Relationships change us.
We should let them.
For years, I’ve listened to people try to explain what happens to love. I think we end up wrong about most of it.
What You Wish For
What You Wish For argues we've been thinking about passion and security backwards. Emotional safety doesn’t dull desire; it creates the conditions for it. When people feel secure with each other, they can keep expanding and bring that evolution back to the bond.
For the person who buys all the books, and wonders why nothing is changing. For the partner who gets handed a book to read and finds themselves nowhere in it.
Elsewhere
The Desire Lab
A weekly podcast about the psychology, science, and culture of desire.
The Emotional Logic
Essays about love, attachment, desire, and why our reactions make more sense than you think.
The point of a secure base was never to stay in it.
Wanting has moving parts. This is what they look like.
When it’s hard to tell the difference between trauma and falling in love.
About Andrea
relationship psychologist • author • podcast host
The question “what would make this make sense?” is one I never stop asking.
Intimate relationships are full of things that don’t seem to. We fight about small things, pull away from the people we most want to be close to, lose desire where we are deeply loved, and repeat conversations we desperately want to end differently.
From the outside, our reactions can look irrational. Put them in the context of a person’s history, fears, longings, and relationships, and something different often appears: logic.
I’m reluctant to stop at ‘that’s ridiculous,’ ‘they’re just like that,’ or ‘maybe we’re incompatible.’ If you’re here, I think maybe you are too.
