Disorganized attachment has long been the ghost in the machine of couples therapy.

Defined by contradiction, confusion, and chaos, it’s the style that defies clean categorization—a nervous system primed for both approach and avoidance, intimacy and terror. T

raditionally seen as the most severe and intractable of the attachment styles, it has also been among the least understood.

But like many concepts born in the 1970s and codified in the 1990s, our understanding of disorganized attachment is now undergoing a dramatic rethinking.

This post is about that rethinking—a contrast between the old clinical map and the emerging terrain, where trauma science, neurobiology, and complexity theory are reshaping how we support disorganized individuals in relationship.

Let us begin by stating something sacrilegious in traditional attachment circles: the conventional Secure-Avoidant framework, while helpful in its day, may be running on legacy software.

Attachment theory has evolved since Bowlby and Ainsworth first introduced their elegant model, and what was once a tidy categorization has become a limiting vocabulary for increasingly complex relational realities.

In this re-examination of the Secure-Avoidant dynamic, we’ll integrate fresh research, critique conventional narratives, and explore emerging models that treat attachment not as a fixed set of traits but as a dynamic, plastic, intersubjective process shaped by culture, neurodivergence, trauma, and adult developmental trajectories.

As a couples therapist, I often tell clients that gossip is the social glue we love to hate. It feels icky when it’s about us, but strangely bonding when we’re doing it about others.

So when new research out of Self & Identity revealed that some folks actually enjoy being gossiped about—especially when the gossip is negative—I had to dig deeper.

It turns out, narcissistic men may not just tolerate gossip—they prefer it over being ignored.

That’s right.

According to five studies conducted by Andrew H. Hales, Meltem Yucel, and Selma C. Rudert, most people still dislike being the subject of gossip.

Some couples fade. Others implode. And a few simply evaporate. Not with a bang, but with a quiet fade—like a candle flickering out in a room that used to be full of light.

And often, it begins when they stop noticing each other.

Not the noticing of chore completion or whose turn it is with the carpool.

Not the noticing that comes with judgment or scorekeeping.

I’m talking about the other kind—the kind that says, I still see you. You still matter. Your inner world is worth tracking.

We navigate an age of dopamine loops and disappearing attention spans, where even our to-do lists have to be optimized for virality, there's something quietly radical about paying deep, sustained attention to one another.

Not scrolling, not diagnosing, not self-optimizing—just noticing. Profoundly. Tenderly. Without agenda. Bestowed attention.

As a couples therapist, I spend my days in the land of half-heard complaints and misunderstood glances. But when a couple stumbles into what I call profound noticing, something shifts.

Tension thaws. The room softens.

One partner says to the other, “You looked so tired when you walked in, I wondered if something hard happened at work.” And suddenly, we are no longer talking about chores or mismatched libidos—we are talking about mattering.

It’s a scene no one imagines for themselves.

You raised your children, watched them grow, and waited for the second act of family life—the warm embrace of your grandkids, stories around the table, and the joy of being “Nana” or “PopPop.”

But the phone doesn’t ring. Holidays are quiet. Photos of your grandkids—if you see them at all—are filtered through social media or hearsay.

Welcome to one of the most silent and painful trends in American family life: grandchild estrangement.

The Rise of Estranged Grandparents in the U.S.

While hard data is limited, surveys and expert accounts confirm that millions of grandparents in the United States are cut off from their grandchildren—often without clear explanation or hope of reconciliation.

Let’s begin with a scenario:

Your partner follows their ex on Instagram. They “like” posts with captions like “Just me, thriving and dangerous.” They watch that ex’s Stories—every single one.

You mention it. They shrug:

“It’s not cheating. We’re not even talking.”

And there it is: digital betrayal in 2025. Not quite infidelity. Not quite innocent. But enough to corrode trust, intimacy, and your belief in the relationship’s emotional safety.

What do we call this?

We call it micro-cheating, and it’s thriving—not because people are evil, but because we’re all hooked into an invisible system of psychological exploitation known as limbic capitalism, inside a culture that valorizes self-preoccupation over mutual regard.

This post is about how we got here, why it hurts, and what to do next if the love of your life just emotionally ghosted you for someone they met in a D&D Discord server.

As a family therapist, I’ve seen the same question echo through the minds of exhausted parents and overwhelmed kids: Why does my child struggle with everything at once?

When one diagnosis pops up—ADHD, for example—others often follow, like a conga line of learning challenges: dyslexia, dyscalculia, executive function disorder, anxiety. Is it just bad luck?

A landmark study out of the Netherlands offers a compelling (and slightly comforting) answer: it’s in the genes.

Love in the age of lag, emojis, and algorithmic warmth is getting more complex.

Let’s begin with a simple question that’s not so simple anymore: Can a heart emoji ever replace a hug?

Welcome to 2025, where some parents tuck in their kids over FaceTime, lovers schedule digital date nights from opposite time zones, and families mourn, celebrate, and check in through carefully curated text threads.

The technology is intimate. The connection is real. But is it enough?

Or, to put it bluntly: Can digital intimacy stand in for physical

affection—or is it a beautifully lit facsimile, a love story stuck in 720p?

Once upon a time, the term long-distance parent evoked a postcard and a phone call on Sundays.

Maybe a letter tucked inside a birthday card with $20. But in the post-pandemic digital era, long-distance co-parenting has undergone a tech-enabled glow-up.

Enter the age of digital intimacy—where FaceTime goodnights, shared digital calendars, and even parenting apps with built-in mood trackers are helping families stay connected across cities, time zones, and emotional bandwidth.

Welcome to the remote family, where love is expressed via push notification, and bedtime stories come with buffering.

Let’s begin with a beautiful thought:

“Compersion is when your partner experiences joy with someone else, and instead of feeling jealousy, you feel happiness for them.”

Lovely, right?

It sounds like spiritual enlightenment with better sex. It sounds like love unchained from ownership, love evolved beyond mammalian insecurity. It sounds like something written on driftwood in a polyamorous co-op bathroom in Vermont.

But here’s the truth: compersion is a useful lie.

It’s a noble fiction, like Santa Claus, or bipartisan cooperation. It’s an idea so beautiful, so aspirational, that even if it doesn’t quite work in reality, we feel compelled to believe in it anyway—like a unicorn grazing in Shangri-La.

And no, this isn’t an attack on polyamory. Quite the opposite.

This is an inquiry into whether compersion can exist without polyamory, and what it tells us about human attachment, jealousy, and the myth of boundless love.

So far in 2025, these specific search queries are on the rise:

• “Why I left polyamory”

• “Poly burnout symptoms”

• “Can polyamory cause emotional exhaustion?”

As more people explore ethical non-monogamy, another trend is quietly gaining momentum: polyamory burnout.

In forums like Reddit’s r/polyamory and confessionals across Medium and TikTok, people are beginning to share their polyamory exit stories—a new phase of visibility for a movement that once promised boundless love and emotional liberation.

This post explores polyamory burnout from the inside, through the story of an imaginary therapy client named Mirelle.

Her emotional exhaustion, identity fatigue, and eventual return to monogamy illustrate a broader phenomenon emerging in 2025.

We’ll look at current research, poly burnout symptoms, and why many are stepping back from polyamorous relationships without shame or regret.