You know how some people seem to glide through life breaking rules, lying with charm, and punching holes in the social fabric without ever wrinkling their shirt collar?

Well, it turns out their brains might be wired for it—literally.

A new study out of Leipzig, published in the European Journal of Neuroscience, offers fresh evidence that psychopathic traits are not just personality quirks—they’re physically scaffolded by unique patterns of structural connectivity in the brain.

Yes, folks, there are now neurological floor plans for being a charismatic menace.

And they’re not just missing connections.

Some of the wiring appears extra tight in the very places you’d least want it to be—like giving an arsonist a flamethrower with an ergonomic grip!

They ask me at barbecues. In parking lots. Sometimes, in a whisper, after two glasses of wine at their child’s back-to-school night:

“So… what’s really the biggest problem you see in couples?”

There’s usually a nervous laugh, like they’re bracing for me to say “sex” and make it a punchline. A quick laugh, and then we’re back to potato salad.

But I’ve stopped giving the polite answer.

Because the real answer is quieter. Slower. And much more important.

The biggest problem I see in couples—the one that quietly wears love down—is this:

At some point, people stop being willing to be changed by the relationship.

Ever walked ten minutes in the wrong direction and refused to turn around—just because “you already started this way”? Welcome to the human condition.

Or, more precisely, to a newly documented psychological bias called doubling-back aversion.

According to new research published in Psychological Science (Cho & Critcher, 2025), people tend to reject more efficient options if those options involve undoing progress—even when it’s obvious that retracing their steps would save time and energy.

It’s not about being bad at math. It’s about the uncomfortable feeling of wasted effort.

If you're single and exhausted, you've probably already received more advice than a NASA launch team. “Put yourself out there.” “You’ve got to love yourself first.” “Don’t be so picky.”

Most of it’s well-meaning, some of it’s cruel, and none of it answers the real question:
Why do some people find love… while others seem to repel it like mismatched refrigerator magnets?

Now, thanks to a new study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, we have a better answer.

It’s not about how attractive, extroverted, or even ready you are.
It’s about why you’re looking in the first place.

Because, as it turns out, the universe has a sense of humor.

Let’s say it plainly and with love: getting cheated on feels like getting hit by a bus driven by someone you made dinner for last night.

It’s confusing. It’s cruel. It’s humiliating.

You go to sleep thinking you’re in a marriage and wake up in a courtroom of public opinion, with strangers in the jury box and TikTokers posting analysis videos of your last Instagram carousel.

So when the world sees a betrayal—say, a Coldplay kiss cam moment between a C-suite executive and someone clearly not his wife—the internet does what it does best.

It organizes itself into a moral army. It chooses sides.

And almost instantly, the betrayed partner is crowned: Saint of the Week. Patron of the blindsided. Keeper of virtue. Defender of vows.

But should we be doing this?

Do betrayed partners deserve automatic moral elevation?
Do we owe them our uncritical support just because they were the one left in the dark?

In a word: no.

In several more words: not unless we’re ready to flatten them into caricatures, ignore the actual emotional mess of long-term relationships, and assign sainthood like it’s a raffle prize handed out after a trauma drawing.

Love isn’t one-size-fits-all. And intimacy—despite what popular culture would have us believe—isn’t a universal language.

For neurodiverse couples, closeness often takes a different shape, one that doesn’t always look like eye contact, shared emotional vocabulary, or synchronized responses.

But it can still be deep. And real. And fiercely honest.

Terry Real’s concept of fierce intimacy—telling the truth while staying in connection—takes on added dimensions in relationships where one or both partners are neurodivergent.

It’s not just about finding the courage to speak. It’s about learning how your partner listens. And how you both come back to each other after the signal gets scrambled.

What Is Fierce Intimacy—When You're Neurodiverse?

Not all intimacy is fierce. Much of it is mild-mannered, polite, and conflict-averse.

We say the right things. We avoid the wrong topics. We walk on eggshells, convinced we’re preserving peace—when really, we’re just preserving distance.

Terry Real, couples therapist and author, offers a different path.

He calls it fierce intimacy—a form of connection built not on constant agreement or careful tiptoeing, but on truthfulness and accountability within the relationship (Real, 2022).

It’s not loud. It’s not aggressive. But it is brave.

Fierce intimacy is the art of telling the truth without abandoning the relationship.

And for many couples, it’s the very thing that allows love to deepen—not disappear.

What Makes Intimacy Fierce?

Coined by therapist and author Terry Real, the “normal marital hatred” phase describes a moment—often early in long-term commitment—when one or both partners look at each other with cold clarity and think:

“I can’t stand you. What have I done?”

It’s not poetic. It’s not filtered through a couples therapist’s Instagram page. But it’s deeply honest—and completely normal. Most long-term relationships go through this phase. In fact, some go through it multiple times.

This isn’t hatred in the clinical or abusive sense. It’s the rupture that occurs when:

• Projection collapses (you stop seeing them as your fantasy)

• Reality kicks in (they’re flawed and not changing)

• And your nervous system, wired for protection, registers this mismatch as a threat

Especially in neurodiverse couples—where partners may have profoundly different ways of thinking, feeling, or expressing love—this disillusionment can feel even more jarring.

Why Does It Happen?

It started with a Coldplay concert.

That’s not a sentence most people expect to signal the unraveling of a relationship, let alone a small cultural tremor. But when the grainy footage hit social media—an executive-looking man nuzzling a woman who wasn’t his wife during a Coldplay ballad—what followed wasn’t just tabloid fodder.

It was meme acceleration. And beneath the schadenfreude and digital pile-on, something more human and more disquieting began to show.

Let’s be clear: this wasn’t just about a man cheating.

It was about being caught in the most melodramatic and 2025 way possible—on the emotional jumbotron of Coldplay, with the entire internet playing forensic marriage detective within minutes.

A CEO and his Chief People Officer were caught on the Coldplay kiss-cam, which is either ironic or poetic depending on how you feel about HR guidelines and "Viva La Vida."

We don’t know their full story — maybe they're in love, maybe it's new, maybe it's an affair, or maybe they're just very, very bad at hiding things in public.

But it’s sparked a national cringe — and conversation — about what happens when emotional intimacy, sexual chemistry, and professional ambition all show up wearing lanyards.

And let’s be honest: it happens more than anyone wants to admit. A lot more.

It began as a night of music, lights, and Chris Martin earnestly trying to stitch the world together with falsetto.

But somewhere between "Yellow" and "The Scientist," two concertgoers found themselves stitched into a very different story: a moment of intimacy caught on the Coldplay Kiss Cam, a flash of panic, and then—thanks to the internet—a viral reckoning.

They were not just two random fans.

As the internet quickly deduced, this was Andy Byron, CEO of Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the company’s head of HR.

Married, father of two. By morning, the phrase "Coldplay affair" had taken on a life of its own.

Let us resist the urge to gawk.

Let us, instead, consider what this moment tells us about narcissism, hubris, and the oddly clarifying power of public intimacy.

Let’s say the quiet part out loud.

Couples therapy is a strange ritual. You schedule your suffering in 50-minute blocks. You pay someone to ask hard questions.

You rehearse vulnerability, sometimes in the presence of someone who isn’t even making eye contact. And then you go home and argue about what was said—or what wasn’t.

It’s brave. It’s hopeful. But it’s also, at times, bewildering.

So when it doesn’t feel like it’s working—or worse, when it starts to feel like a weekly exercise in despair—you begin to wonder: Is this still worth it?

Let’s explore when it’s actually wise to quit couples therapy, and when the discomfort you’re feeling is exactly the thing you should be leaning into.