There is a particular kind of loneliness that can settle into a relationship when one partner wants more sex, or different sex, than the other. It rarely gets talked about directly, even in therapy, even between people who love each other and communicate well about almost everything else. This is desire discrepancy, and it is one of the most common issues couples bring to therapy. You are not unusual, and you are not failing. What desire discrepancy actually means Desire disc

You know that sting when someone is short with you, or doesn't reply, or you sense a shift in the room? For most people it is uncomfortable but manageable. For many people with ADHD, it can feel catastrophic: a wave of pain or shame that is completely disproportionate to what most would consider a minor social event. This is rejection sensitive dysphoria, or RSD, and it is one of the most significant and least understood aspects of the ADHD experience. What is RSD? Rejection

If you are neurodivergent, you may have spent years becoming very good at something that has no name in most people's lives: performing normality. Watching how other people behave, then calibrating your responses so that you appear to fit in. This is called masking, and while it can be a genuinely useful survival skill, it comes with a cost that is rarely talked about honestly. What masking actually is Masking refers to the way many autistic and ADHD people, and those with ot

Have you ever found yourself completely consumed by thoughts of another person? Not just enjoying someone's company or hoping a relationship might go somewhere, but thinking about them almost constantly, replaying conversations, and feeling your whole mood shift depending on whether they noticed you that day. If that sounds familiar, there is a word for what you experienced. It is called limerence. What is limerence? The term was coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in her 1

Have you ever wondered why the same social situation that feels energising to one person leaves another completely depleted? Or why certain environments, like a busy open-plan office or a difficult conversation, seem to cost some people so much more than others? Part of the answer may lie less in personality or willpower and more in something more fundamental: the state of the nervous system. What is polyvagal theory? Developed by neuroscientist Stephen Porges, polyvagal theo

If you've ever been told you're too sensitive or too much in your head, or spent years trying to be more outgoing and more the kind of person the room seems to want, you'll recognise something in Susan Cain's work before you've finished the first chapter. Her 2012 book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking made a case that feels obvious once you hear it, and yet clearly needed saying: that somewhere between a third and a half of the population is w

There is a particular kind of grief that doesn't get much space in the conversations around trans experience. Not the grief of loss that others can see and name, but something quieter and harder to hold: the grief of wanting something for yourself that you cannot have, or cannot have yet. This is not a grief that comes with condolence cards. There is no ritual for it. And because it sits alongside an identity that is already so often contested and debated, many trans people f

We live in a culture that talks endlessly about happiness. Get the right job and the right relationship into place, and the feeling will follow. And yet, for many people, the feeling doesn't follow. Or it arrives briefly and then slips away, leaving something harder to name underneath. Writer and researcher Emily Esfahani Smith spent years exploring why. Drawing on psychology and philosophy alongside interviews with hundreds of people, what she found is that happiness and mea

A parent's hand gently holding a baby's hand, representing what is passed down between generations, both the love and the unspoken weight. Have you ever noticed yourself reacting to something in a way that feels bigger than the moment? Or perhaps you carry an anxiety you can't quite name, one that doesn't seem to belong to any single event in your own life? You might be carrying something that was never originally yours to carry. Generational trauma, sometimes called intergen

red abstract shapes layered over one another, representing the idea of red flags as subjective and open to interpretation rather than fixed. We've all heard about red flags. Dating culture is full of them. A quick scroll through social media will offer you a near-endless checklist: the way someone texts, how quickly they introduce you to their friends, whether they still follow their ex online. Flag this. Avoid that. But here's a question worth sitting with: whose red flags a

A wooden star-shaped puzzle with interlocking pieces, representing the idea of a brain or mind that fits together differently. There's a particular kind of relief that comes from being in a room, or on a call, with someone who doesn't need you to mask. Who isn't quietly waiting for you to communicate in a way that feels easier for them. Who understands, without a lengthy explanation, why certain things feel impossibly hard while others that seem simple to everyone else come n

An overloaded car packed full of belongings, representing the idea of asking one relationship to carry more weight than it can hold - are we asking too much? There's a particular kind of loneliness that settles into a relationship: the loneliness of feeling unseen by the one person who's supposed to know you best. It's one of the most painful experiences a couple can have, and it's becoming increasingly common. But why? Many of the couples I work with are committed, caring, a

Diverse group of people smiling Most of us were never taught how to talk about desire. We were taught, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, strict relationship structures and that wanting someone outside of our relationship was something to hide, feel ashamed of, or simply ignore. But what if the conversation itself — however uncomfortable — could actually bring you closer to your partner? Ethical non-monogamy (ENM) is an umbrella term for relationship structures where all partn