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Love Is a Verb — On the mechanics of human connection

• [article] Active listening is misleading — 11 Jan 2024
  Active listening isn’t about ticking boxes in conversation; it’s about diving into emotions to transform surface-level chit-chat into deep, collaborative dialogue. Forget models, focus on feelings.
• [article] The value of relationship control — 13 May 2022
  ‘Control’ isn’t always a bad thing in a relationship. In fact it’s necessary. We always have a level of control over our partners, we must just use it with their approval, and to meet their needs as well as ours.
• [article] Explaining group dynamics — 29 Mar 2022
  Group dynamics are often thought to be a complicated thing to explore. But a 50-year-old model explains much of it with only three things: a need for Belonging, for Affection, and for Control.
• [article] The true meaning of family ties — 24 Sep 2020
  It’s no secret that we are lonelier than ever. We have many complaints of modern society, but our growing isolation is a common one. There are two reasons for this unhappy accident—the difficulty of finding people in ever more crowded cities, and the fact that we have lost sight of what a community is really made of. This article is about the latter.
• [article] The loneliness epidemic — 20 Sep 2020
  One in five people are lonely. This is not trivial. Loneliness is emerging as one of the greatest threats to physical and emotional health. And it shouldn’t be, because unlike many of our most intractable problems, this one seems so solvable.
• [article] Why people lie to you (and you let them) — 24 Jul 2020
  When we first meet someone, we follow a certain social script. That script calls for certain kinds of lies. But it’s not malicious. It’s a fundamental part of the relationship building process. They lie to us, and we tell them what kinds of lies are ok. Because humans are flawed creatures, and all we want to do is connect.
• [article] On attraction and love — 13 Mar 2020
  Much is written on the subject of attractiveness. It has become synonymous with beauty. Attractive celebrities, attractive influencers, attractive art. And through this myopic lens, attraction becomes something ugly. Something that people have or do not have. Something to be jealous of. Something to be torn down. But it doesn’t have to be. It can actually be something very beautiful indeed.
• [article] Attractiveness might be more about the environment, than about you — 23 Aug 2018
  There are a number of things that occur naturally in our environment that can alter the attraction we feel for people. These things might seem small, but they have an outsize influence on our preferences for people.
• [article] Coming together - the pattern of friendship and love — 12 Jun 2018
  Making and keeping our connections to others remains one of the fundamental arts we learn in life. And having a stickybeak into other people’s relationships is one of the fundamental past times. But if there’s one thing psychologists are good at, it’s identifying patterns in the way people behave. In that spirit, this model describes the process of people coming together used in the counselling office and by counsellors people-watching over coffee that’s quite beautiful.
• [article] The most powerful way to get someone to like you, is to like them first — 23 Apr 2018
  One of our most powerful urges is to be liked. Strange to find, then, that one of the most powerful influences on our likeability is whether others think we like them—‘reciprocal liking’.
• [article] Sexual Attraction - What turns us on in others? — 20 Mar 2018
  Evolutionary psychologists have a perspective on sexual attraction that is discomfiting, but revealing.
• [article] How being clumsy makes you better looking (according to psychologists) — 6 Oct 2017
  If you’re anything like me (and here’s hoping you aren’t), then you might be delighted to hear that your inability to walk through life unaccompanied by the sounds of various clatters and clangings could actually make you look a little better looking in the eyes of others.
• [article] Why polygamy might be more natural than you thought — 8 Mar 2017
  Most theories of relationships centre on the idea that humans are well-suited for, and biologically disposed toward forming ‘pair-bonds’. But these traditional anthropological and evolutionary perspectives on sex are facing a growing threat from a more recent contender. The idea that human promiscuity is our natural state and community-style lovin’ better explains the state of our modern sexuality.
• [article] The Friendship Checklist — 20 Feb 2017
  Friendships are based on many of the same building blocks of intimacy as romance. In fact, up to a point, friends travel the same cognitive road as our lovers do. But friends can be more satisfying than our spouses, and more enjoyable, according to research. All this begs the question, what the hell is a friend and why are they so awesome?
• [article] Four ways to be attractive (and one you've probably overlooked) — 22 Jan 2017
  What is attraction? Usually, we just think of it as what turns us on. But interpersonal attraction is so much bigger than this. At its core, attraction is the inclination to chase the good feeling you get from someone else. It’s the word we use to describe what draws people together. And, it has aspects that are often overlooked.