Understanding bonds, your own included

The one who shuts down in the middle of an argument looks like the calmer of the two. The physiological measurements say exactly the opposite.

You think a disagreement has been settled; it resurfaces six months later, identical. That repetition is not a failure: it is the rule, and it has been measured.

The phrase has become the announcement of an imminent break-up. Yet it describes an ordinary way of functioning, one that has nothing to do with disengagement.

Sharing a home is a test distinct from the feeling, and there is nothing automatic about it. Part of what gets attributed to the couple in fact belongs to domestic organisation.

It is blamed for the end of most stories. Yet repetition produces attachment as much as it dulls it, and research knows which of the two, and on what conditions.

It is treated as a character flaw or as proof of love. It is above all a signal, and decoding it means separating what one observes from what one concludes.

Carrying out a task and remembering it exists are two distinct jobs. The second is invisible, and that is what makes its division so hard to discuss.

Every relationship installs a list of subjects no longer raised. It forms without a decision, and what it contains says more than what gets said.

An argument does not stop when the arguments are exhausted. It stops when a gesture is accepted, and that gesture obeys precise rules.

Two people can share four evenings a week without seeing each other. What counts is not the duration but what is called joint attention.

Support is rarely what we think. Part of what is offered with the best intentions produces the opposite of the intended effect.