In a gleaming factory in Aichi Prefecture, a Toyota line worker once heard a squeak coming from a rear axle. So, naturally, he pulled a cord.

The entire assembly line came to a halt.

Not because someone was getting fired. But because someone noticed something. And in the world of Japanese manufacturing, that’s sacred.

This isn’t a story about cars.

It’s a story about family systems therapy—because that squeak?

That was little Max screaming about the blue bowl again.

A new study out of the Journal of Research in Personality confirms what some tattooed folks have known since the first ink met skin: people are hilariously confident—and largely wrong—when they try to read your soul based on your sleeve.

Let’s start with the experiment.

The researchers corralled 274 tattooed adults (mostly women, mostly White, spanning 18 to 70) and asked them to complete the classic Big Five personality assessment.

Then, they took photographs of the participants’ tattoos and collected the stories behind them.

Meanwhile, 30 psychology-savvy raters were tasked with reviewing the tattoos—some with just the image, others with both image and personal meaning—and asked to assess the wearer’s personality.

And assess they did. Cheerful colors? Must be an agreeable

person. Big bold designs? Clearly an extrovert. A skull with a serpent wrapped around it? Neurotic as hell.

These snap judgments weren’t just consistent—they were confidently consistent. Everyone was vibing the same way about each tattoo, nodding in unison like they’d cracked some secret personality code.

And they were wrong. Almost all of them.

I used to think compersion was a niche affectation of the polyamorous intellectual elite—a smug little parlor trick for those who insisted on moral superiority while casually dismantling monogamy.

In earlier posts, I dismissed it as a shiny buzzword that functioned more as ideological branding than emotional reality.

I may have even implied it was emotionally fraudulent. That was not generous of me. Worse, it was wrong.

In the spirit of intellectual repentance, let me try again. This time, with humility, and actual science.

What Compersion Is—No Spin, No Smugness

Let’s start with a simple, chilling truth:
If your first lessons about sex came through violence and betrayal, adult conversations about intimacy may still feel like combat drills.

Now picture this: you're in a quiet lab in Canada. You've brought your partner. You're here to talk—on camera—about the one sexual issue that bothers you most.

Then, like some surreal therapy-themed video game, you’re handed a joystick.

You’ll use it to track, second-by-second, exactly how you felt while watching yourself argue about sex.

No pressure.

This isn't dystopian couples therapy—it's a groundbreaking experiment led by psychologist Noémie Bigras (2024). The study tried to map how childhood trauma rewires adult emotional responses during sexual disagreements.

And spoiler alert: attachment anxiety, not avoidance, turned out to be the real saboteur in the room.

Not All Trauma Is Equal, Especially When It Comes to Sex

Neurodiverse couples are not rare—and they’re not broken.

They’re often just misunderstood. Neurodiverse-affirming couples therapy helps partners move beyond misinterpretations to find deep attunement across different neurological styles.

Instead of assuming emotional disconnection, therapists translate buffering as a survival strategy, inertia as executive dysfunction, and bluntness as sensory overwhelm.

This approach respects each partner’s brain, creating a shared language rooted in regulation and empathy—not shame.

Meet Nico and Samira: A Neurodiverse Love Story

So the two of you aren’t fighting. You’re not flirting either.

You’re managing schedules. Paying bills.

Swapping logistical texts about Trader Joe’s runs and whose turn it is to get the kid with strep. You share a bed, but not a nervous system.

Welcome to functional dissociation—the quiet purgatory where many modern couples live.

No shouting matches. No passion. Just… performance.

And therapists are finally catching up.

What Is Functional Dissociation?

In trauma theory, dissociation describes a disconnection from the self—thoughts, feelings, memories, bodily sensations. It’s how the brain says, “Too much.”

But we’re now seeing that this coping style doesn’t stay locked in individual experience. It becomes the ambient weather system in a relationship.

Functional dissociation in couples is the mutual, adaptive numbing that lets a relationship survive—but not thrive. It's not classic avoidant attachment. It's not stonewalling. It's more like… ghosting, together.

So the two of you aren’t talking. Again.

One of you is pacing.

The other looks like a statue someone forgot to finish. Silence thickens.

You’re left wondering: Is this emotional abuse? Or is this just Wednesday?

Let’s talk about two of the most misused terms in modern relationship psychology: gaslighting and stonewalling.

They’re not the same thing.

But they often show up together—like that couple everyone finds exhausting but keeps inviting to brunch.

What Is Gaslighting as opposed to Stonewalling?

In the world of relationship advice, most books speak in generalities—“partners,” “loved ones,” “communication breakdowns”—as if all relationships follow the same emotional map.

But if you’re in a relationship with another man, you know that map may be drawn quite differently.

That’s where Opening Up: A Communication Workbook for Male Couples by Rick Miller comes in—not just as a workbook, but as a lifeline.

It’s not loud, it’s not flashy, but it is deeply specific, and quietly revolutionary.

Let’s take a closer look at why this book has struck such a chord with therapists, couples, and reviewers alike.

Picture this: your ancestors are huddled in a Paleolithic cave.

One wants to leave the relationship, but breaking up means exile, starvation, or being eaten by a saber tooth tiger named Chunga.

Fast-forward 50,000 years and breakups still suck—but now, instead of tigers, we have TikTok therapists and group chats.

In a recent Greek study that’s as poignant as it is uncomfortably relatable, Apostolou and Kagialis (2024) decided to investigate how people break up—not just why.

And what they discovered is depressingly logical and oddly familiar: most of us try to be decent about it, some of us hedge our bets with ambiguity, and a few of us just quietly vanish like interns after lunch.

But wait. Before you tattoo “Soften the Blow” on your wrist, let’s explore what this research really says—and how it syncs or clashes with what couples therapy titans like Gottman, Perel, Tatkin, and Johnson have been saying all along.

American elders hoard belongings—and feelings—at record rates. Learn the science, the stigma, and Swedish death-cleaning tactics that actually work.

Walk into any big-box store on a Saturday and you’ll see the national pastime: refilling already-full houses.

Public surveys find that U.S. consumers rent 49,000 self-storage facilities—more than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined.

No wonder the Senate Special Committee on Aging recently flagged hoarding as a “quiet public-health crisis” for older adults, estimating 6.2 % prevalence in seniors versus 2 % in younger cohorts.

Why the age skew?

Survivors of the Great Depression, Cold-War rationing, and 1970s inflation internalized a scarcity mantra—waste not, want not.

By 2025, that thrifty reflex collides head-on with Amazon Prime.

Result: floor-to-ceiling Rubbermaid history lessons plus a growing chorus of first-born children begging Mom and Dad to downsize.

Teens with high psychopathic traits are dying young at alarming rates. Here’s what every therapist, school, and policymaker needs to know about screening and saving lives.

A groundbreaking study published in Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology followed 332 incarcerated youth over a 10- to 14-year period.

What researchers found was grim: teens with high psychopathic traits (scoring 30+ on the PCL:YV) had an 18.3% mortality rate before age 35, more than double the rate of lower-scoring peers (Maurer et al., 2025).

“Eleven of the sixty participants who scored 30 or above died during the follow-up period... a mortality rate nearly ten times the expected base rate” (Maurer et al., 2025, p. 21).

These weren’t overdoses from untreated depression alone, or violence explained by poverty. The predictive factor wasn’t trauma, conduct disorder, or ADHD. It was psychopathic traits.

Gary Chapman’s 1992 classic was written for people with full batteries and no lag.

But for neurodivergent couples running on low power mode—think autistic shutdowns, ADHD inertia, and spoon-theory budgeting—the traditional love languages can feel more like emotional overdrafts than sweet nothings.

Enter Low-Demand Love Languages: tender, sustainable affection for people who love deeply but just can’t swing the high-cost intimacy of dinner-theatre emotions.