

It’s not difficult to imagine how non-readers, losing the skill of reading, find reading more effortful, so they avoid it. But by avoiding reading, they also risk losing vocabulary and may find it difficult to express themselves and their ideas.

It reminds me of this British guy I watch on social media who says, “If you want to say ‘Don’t F*** with me,’ It is far too rude. Far too blunt…” and then goes on to give you alternatives, ending with the Victorian version. And as you can imagine, they are hilarious, but only because he’s got quite the vocabulary.

Beyond counting vocabulary, reading gives you repeated practice of inhabiting a mind that isn’t yours. I used to read a lot of Agatha Christie novels. Then moved to Raymond Chandler, and from there to more modern crime novels. When Breaking Bad came out, Season1, Episode 2, when Walter White and Jesse Pinkman had to dispose of the corpse of a rival drug dealer, I said, “Get hydrofluoric acid and put him in the bathtub. Make sure it’s NOT a ceramic tub or else…” Well, we know how that went. They put him in the regular ceramic tub, and the whole human-remains soup came crashing through the floorboards into the hallway below.

My boyfriend looked at me like, “How did you know that?” I told him that I know 100 ways to dispose of a body so no one can find it. I was just inhabiting the Breaking Bad world, but my boyfriend found it difficult to sleep at night for a while. Thankfully, most worlds I inhabit are much more pleasant and do not involve breaking the law. These days, I mostly read non-fiction and try to fill my head with more useful information.

Good reading, not just fiction, transforms the reader. It asks us to see different perspectives, and we inevitably ask ourselves many questions: “What would I do? What if I am in this situation? How can I use this? Is this helpful? What is left unsaid? What are the implications?” and so on. Our minds churn out ideas from there.

But, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s 2023 PIAAC assessment of adults ages 16–65, roughly 8% of working-age U.S. adults have extremely limited English literacy (below Level 1), while 28% have low literacy skills, meaning they struggle to comprehend as complexity increases. How does more than one quarter of the U.S population survive an increasingly complex world - from navigating bureaucracy to voting, to avoiding scams, to getting jobs, to simply functioning day-to-day?

Reading is literally a brain exercise. So is conversing, apparently.

Scientists analyzing 22 studies spanning 14 years found that we speak 338 fewer words per day in our modern societies. Meaning we don’t speak as much as we used to. Whether that means we’re also losing conversational skills is another question, but generally, skills we practice less aren’t skills we should expect to improve. “From 2005 to 2019, the reduction in the estimated number of words spoken per day was about 28%.“ It makes me wonder what COVID did to the rest.

That can’t be good.

Living in one’s own head hasn’t proven to be the most hospitable environment, especially for long periods. You see people talking to themselves and their pets instead, but that’s not helping with intellectual discourse or learning to live with other people’s opinions, preferences, ideas, and questions.

It’s not hard to imagine a feedback loop. People become uncomfortable asking for help or learning about their neighbors and community because these things require conversations. Face-to-face conversations become more uncomfortable, so people avoid them and feel increasingly isolated, but also more judgmental of others, more intolerant, and more vulnerable to confirmation bias and manipulation.

The not-talking bit is interesting in the age of AI because when people don’t know what to say, they just ask ChatGPT. The result is that people text like witty comedians or thoughtful, emotionally intelligent humans, but when you meet them in person, they can’t get three words out. “I hear what you’re saying, and I want to validate your feelings while also expressing my boundaries…” sounds terrific in a text. But in an actual argument, people interrupt, get defensive, can’t articulate what they feel, violate boundaries, or shut down.

Resumes shine, while people bomb their in-person job interviews. Someone writes beautifully reasoned emails but contributes very little when challenged in real time. When asked about their own email, if AI did much of the reasoning and probably all of the writing, they have difficulty defending their arguments or can’t remember what they wrote.

Not to mention what happens in classrooms these days. I used to sweat over papers and exams. Now, the answers are easy to get, but who bothers remembering them? AI can structure a paper, but students risk failing to develop the skill of structuring their thoughts. They lose the opportunity to think for themselves and to know why they think what they think.

Between not reading and not talking, we might be setting ourselves up for a very unpleasant future, one in which we find ourselves more polarized, more reliant on technology to do things for us, and more isolated. To circle back to the beginning, what would our world look like if it bifurcated into readers with conversational skills and mute non-readers?

Thanks for reading this.

People want a magic cure for ailing relationships. I get it. And there is one. Maybe not exactly magic, but definitely something you can do today no matter how stale or tumultuous your relationship has become. If I tell you what it is, you probably won’t believe me because it’s the easiest thing you can possibly do, won’t mind doing, and already know how to do it.

And if you like your relationship and want to keep liking it, what I am about to tell you will benefit you too.

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There are two sides to every story, they say. But infidelity has three. You need to understand all three to know how to protect your relationship and yourself from becoming one of them. And to do that, you need to let go of the most common assumptions about affairs you’ve most likely accepted as gospel, because each perspective holds a diagnostic clue about hidden relationship dynamics and vulnerabilities.

When a relationship fractures, we instinctively want to assign blame. We want a clear villain and a clear victim. We want clear explanations. An affair offers none of it. Instead, it turns people’s worlds upside down. It meshes blame, shame, guilt, excitement, passion, insecurities, entitlement, and right and wrong into a Level 5 hurricane, with a long tail of destruction.

Who cheats more? It depends on what you consider cheating. Not all affairs involve physical contact. Not all people honestly answer survey questions for statistical purposes, either. Recent findings from the General Social Survey (GSS) and the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) highlight some interesting trends in physical cheating. In a major reversal from previous decades, the reported infidelity rate for married men (ages 25–54) dropped from 21% to 11%, while women in the same age group remained at 14%.

However, this did not mean that men stopped cheating. It means they changed their cheating ways. It turns out, the steep drop in physical cheating among younger men directly correlates with the rise of digital alternatives such as online pornography, virtual intimacy, and social media flirting, replacing physical affairs.

While historic GSS data only tracked physical intercourse among married people, modern surveys find that 76% of Americans consider a secret, non-physical emotional relationship to be infidelity. Nearly 72% of U.S. adults state that a secret online-only emotional relationship constitutes cheating, even if you are not married.

Chances are that you know someone, or you are someone who has been either a cheater, cheated on, or an affair partner. Perhaps some of you reading this are currently in a love triangle, even if you don’t know it yet.

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I wonder what her experience feels like to her. She always looks happy, but what does happiness feel like from her perspective? Perhaps in her little furry head, the world for “happiness” is a “sand hole.” Or perhaps happiness is not a word. It’s a smell. What does a beach sand hole smell like? How would I know?

How would I know anything? People have been asking themselves this same thing since apparently humans were self-aware enough to wonder about it. Ancient scriptures dug into that hole. Years ago, I dug into ancient scriptures and came out the other end not necessarily enlightened but definitely more informed. Ancient philosophies seem to agree on a few things we can’t dispute and should pay close attention to.

The most fundamental agreement among philosophical thought from India, China, Ancient Greece, and Mexico is that human beings normally experience neither themselves nor reality quite as they actually are, and therefore we misbehave and suffer.

And here we are, doing our best to keep it that way. We rarely question our perceptions. Our best guesses of what reality is come from the sciences. Most of it goes right over our heads, because these days most of us need a calculator to figure out a restaurant tip, let alone understand what chemistry or quantum physics is telling us. It doesn’t stop us from misunderstanding it and arguing over it, though.

While I remember the Deepak Chopras and Oshos out there who confidently misrepresent quantum physics to build a business empire selling people hope of enlightenment and escape from suffering, Lulu poops.

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Some discard it altogether, accepting their fortune’s loss. Others wonder if they could refill it.

So, when a client tells me, “I am no longer attracted to my partner,” I want to know what we are talking about. What was in that pouch? Romantic, sexual, and physical attraction may sound about the same, but they are different types and sizes of coins in the pouch. There might be other coins in there too, such as admiration and respect.

Everyone’s fortune depends on their perception of which coins are missing and how big those coins were from their perspective. Is there anything left at all? Even more interesting to me is why these coins disappeared. Until this question is answered, the pouch cannot be refilled. The answers themselves cannot refill the pouch either. That’s just the first step and what could be a long and sometimes impossible process.

Couples need to do the right things to plump up their attraction pouches again. And they need patience. Some succeed. Many fail.

Physical attraction is finding someone’s appearance, voice, scent, movement, or overall presence aesthetically appealing. It’s essentially, “I like looking at this person.” We say things like, “She’s beautiful,” and “He’s handsome.” It’s a good start, and it could be the end of it. We can enjoy the physical attractiveness of others without ever wanting to have sex with them or even have them over for dinner.

Sexual attraction makes you say, “I WANT this person.” That’s where “chemistry” delivers its magic. Often, physical attraction precedes sexual attraction. But also, many people become sexually attracted to someone they didn’t initially find especially physically attractive. But the person’s personality, humor, intelligence, confidence, or emotional intimacy, and sometimes reputation, whip up an unmistakable chemical reaction, inducing the kind of craving that makes you sing “Let’s get it on.” Unless you’re a millennial, in which case you might be humming along to “Need to Know” (Doja Cat). Anyone older, don’t look up that one. Consider yourself warned.

Researchers often distinguish physical and sexual attraction because even though they may overlap, they are not identical psychological processes.

Then, there’s romantic attraction, adding yet another layer. Somehow your brain decides that you just can’t live without the object of your affection. Now, you want to have this person forever. You imagine yourself building a life with them. You miss them when they are gone. You want them to hold you and tell you how much they love you. You become Romeo and Juliet with a wedding. That’s an “All of Me,” John Legend time.

One of the most interesting findings from relationship research is that these dimensions don’t always rise and fall together. In a long relationship, for example:

• Physical attraction may remain high (”I still think she’s beautiful.”)

• Sexual attraction may fluctuate.

• Romantic attraction may remain very strong (”He/She’s still MY person.”)

Or:

• Someone may still find their partner physically beautiful.

• Romantic love may still exist, but fluctuate.

• Yet, sexual attraction may be gone completely.

But the worst case is when all three disappear. That’s a truly sad-looking, droopy, empty pouch of attraction. You look at the other person and don’t want to even talk to them. May even feel repulsed.

So, that’s why I want to know what my clients mean by “attraction.” Getting “it” back depends on what has been lost, how long it has been, and what killed it. These may be the most frightening questions in long-term relationships because they usually arrive after months or years of pretending nothing is wrong.

What actually kills attraction?

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I’ve been living aboard the Hail Mary ship on a journey to save the Earth from certain death. It’s only been a few days for me flipping pages, but if you know your relativity, you know how time dilates. My few days with a human and an alien on a dangerous interstellar adventure are the equivalent of several news cycles in America.

Somehow, America still exists despite my inattention to controversial political details.

Upon my “return,” I am told that our Secretary of State/National Security Adviser/Acting Archivist of the United States (what’s that?)/Acting Administrator of the USAID(didn’t this get DOGEd?), the one and only, multitalented Marco Rubio has released a 100-page report, blacklisting a bunch of politically inconvenient US Citizens and organizations.

I am told that the Mayors of NYC and LA, George Floyd, Rep. Oman, and even Amy Goodman from Democracy Now are blacklisted. As in the Red Scare and McCarthyism of the 50s.

Supposedly, this is all over the news. Big news. Can-you-believe-it news.

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Jane’s husband survived a heart attack at 37. She says everyone around them assumed everything was fine now. In many ways, the crisis was over. But it didn’t feel over for her at home. She felt exhausted, serving as his caretaker and providing emotional support, coordinating his appointments, running the household, caring for the children, and still working.

She admits to feeling like running on empty and, at the same time, guilty for complaining or asking for time to herself. Meanwhile, her husband was not the man he used to be. Dependent, vulnerable, and mostly depressed, he spent his days withdrawn in his own world. Still haunted by the fear of another heart attack, he felt his stomach tighten and his heart race whenever he was alone, but he ground his teeth and kept it to himself, ashamed to admit how frightened he was.

A medical emergency is not necessary for one spouse to become the other’s caretaker. Sometimes, people just age differently. Not everyone has the means to hire help, or the good fortune to have family around to share the burden. Frequently, older couples prefer to age in place. But aging in place is not necessarily the easiest on the caretaker.

No matter how people end up in a caretaking situation, they usually struggle with shifting relationship dynamics and the renegotiation of roles and responsibilities. They become like Roman Riders on two horses - the one saddled with logistics, and the other with psychological unease, galloping through their new reality while trying not to fall down and make things worse.

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I doubt there’s anyone left in this country, or on this planet for that matter, who hasn’t heard of “limiting beliefs,” “childhood trauma,” or the relationship between our upbringing and our current life experiences. In other words, therapists and anyone who’s ever read a self-help book know to look for clues in our past.

Yet knowing why we get stuck in unhelpful, unhealthy behavior and relationships is not the same as why we remain stuck even when we have the self-knowledge and intellectual understanding we need to move on.

I observe clients, friends, family, and people in general: after a year, two, or ten of therapy, working on themselves, reading and following expert advice, and gaining insight, many still struggle with the same emotional challenges. In many cases, they cycle in and out of “doing better” and “not again.”

For example, a man in his 50’s has been holding a grudge against his mother for leaving him with his dad when he was a schoolboy. No amount of talking it over with her and listening to her reasons and apologies, no amount of help and support she’s gifted him for decades since, no amount of therapy has actually made any difference except in superficial ways. His relationship with her remains tainted by resentment and blame, even though he understands intellectually what he is doing emotionally to her and to himself. An easy explanation would be to say that this dynamic and being the victim are now part of his identity. But what if he does not wish to be this way and has been trying for years to get over his resentment? What if he’s tried to reframe, understand, and empathize with her, and still the lever of resentment refuses to budge while the dynamic continues to hurt both of them?

Many people want change. They understand how they got to where they are. Yet change rarely comes. That suggests something important: insight, by itself, is not the lever that moves human behavior. Something else is holding the system in place.

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According to Esther Perel, a famed relationship expert, we exist in the midst of a relationship revolution.

We’ve transitioned from production-based relationships (the institution of marriage for the preservation of wealth and the growth of one’s resources) to service-based relationships (we want pleasure, fun, someone to fulfill us and help us become the best we can be as individuals). We’ve elevated personal relationships up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from survival, through love and connection, to self-actualization. Which is to say, we now leave relationships not because they are bad, but because they are not good enough.

We have gained unprecedented freedom in the relationship space, but no longer trust the maps that once helped people navigate it.

We used to know the roles we should play. Now, we’re free to redefine everything, including ourselves. Our unprecedented freedom creates opportunities and flexibility to choose partners, leave marriages, reject tradition, make our own relationship rules, and reinvent ourselves whenever we feel we need to. Many take full advantage of it, as evidenced by marriage statistics showing high divorce rates, fewer people choosing to marry, and when they do, it’s much later in life.

Others feel confused and left behind instead, as they can’t seem to figure out how they fit into the new world without traditional rules and prescribed roles. They look back in time and feel that it’s never been so hard to find a life partner before.

In all this freedom to choose, to change, to explore, we still search for stability and security. A few find it, while many more experience existential anxiety.

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Conflict is like the flu. You know it happens, but you hope it won’t happen to you, and not today. And, if it does, it will be easy, and you’ll be back on your feet in no time. But sometimes, it puts you out for weeks. As long as you live, conflict and the flu will happen to you.

While some contentions get resolved with as little as clarifying your statements, intentions, and plans, admitting fault or a mistake, others linger and eat you up for weeks, months, and even years.

“If you don’t want to fight, learn to compromise,” you’ve heard it a million times. I consider this a recipe for stewing in resentment, leading to recurring arguments about the same thing. Here’s why.

Compromise often relies on the same assumptions as distributive bargaining: that there is a fixed pie and every gain for one person comes at the expense of the other. It works in some situations, like when you and your friends need to split the bill at the pizza shop. You all ate a different amount of pizza. Count the slices. Determine your portion of the bill. People pay for what they eat. Everyone goes home full and happy.

The classic example of distributive bargaining is haggling over price. You have a bike to sell and want $100 for it. I want to pay $50. We settle at $75. Neither of us got what we wanted.

The compromise worked, but the result is mediocre. We could get over the bike price after a while, especially because we may never see each other again, and the stakes are pretty low. But when these types of compromises occur in relationships, the mediocre results can cause people to feel and behave in strange ways.

Not everything divides like a pizza pie or should amount to a haggle. Values, beliefs, wants, and human needs do not subject themselves to these strategies.

If you believe Christmas should be spent with your parents, but your partner wants to go skiing and brings up the fact that last year Christmas was at your parents’ house, you are about to enter a negotiation. If you are married to someone whose wants, values, priorities, or needs regularly conflict with your own, good luck feeling happy about the compromise you end up making. At best, you will feel begrudgingly accommodating. Inevitably, you will start keeping a mental score that you will gladly bring up at the next negotiation, whatever that might be about.

Usually, no one wins, not even the person who gets to have their way, because they will have to contend with their partner’s resentment and eventually give up something they want to even out the score. The winner still has to live with their partner’s disappointment or withdrawal. A negotiated victory often becomes a relational loss.

Sometimes “compromise” means the less powerful person consistently accepts slightly less than they want. Many unhappy marriages are built on decades of “reasonable compromises” that disproportionately favored one partner. If every major decision is split down the middle or skewed towards the more powerful person, people may slowly lose touch with what they genuinely want. You see this in career choices, lifestyle choices, sexuality, parenting, retirement plans, and even in who people vote for and where a couple chooses to live.

Even though compromise is fast - let’s just meet in the middle, many conflicts have objectively better solutions than the midpoint. But to find them requires a different way of thinking about them.

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Marriage occupies a central role in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Unlike many Christian traditions that view marriage as lasting only until death, faithful Latter-day Saints believe that marriages performed in LDS temples are “sealed” for eternity.

Mormons believe that the highest level of heaven is associated with eternal family relationships.

Marriage and family are considered part of God’s plan for human progression. Although a civil marriage can be dissolved, especially after counseling and a fair attempt to save it, or in cases of abuse, abandonment, addiction, and infidelity, temple marriage is another matter.

My client walked out on a temple marriage. Officially, people are free to leave, ask for the marriage to be unsealed, and if they remarry, they can be sealed to the new spouse. They can also leave the faith if they want to, and the Church does not teach that they should be shunned. Officially.

However, severe consequences do follow. Many former members describe their departure as being treated almost like a death in the family because relatives believe eternal togetherness may be at risk. Former members lose social support networks and find themselves excluded from community life. Some even lose business partners, clients, and professional connections and opportunities. And there are complications with joint child custody arising from one ex-spouse leaving the faith while the other remains in it.

My client, like many others, had to decide if she could stay physically in, but mentally out, and continue to do whatever other Mormons do, just to preserve her family and social bonds, or if she couldn’t. At first glance, this looks like a cost-benefit analysis of logistics, connections, and structure. But below the surface, a person who no longer holds that religious identity finds themself trapped in a world they don’t belong to, and it sucks.

This kind of pretending felt corrosive to her mental health and balance. Eventually, the pain of pretending became stronger than the pain of taking a chance. She took that chance, and at the time she came to see me, she was feeling the pain of possibly losing her children and grandchildren forever.

She had outgrown her religion and her marriage. From her perspective, she should not be punished for living honestly and authentically.

People rarely stay the same. Everyone changes. The problem is that couples often change at different rates, in different domains, or toward different values. One person starts therapy. One develops a spiritual practice. One becomes healthier, more ambitious, more independent, more social, more reflective, and more emotionally aware. The other may be growing too, but in ways that don’t overlap, and may or may not be compatible. Or they could be stagnating, even getting worse. They could be getting less healthy, more complacent, politically differently aligned, develop substance abuse dependency, become chronically negative, abusive, etc.

Can a relationship survive growth divergence and personal changes? In exploring the question, I found six interesting themes.

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“Mawage. Mawage is what bwings us togethah today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam wifin a dweam! And wove, twoo wove, will fowow you forevah…”

So, proclaims the priest in the famous Princess Bride scene. And it does, until it doesn’t. And frequently, it doesn’t. Because twoo wove takes more work and usually looks much different from a fairytale wedding ceremony. Too many people these days mistake wedding planning for life planning with another human, along with all their hang-ups, weird habits, and slew of relatives.

As far as stats go, the success of Mawage looks like a coin flip, with fewer second and third marriages making it past the 5th year. I, personally, would not consider starting a business with these kinds of odds. And yet, every day, people jump into this kind of joint venture without real clarity and practically no contingency plans.

Why then would anyone pretend to be surprised that so many people suffer the dissolution of Mawage? More interesting to me is the question of why so many women feel such relief when it finally ends, as they embark on a path that’s no longer “less traveled.”

We now have an increasing cohort of ex-wives who leave their husbands to grow and transform on their own terms. Empowered, good earners, and independent, they seem less attached to that dweam wifin a dweam, and perfectly happy to create their own reality.

I “met” Cindy, a fellow writer who explores these concepts, and over time, we engaged in some interesting conversations. So, we decided to ask three questions we hear most from clients and readers from our individual perspectives.

We do not align on these, but this only demonstrates the complexity of the environment and the variety of the viewpoints within it, as it should. As the question each woman (and man) asks themselves when evaluating their situation, although possibly common, still triggers unique responses, as no two marriages are the same. No two people are the same. No two lives are the same.

How would you answer these questions? Have you had to? Are you currently struggling with them?

CDT = Cindy DiTiberio (Read her post
VP = me, Val

How important is sexual compatibility compared to emotional compatibility in a lasting relationship?

CDT: I guess the question is, are you monogamous? If you are monogamous, then sexual compatibility is probably pretty important if sex is a high priority for you. If you both don’t have a high sex drive and sex isn’t a primary way you stay connected, it would be less important. But is sexual compatibility what you like in bed? Or how much you want to have sex?

Do you know that I’ve never really considered emotional compatibility? But now that I’ve googled it, I think this is more important than sexual compatibility because how you feel seen and heard and nurtured in your relationship seems to come down to emotional compatibility and without it, what are you even doing in a relationship?

I think for a relationship to last you need both. In other words, if one person really values sex and the other person doesn’t, that’s going to be an issue in your relationship that doesn’t go away. And if you don’t feel emotionally supported in your relationship, again, what are you even doing in a relationship with that person?

This is one of the challenges with long-term relationships and the structure of marriage. I believe we are made to grow and evolve as humans. Therefore, what we need from a relationship or what we want from a sexual relationship is prone to change. If two people can grow and change and adjust together, the relationship can last. But often, the changes lead to a couple who were once compatible no longer being compatible. That is not the fault of either individual but just what happens when humans change and evolve.

VP: I’d say, sexual compatibility matters a lot, regardless of your relationship structure. Yes, there are committed relationships out there that right off the bat do not include any kind of sexual interaction, but that’s a very tiny percentage of the population. Interestingly, I’ve seen many relationships that only still exist because the sex is good. People are willing to put up with all sorts of toxic behavior and even joke about working out their differences in the bedroom, and having make-up sex. Sadly, if they are still together when they get older, and their body parts don’t work anymore, I see them in my office complaining about having a shitty marriage.

Emotional compatibility will carry a relationship through ups and downs. People like feeling cared for, considered, prioritized, seen, heard, not just given orgasms. Emotional compatibility keeps people together, and it helps them enjoy their relationship outside of the bedroom and long after the sex drive is gone.

It shouldn’t be an either-or question at all. How would you like to have to choose between eating and drinking? That’s how it is with sexual and emotional compatibility. You need both. A relationship can’t survive on one alone. It gets a little tricky when partners mistake emotional safety for erotic compatibility. They are related, but they are not the same thing. Emotional safety builds trust, creates stability and predictability, and provides security. Eroticism sources from novelty, likes to live on the edge, and sometimes ventures outside of comfort zones. It needs playfulness, fantasy, tension, unpredictability. So, basically, emotional compatibility has to balance just right with sexual compatibility.

Assuming partners are physically healthy, when sex fades in marriage, is it usually about attraction or about resentment, complacency, or emotional distance?

CDT: I think it is about the structures inherent in a marriage which stifle eroticism. Domesticity and cohabitation leave very little room for mystery, as Esther Perel says.

Celeste Davis has written the treatise on this but patriarchal sex is not sex that many women enjoy. So many wives find they do not desire sex with their partner but then leave said marriages and discover a whole new interest in sex. I don’t think sex as maintenance is appealing for women, something they should do as part of the marriage contract no matter how much desire they feel. Emily Nagoski has a section in her book Come Together about how we have emotional floorplans in our brains with different rooms and that it is all about what leads you to eroticism. And much of our daily lives as partners and parents require being in rooms that are not adjacent to that space.I definitely don’t think it is about attraction, I think it is about the conditions of our lives and what makes sexual desire bloom and what makes it die.

VP: The answer is YES. Yep. All of it. Resentment is a powerful force. It shows up in all sorts of ways, from passive-aggressive behavior to trying to one-up your partner, to power struggles, to withholding sex, and in a million other ways.

If complacency can kill your houseplants, it definitely can kill your sex life with your partner. Eroticism and long-term desire require intentionality, not just compatibility. I forgot who said that foreplay begins as soon as the last orgasm ends. It means eroticism needs constant tending. But it’s fun, so I don’t understand why people choose complacency instead. I can understand resentment from unresolved problems and never-ending nagging and ongoing conflicts, or from the imbalance in the relationship, but for the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone would choose that over touching their partner 1000 times a day, smiling, flirting, and being playful with them.

As for emotional distancing, well, dah, what do you think resentment is? It’s emotional distancing. But so is lying, hiding things from your partner, being selfish, communicating like a toddler, treating them like a toddler, micromanaging them, assuming you know everything about them, losing curiosity about them, and putting yourself first all the time, to name a few reasons people end up emotionally distant. None of these are compatible with an awesome sex life with your partner.

I’ve got no issues with open relationships, swinging, and all sorts of adult ways to stay sexually alive, explore, and enjoy yourself. But no matter what you do with others out there, it may still not change what you do with your primary partner and how you relate to them at home.

If sexual needs aren’t met in marriage, what is the responsibility of each partner?

CDT: I think there needs to be a renegotiation of terms. I don’t think one person should be responsible for another’s sexual fulfillment which is one of the reasons I am no longer a proponent of marriage. I think we change as we age and our bodies change and our desires change. So if someone’s needs aren’t being met, I wish we had more avenues to support couples who want to explore polyamory. I have shared in this post from The Marriage Diaries three marriages where they opened the marriage. One woman realized after being married she was asexual and she was thrilled when they opened their marriage and she no longer had to have sex she didn’t want. For another, they just weren’t compatible as lovers but remain married as platonic partners until the kids are grown (or these terms no longer feel manageable). But I think for many people, because marriage is still so closely tied to monogamy and fidelity, it is hard to imagine being married with new terms of sexual freedom.

I think often relationships run their courses and no one’s needs are being met the way they were in the beginning. At this point, we should be able to name time of death. Oops, this isn’t working anymore, is it? You deserve to have your emotional needs met and it looks like I’m not able to meet them the way you need. I deserve to have my sexual needs met and it appears you no longer have the desire to do so. I totally understand and don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to! Let’s figure out how to mutually and respectfully part ways.

But of course marriage, because it is a legally binding contract tied to all those promises you made at the altar, is much harder to unravel. We are told to try and make it work! And thus people’s needs aren’t being met and we make it a personal failing or try and fix it via therapy instead of just naming that the relationship should end.

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VP: Yep, definitely a renegotiation of the relationship. Clients come to me saying, “My wife doesn’t want to have sex with me anymore.” I usually ask, “Would you want to have sex with you if you were your spouse? Why would you and why wouldn’t you?” A guy once said, “I don’t find my wife attractive anymore.” Looking at him, I asked, “Do you think she finds you attractive?” It’s easy to project the problems onto the other person, but nothing will change until both partners have a heart-to-heart conversation about the state of their relationship and figure out what to do together.

A marriage is a contractual relationship between two people about living together. It’s not a sex slave contract. No one should expect sex from their partners, no matter when, no matter how. Sex is something you share together, not something you demand. And unless it’s fun for both of you, it’s going to fizzle out eventually. So, if you want it, don’t demand it. Create and maintain the environment for your partner to want it too. That’s not the same as bribing them with flowers and chocolates once a year. If you make them feel obligated, they’ll want it even less. Go back and read that emotional compatibility section again. Get creative on top of it, without pressuring the other person.

You will need to change things about yourself just as much as your partner will have to change things about themselves. Get busy. If, for some reason, your partner has decided they are done with sex altogether, it’s their right to make that decision. But it is not their right to stop YOU from having that experience forever. So, that’s when the terms of your relationship most definitely need to change.

I know people who’ve been married for longer than I’ve been alive and are still having sex. Yep, in their 80s. It may not look or feel like what they did in their twenties, but they’ve kept the flame going. It means it’s possible, should two people choose to. If they don’t, then they need to talk to each other and figure out how to navigate the challenge, what they allow each other to do, and what’s fair.

I hope you enjoyed this two-perspective conversation.

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According to Carl Jung, dreams contain useful material. Some more than others. This one most definitely. It left me in a crabby mood. All day, I was trying to shelve it as a “whatever,” but it kept falling off the shelf, irritating me, until at 9:30 pm, I tugged on a string. The dream unraveled and came together into an unexpected revelation.

About this time two years ago, I had just arrived in Bulgaria, the beginning of a new phase in life. I had my mother to keep an eye on, while traveling with my doggie, while trying to figure out who I am becoming.

Becoming doesn’t arrive, though, because it’s actually a verb.

So, my first mistake was to imagine a final version of the person I am going to be. I changed my alarm clock from 5:45 am to 7:00 am and woke up every morning for over a year expecting a new me that felt comfortable in my new surroundings, new responsibilities, new rhythm, and newfound freedom.

But instead, I felt restless. I questioned my value without the hustle, the competition, my businesses, my projects. Stepping back meant that I’ve agreed to give up achieving, striving, and growing. The accumulator had to become a spender. The hard-working entrepreneur had to relax.

Or perhaps, I could start another business. In Bulgaria. And one in the US. And maybe I should buy another house to fix up and flip. I could buy a couple of apartments in Sofia, fix and flip them, too. What if I learn how to groom dogs and open my own grooming place? I could teach English to Bulgarians. I could start a relocation consulting firm and help foreigners who want to move to Bulgaria or travel around Europe with their pets.

I felt like the year after graduation, when a kid tries to figure out what they want to be. Some go right into a predetermined career, taking the entry job they think will get them there, never stopping to ask if that’s really them. Others bum around trying to figure it out, finding random jobs to pay the bills, and reminiscing about the fun days in college, but complaining that it didn’t prepare them for real life. Yet others go right back to school, earning the next degree, and vowing never to leave academia. I went into working for myself back then.

But what about now?

This is where my mind has been for two years until last night, when Jason didn’t kill me. Instead, he stretched my arm out and ran it through this girl right in front of me. She didn’t feel a thing. I was intangible. I yelled for her attention. She didn’t hear me. I was a ghost.

In my world, I was someone. Not famous or important like a celebrity, or a scientist, or even like a politician, or a local priest. But I had a place in my little community.

Restrained by Jason, intangible and invisible, somehow, I did not panic. I went into full problem-solving mode, wondering how this was possible. Curiosity made me reach overhead to pull Jason’s mask off. As my fingers locked onto the sides of the mask, aware of the heavy straps holding it in place, I woke up. Too soon. I almost had it.

What was this force holding me back and making me feel like a ghost in my own life?

To explain it, I have to tell you about the concept of “generativity,” defined by the psychologist Erik Erikson as the desire to leave a positive legacy. It is a central psychological task of middle adulthood—typically ages 40 to 65—where we focus our energy on making a lasting impact. So, people raise children, become mentors, volunteer their time for worthy causes, build things, create, innovate, and pass it all to their family or others.

Later, Dan McAdams and John Kotre expanded on the idea as a multifaceted, lifelong arrangement of desires, cultural demands, and life stories. Instead of viewing generativity as a strict age-based stage, McAdams proposed we look at it as a dynamic, ongoing psychological construct defined by not entirely altruistic inner desire, social expectations pushing us toward contribution and care, conscious caring orientation toward future generations, underlying optimism in the goodness of humanity, conscious personal goals and long-term plans to help others, and the stories we tell ourselves in which we are the contributors, guides, survivors, teachers, builders, healers, leaders, or protectors.

My story is a story of pulling myself up by my bootstraps, overcoming, and figuring things out. Two years ago, a new story began, and I didn’t know what it was about. I still don’t know, but I know what held me back from figuring it out.

Money.

Money is tricky because I can live with or without it. I am not flashy. But I love making money. I inherited this from my paternal grandmother. She was evil by all accounts except mine. She treated me well and taught me some useful lessons.

She monetized everything she did every day, despite being uneducated and illiterate. She grew a garden but made it bigger than the family needed, so she could sell the excess produce. If she needed 10 chickens for food and eggs, she got 25 and sold the extra eggs and meat.

She loved knitting. I had more sweaters than I could wear, and unbeknownst to me, I had become a model for her craft. People were lining up to order sweaters from her at increasingly higher prices. In a communist country, with only a minimal pension, she had figured out how to build wealth. The extra money she made and saved over the years bought property.

Now, I don’t want to glorify her because there are still people in her village who won’t walk on the sidewalk in front of her old house, even though she’s been dead for 25 years and the house has been sold. My own mother’s blood pressure rises, and she turns red in the face at the mere mention of her name. But I have to give credit where credit is due.

I grew up with her eagerly dispensing advice. It’s no surprise that I’ve managed to monetize all my hobbies. Some only made enough money to buy more supplies so I can continue to enjoy them. Others did much better. Yoga is one of them. It became my bread and butter for decades and grew into a yoga studio, a yoga teacher-training program for two different studios, international yoga retreats, and much more. Interior decorating and remodeling houses worked out amazingly well, too.

For decades, this served me well because it helped me survive and build a nest egg big enough to make freedom and a bi-continental lifestyle possible. It allows me the flexibility I need to take care of my mother, to travel, and still be part of the community I love in California.

But in this new phase of life, the urge to make money and monetize my life is holding me back from contributing in the ways I most want to, and from creating for the sake of creating. It also distorts my focus, misinterprets my outcomes, and makes me depressed.

It asks me to pick a place so I can stay there and build something. But I need flexibility more than I need the money. It wants me to focus on one thing so I can grow it, scale it, and make it a viable business. I want to travel with my doggie while she still can. It whispers fearful scenarios in my ear to convince me that I should be making more money. I am pretty sure I can survive anything, except perhaps a zombie apocalypse. But who needs money in a zombie apocalypse?

It tells me that I am no one unless I am the person I used to be.

It puts a price tag on my value. It evaluates every hour, every effort, and every dream through the narrow lens of potential earnings. It reduces my life to a balance sheet. I look at the balance sheet with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Then I turn around and put myself up for sale again.

At the same time, I already experientially know that what’s valuable is not always what makes money. I have a doggie. I bought her eight years ago. Since then, torn between having to work and wanting to play with her, I’ve had a constant reminder and a goal that making money should become a side gig at some point. I paid $1000 for my little Lulu to save her from her neglectful owner. I would have paid $2000 if he had asked. But her value to me massively exceeds that cost. I wouldn’t sell her for a billion dollars. No way, no how.

“At some point” is now, but I can’t make that transition because Jason is holding me back and threatening me with intangibility and invisibility. But I got my fingers on that mask. It’s coming down, and I know what’s behind it.

Fear.

I’ve been afraid to separate my value from my ability to monetize myself. I hid it behind a search for my next project, next accomplishment, next money-making opportunity. Anything that would keep me visible, relevant, and tangible.

~~~~~

Life Intelligence explores the psychology of relationships, identity, self-discovery, meaning, and life’s transitions.

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When the COVID lockdowns hit in 2020, and uncertainty reigned over our lives, I kept my sanity by roaming the beaches and Montana De Oro with my little doggie. Nature replaced doomscrolling for enough hours every day to allow me to remember that I have long-term plans, control over my health, and lots of humans I can be in touch with to support each other. My mind created a container for the chaos and uncertainty, keeping them there so I can function, plan, explore, and even enjoy the gifts of extra time and bonding with my doggie.

It was during that time that I realized that I could have a completely different life, the life I am living now. The mind’s ability to compartmentalize is one of the oldest adaptive strategies we have. At its core, it is the psychological act of separating conflicting thoughts, emotions, identities, memories, or behaviors into distinct “mental containers” so they do not collide all at once.

It exists on a spectrum. At one end, it is a healthy emotional organization. You still need to go to work, even if you are waiting for news about a sick parent. Parents embroiled in a contentious divorce still need to care for and love their children. Trauma survivors still need to function every day. Tragedy does not stop the bills from piling up. Some emotional distancing preserves cognitive bandwidth.

So, compartmentalization helps us retain emotional resources in the face of stress and unfortunate or unavoidable situations. It helps us delay emotional processing to preserve emotional stability when needed most.

It also enables role fluidity. Humans occupy many identities. We are children and parents. We are artists, lovers, nature enthusiasts, musicians, political activists, professionals, spiritual beings, friends, athletes, dancers, etc. We can occupy some identities at the same time. Others we occupy at different times for a fuller life experience and for different opportunities to express ourselves and fulfill our potential.

At the other end of the spectrum, compartmentalization becomes fragmentation, denial, or dissociation. It can preserve functioning, protect identity, reduce cognitive overload, and help people survive impossible situations. It can also distort reality, delay grief, sustain hypocrisy, enable bad behavior, excuse hurting others, and lead to disconnection from oneself.

At around the same time in 2020, I ran into a story about a man who maintained three separate families across different locations, convincing three women that he worked for intelligence agencies like the CIA or MI5, which explained his frequent absences and secrecy. He managed to father 13 children and was a convicted pedophile with a long history of fraud and manipulation.

The deception unraveled when one of his wives, Mary Turner Thompson, received a phone call from one of his other wives, saying, “I am the other, Mrs. Thompson.”

While this example may seem extreme, and while most people are not psychopaths, there are still plenty of unfaithful spouses out there, maintaining extramarital relationships sometimes for years. There are also people embezzling money and committing various crimes with otherwise perfectly normal lives.

What’s striking in many of these cases is that the person often does not experience themselves as “living a lie” in the simple way outsiders imagine. They can psychologically “enter” one compartment fully while temporarily suppressing the existence of the others, sustaining double lives for years.

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I grew up watching and listening to my parents fight. I never knew when an argument might erupt and over what. Frequently, they started with “you said that…” followed by “I never said that…” - the telltale sign of poorly communicated, unmet expectations. I remember sneaking up to their bedroom door after it would slam shut in the midst of a verbal explosion, ready to pounce in with a made-up need for help to break up the fight if it sounded like words might turn into blows.

I don’t think my parents had a clue about how to be partners. They communicated through issuing orders, guilt-tripping, and stonewalling. My mother was the more passive-aggressive of the two, and my father was the drinking man-child.

Along the way, I realized that none of their fights truly ended. They would literally exhaust themselves yelling at each other, then get up the next morning and go about their business as if nothing had happened the night before. The problem with that, from my 10-year-old person’s perspective, was that the next blow-up inevitably revisited the previous blow-up. And the one before that one. And everyone as far as they could remember. I could literally predict what they would say, sitting there by the closed door.

Thankfully, I also had other relationship models. But that childhood experience really soured me on relationship conflicts. I became very picky in my early relationships, avoiding people who seemed potentially explosive. I ran away at the first sign of disagreement. I kept things to myself to avoid confrontation. And when a difficult, confrontational conversation had to be had, I spent days thinking about what I needed to say and how to say it.

When occasionally blindsided by a conflict I didn’t see coming, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt unprepared. I didn’t like it. But I knew that no matter what, the conflict had to end. It needed to be resolved, settled, done with, if I didn’t want to keep having it like my parents.

But I still didn’t know what to do after. And after is just as important as before, and during, and sometimes even more important.

Most people sweep the incident under the rug and pretend it never happened after they exhaustively defend themselves, blame, and attack the other person, as each wants to come out on top, proving themselves right and justified. Or, eventually, someone apologizes (usually the person with less power or greater aversion to the situation), and life resumes as if the explosion never happened. But rest assured. Mental scores are kept and delivered at the next opportune moment.

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Then the Lufthansa pilots, flight attendants, and ground personnel went on strike, demanding higher pay. My flights got canceled once. Then twice. Then, the third time, I was delayed by three hours. Meanwhile, my Turo was canceled two days before I was supposed to pick it up, leaving me stranded and facing three times more expensive options.

All along, I kept seeing more and more reports of people detained at the airport upon arrival, their phones and computers searched by Border Patrol agents. Technically, US citizens have the right to refuse a search. In practice, those who did got their devices held “for further inspection.” Many of them never got them back.

It made me nervous, to say the least. I considered deleting my social media apps and logging out of all my email and cloud storage, worried about my privacy and what would happen to Lulu if I were detained for any reason. Sometimes, the reason is a mistaken identity - citizen or not. Other times, they are just mean.

Violations of rights seem to be the norm rather than the exception these days. The courts can’t keep up with lawsuits against the government by individuals, class actions, states, universities, companies seeking to recover their tariff money, and civil rights organizations. Everyone is suing the government. Even Trump. He wants $10 billion from his own Treasury Department and IRS, alleging they failed to prevent the unauthorized leak of his confidential tax returns, the same tax returns every President before him voluntarily disclosed.

My problems are small potatoes compared to people unable to access life-saving medical care because of rural hospital closures. Others can no longer afford to feed their families, lose their jobs or sanity to AI, and their right to representation thanks to the latest SCOTUS decision gutting the Civil Rights Act.

Even nature is not spared. Everything that blows up in these two major wars goes up into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and erratic weather patterns, causing various environmental crises around the globe. From floods, fires, and droughts to rising sea levels, species disappearing, and famine. Meanwhile, the US drills more for fossil fuels, opens up the National Parks for logging and digging, and defunds the NPS.

Nations are at each other’s throats, alliances breaking. Long-standing cooperative organizations designed to ensure world stability are losing members. Meanwhile, according to major global democracy monitors like Freedom House and the V-Dem Institute, the number of authoritarian regimes has demonstrably increased over the last decade. As a result of these trends, approximately 72% of the global population now lives under autocratic rule.

The best way I can describe the fundamental experience of being an individual right now is a scale mismatch — the problems are planetary, the disruptions systemic, and yet you still have to wake up, make coffee, and figure out what to do with your life. That gap between the enormity of what’s happening and the smallness of individual agency is, I think, the defining psychic condition of this era.

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The same day, The Atlantic‘s editorial staff decided to feature, on the magazine’s front cover, his article My Family’s Slave. He never got to see it, but the world did. The article went viral, provoking intense responses across Filipino, American, and global audiences. Some praised him for his honesty and craft while debating moral responsibility and cultural complicity. Others were appalled that anyone in modern-day US could own a slave, regardless of how it turned out.

When the article came out, I realized I knew of Lola. To me and the rest of the world, she was his sweet, caring grandmother. He was caring for her in her old age until she passed away in 2011. What none of us knew was that the truth was much more complicated, and that my thoughtful, educated, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, mentor, and dear friend Alex lived with, benefited from, and participated in maintaining a dark family secret - they owned a slave.

I was someone he had trusted with other deeply personal family things. But even I didn’t know this until I read about it. Was this article his way of breaking the spell of a secret that defined three generations? How did it affect him and his life trajectory as someone who studied people deeply? He embedded himself in a Filipino gang so he could write about the complexities of survival and human interactions. He exposed hierarchical abuse in Native American tribes. He followed 911 survivors for years, tracking their lives and stories. He was a compassionate human being if I ever saw one.

Lots of families have secrets. Jack Nicholson was raised by his grandparents, believing his grandmother was his mother, until Time Magazine reported that his older sister was his mother. By then, both had passed away. Hidden adoptions or misattributed paternity were common in mid-20th century Western contexts because society didn’t take kindly to women who had children out of wedlock. Facing stigma and denied opportunities, many felt that they had no other choice.

Family members’ concealed involvement in events like the Holocaust. I remember taking a tour of Munich some years back with a tour guide my age who proudly told stories of the city’s history until she hit WWII and German society during Hitler. Her pride, replaced with facts about buildings, made me ask, “Do you know what your family was doing during that time?”

“My grandfather was a professor at the university, and my grandmother stayed at home taking care of my mom and the other kids.”

No mention of the other side of the family. She tried to change the subject, pointing at a landmark.

I noticed.

“Have your grandparents ever told you how they felt about Hitler and the rise of fascism, about what was happening in the war, and to Jewish people?”

“German families don’t like to talk about that time,” she said. “Many people had to go along to get by, to keep their jobs and feed their families, to avoid ending up in a concentration camp themselves. Everyone usually says that they were not involved in any way with the rest of it.”

If no one was involved with “the rest of it,” then who stood guard at the concentration camps? Who rounded up Jewish kids? Who processed the paperwork? Who delivered food and supplies to the concentration camps? Who built the buildings? Who approved Hitler’s budget? Who voted for his regime?

I didn’t ask. Secrets don’t come out just because people ask.

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You’ve seen the videos of “Karens” asking to see the manager. Fun fact: Guys who do the same are called “Kevin.” If you run into one, you should know what to call them. These people explode in public, making everyone around them uncomfortable. Some get arrested. Others get instant karma. But they never just apologize and walk away, restoring peace, order, and their dignity.

But what about your co-workers, friends, and family members who emotionally overreact, triggered by only-they-know-what? What do you do when they spring into anger, name-calling, blame, manipulation, and even violence? How do you handle difficult conversations where some sort of confrontation is inevitable? What do you do if you are the manager Karen just called, or have to deal with an emotionally activated and out-of-control spouse?

Arguments happen in all relationships because high-stakes conversations happen in all relationships. Workplace conflict is not uncommon. Dealing with narcissistic and manipulative people is not always avoidable. Life offers plenty of expected and unexpected stressful situations. People flip when the barista gets their coffee wrong, flights get canceled, they get pulled over when in a hurry, are inconvenienced, dismissed, or challenged.

So, why do we emotionally erupt and often make things worse? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just talk, figure things out, and move on?

From the outside, emotional outbursts and tantrums seem to be about entitlement. The behavior comes across as rude, belligerent, and threatening. But reactivity usually stems from a perceived threat, even if not fully understood.

Human egos want the world to confirm who we think we are, to feel safe, secure, and in control at all times. Even though egos can tolerate some ambiguity and uncertainty, situations beyond certain limits will trigger a reaction. Not everyone who is triggered becomes a Karen or a Kevin. But those who do seem to have those limits set pretty low.

There are many ways to explain the dynamics, but they all essentially organize the explanations around Identity, Control, and Safety triggers, with our past experiences, upbringing, and personality traits shaping our tolerance limits, conflict participation tendencies, and resolution skills.

Understanding how to recognize the underlying triggers makes us more able to sidestep potential issues, navigate, and de-escalate a Karen in progress. It also helps us avoid becoming one. Logic in heated situations does not work. The other person is in full limbic system mode. They are kindling, and your logic actually adds fuel to that kindling because it sounds to them like you are reinforcing the threat they perceive.

You need an extinguisher to put out the flame in real-time.

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