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How do you play? I mean that as a real question, not a rhetorical one. So many of us have lost our access to play somewhere along the way to adulthood. It got buried under responsibility, under seriousness, under the quiet belief that being an adult, or being in a serious relationship, means being composed. Boring. But play, play my darling, is not the opposite of intimacy. It might actually be one of its deepest forms. Think about the last time you were truly silly with your

Have you ever found yourself getting really irritated by someone's behaviour, almost like it hits a nerve you did not even know you had? Maybe it is that one person at work who always seems too confident, or a friend who is overly emotional, or even someone you barely know who just rubs you the wrong way. It is easy to write it off as a personality clash, a difference in how we relate. But what if there is something more going on. Carl Jung put it simply. Everything that irri

I wonder if your familiar with this experience... The scroll that gives you a break from your reality. The glass of wine that isn't really about the wine. The shopping cart that always fills, or the delivers that arrive and you can't remember ordering. The cigarette you didn't even want but your hand somehow ended up with. The way your fingers through your phone without awareness to social media. The snacking that stops when the box is finished. We've been taught to see these

There's a thought that keeps so many relationships holding their shape long after the shape has stopped being true. The thought goes something like this: if I stop reaching, if I stop bridging the gap, if I stop being the one who softens and adjusts and holds the whole thing together, it will all fall apart. So you keep reaching. You play the role your partner needs someone to play. You become the regulated one, the flexible one, the one who understands, the one who doesn't a

Before any of us had language for want or need, we had a body. And that body was already learning, long before we could name it, what was safe to reach for and what wasn't. So many of us grew up in homes where children were meant to be seen and not heard, where a want voiced too plainly got called greedy, or too much, and a need voiced too plainly got met with irritation, or silence, or something worse. As children we took what was offered, what was allowed, because that was

There's a myth we've been sold about safety, and most of us have been quietly organising our whole relational lives around it. The myth goes something like this, out there somewhere is a person who will finally make us feel safe. Once we find them, once we do the work, once we get the relationship right, the risk will stop. The world will soften. We'll finally be able to exhale. I want to gently take that myth apart, because I think it's costing people something. Not the desi

Honesty is the floor, not the ceiling. Most people think honesty is the whole job. Don't lie. Don't cheat. Answer the question when you're asked. Tick the box, call it integrity, call the relationship "honest." It's not nothing. But it's the floor, not the ceiling. Here's my take on the differences and why I see them valuable, to understand the difference. Honesty Honesty is reactive. It's what happens when something is asked of you and you tell the truth instead of a lie. It

I want to say something that might land a little uncomfortably for some of you, and that's okay. It comes from a place of real care for your relationships, not from anywhere clinical or cold. Yes, you should be able to share vulnerability with your partner. That's part of what intimacy is for. But I don't believe your partner should be the only person you bring your vulnerability to. Having friends, a therapist, a wider support community, places where you can express and conn

Something I learned from my own therapist a while ago has stayed with me ever since. When you're in the middle of something big, let it be yours for a while. Let it feel. Let it land in your body, before you bring it to anyone else. A big experience, a big revelation, a big realisation, these moments are precious, and more fragile than we usually realise. The instinct, when something big lands, is to reach for someone straight away, to make sense of it through another person'

Someone asked me recently what kind of clients I see, and what the most common thing is that shows up in my couples work. I've been sitting with the answer since. Most couples come in talking about communication. They want better words, better timing, a better way to land what they're trying to say. And there's nothing wrong with wanting that. But communication was never really the problem. It's the surface of something that runs much deeper, and if we only work at that surfa

What fourteen years of open relating has actually taught me, written from inside the experience. I am writing this tonight while my nesting partner is at a sexuality festival with no phone reception. No contact. No quick reassuring text. Just trusting, and being with me. I want to be honest with you: I had a little tear last night. I long for his cuddles. I bought myself a bunch of self-care things, made some art, called a friend, caught up on things around the house, rested.

The relationship you have with yourself is the foundational one. Every other relationship in your life, the way you love, the way you receive love, the way you show up, the way you leave, is shaped from here. Not partially, fundamentally. This isn't a self help idea. It's a relational truth. When you know yourself, really know yourself, you bring something different into connection with others. You stop looking for someone else to tell you who you are. You stop outsourcing yo

I forgave you. I want to be clear about what that means, and what it doesn't. Forgiveness was never about you. It wasn't a gift I was offering, or a door I was opening, or a signal that what happened was okay. It was something I did quietly, in my own body, for my own life. A release. A putting down of something heavy that was never mine to carry in the first place. I'm not bitter and I'm not holding a grudge. I genuinely wish you well. But I have also seen you clearly. You s

When multiple hearts are on the line, everything gets more real. The tenderness gets more real. The fear gets more real. The desire, the history, the healing that walks in the door with every person you choose to love. All of it, more present, more honest, more asking something of you. And when multiple hearts are on the line, the undercurrents really begin to reveal themselves. Alive, and popping up their heads. To stab, or run, or hide, or reach. The parts of us we thought

A boundary is not a wall you build to keep people out. It is an act of self-knowledge. The honest, sometimes tender reckoning with where you begin and where you end. How close someone can actually come to you for love to still exist in the room. Most of us were never taught this. We learned, instead, to make ourselves smaller. To prioritise the comfort of others. To abandon ourselves in service of keeping the peace. We learned that being "good" meant being pliable, available,

We all know chemistry. That pull toward someone that you didn't choose and couldn't explain if you tried. The way everything sharpens when they walk into a room, the way your body registers them before your mind has caught up. Time moves differently. You feel more yourself somehow, and also completely undone, all at once. We fall in love inside that feeling. And then, without really noticing it's happening, we slowly dismantle the very conditions that created it. And here's t

Recently, I found myself in new and uncomfortable emotional terrain. I had never been here before. And it was confusing in the way that only truly new experiences can be. The kind of confusion that doesn't have a map yet, where your nervous system is scanning for something familiar to hold onto and finding nothing. My first impulse was to reach for distraction. For comfort. For anything that might fix it, explain it, or fast-forward through it. I wanted out. But I knew there

And here's why you should work with me. I feel deeply. I make genuine contact. When you are in the room with me, I am actually there with you. Not performing presence. Not waiting for my turn to speak. Truly, fully there. I am deeply sensitive human. I have had to learn how to live with that sensitivity, and now I thrive in it. It has most certainly been overwhelming at times. It has also been the greatest gift of my life. It is why I can feel what is happening in a room befo

And your relationship with discomfort is most honestly revealed inside your relationships with others. You can think you've done the work. You can have years of therapy behind you, a somatic practice, a journalling ritual, a whole interior landscape you've tended carefully. And then someone you love says the wrong thing at the wrong moment, and the body tells the truth. That's where the real data is. Not on the cushion. Not in the quiet of your own company. But in the charged

I heard a version of the same thing from several people in my session room this week. Different stories, different relationships, different losses. But the same thread running through all of them: why can't I just move through this faster? Grief, transition, the end of something that mattered. We want to be on the other side of it. We are impatient with ourselves, uncomfortable in the in-between, and quietly ashamed of how long it's taking. So we push. We get busy. We rationa