The story goes that once we have found the “right” person, the work is to protect what we’ve built and keep it free from disruption. This story comforts us because it suggests that love is a stable state we arrive at, a structure we can maintain through effort and care. And yet, love is far less like a fixed structure and far more like a living system: adaptive, dynamic, sometimes unruly, and always in conversation with itself.

To hold someone is to say: You don’t have to carry this alone. To hold yourself in the process is to say: Neither do I.

A practical guide to nervous system regulation and rupture-repair dynamics.

For years, we’ve dismissed emotional intelligence, communication, and care as “soft skills,” or the optional extras of the professional world. Kind, but not critical. Nice, but not necessary.

That language is long overdue for a rewrite.

We celebrate independence, praise detachment as emotional maturity, and raise an eyebrow at anyone whose love feels a little too consuming, too dependent, too much. Somewhere along the way, dependence became a dirty word. So how do we say “I need you, but I need me too?”

The paradox of wanting love but fearing it is one of the most human experiences we can have. It’s not irrational. It’s protective.

You know the feeling: someone gets too close, and suddenly, you’re pulling back. Maybe you change the subject. Maybe you make a joke (whoops, guilty). Maybe you disappear altogether. We call it putting up walls, but it’s really a form of protection. And like most protective strategies, it started somewhere meaningful.