Adults follows a very traditional format that we know works: a group of unconventional friends in a well-known city trying to figure it out. E.g: New Girl, Sex and the City, Girls and Friends, which even today is still relatable and funny. This format timelessly works because it hits on two very human needs that we all crave: being loved and being seen/accepted by others despite not being perfect. We all carry this restrictive belief that in order to be happy and loved, we must somehow be perfect. So we try too hard to seem like we have it all together and to “perform” perfectly. And then we watch this TV show about people who are messy and flawed and yet are loved by their friends. They are still having fun. They are still happy. They are still figuring it out.

And this is where Adults really gets us. The show dives into the everyday problems that are actually really fucking scary when you’re living through them. Having a group of friends that no longer reflects you but still connecting with them enough to keep them around. Being a different person with your family compared to who you are with your friends. Being unemployed. Being afraid of getting older. Messing up at a job you really care about. Having hard conversations with your partner. Falling out of love and then falling in love with someone else. These are all things we experience in our twenties, and they rightfully scare the shit out of us. They can make us feel like something has gone fundamentally wrong - like this means we’re not a good enough person, that we’re failing, that everyone else has figured it out except us.

But then we watch these characters experience those things on screen and we feel along with them. We relate to them. We see ourselves in their flaws and think, oh my god, that is me. And there is something incredibly comforting about seeing someone else go through the exact thing that you are afraid of. We feel less alone. We get to sit with the discomfort alongside them, without actually having to be in our own lives for a moment. And then, eventually, the conflict is resolved. We get the release. The tension we’ve been holding alongside the character gets to go somewhere. We get to laugh, cry, breathe and feel the relief of watching something painful become okay again.

And importantly, the characters don’t usually get through these things by themselves. They don’t get through them through self-punishment, isolation or trying to become “perfect”. The conflict within each episode is often resolved through their friendships. We watch as the people around them love them through that uncomfortable pain, help them through it, laugh with them and then find a resolution, often with a radical kind of self-acceptance of who they are. And I think this is a huge part of why it feels so good to watch because we all want this in our own lives. We’re not only relating to the problem, we’re experiencing the emotional release of seeing that problem resolved through friendship and connection. We get to watch someone fuck up and still be loved. We get to watch someone feel lost and still have somewhere to go.

This is also really different from what we are shown on social media. On TikTok, we are constantly watching people’s What I Do In A Days, vlogs and lives that are all smiles and happy moments. Rarely do we see people speak about devastating or uncomfortable moments while they are actually experiencing them, and we don’t see them resolve it either. And that’s a good thing in some ways. We don’t want to see people sharing too much online. But that’s why we have stories.

Stories have been around for millennia to do this for us. They teach us about life and love through characters, meaning no real people have to be exploited for our entertainment and learning. We can experience the uncomfortable parts of being human from a safe distance. We can see ourselves in someone else. We can feel less alone. We can laugh at things that are actually quite painful. And we can be reminded that maybe the things we are so afraid of don’t mean that we are failing at life. Maybe they just mean that we are human.

Thought-provoking, life-changing cinema? Debatable. Instant commercial success? Well, yeah.

But why?

These kinds of shows tap into something deeply human. They’re almost like fast food. A potato on its own is fine, but turn it into a chip with the perfect amount of oil, salt and crunch and suddenly it becomes addictive. These shows do the same thing emotionally. They take real feelings and heighten them to perfection.

When we watch television, our bodies respond to what’s happening on screen. When a character feels rejected, nervous, desired or heartbroken, we feel it too. When they finally get the guy, we experience the payoff with them. That emotional rollercoaster is why we watch stories in the first place. But romance adaptations like Off Campus take that journey and amplify it. They turn the emotional equivalent of a steamed potato into McDonald’s chips.

So how exactly are these shows “biohacking” us into obsession?

A huge part of it comes down to the male lead. Most addictive romance stories begin with a guy who is emotionally unavailable, disinterested, intimidating or completely unattainable. Enter Garrett: hockey captain, rich, attractive, sleeps with beautiful girls and insists he never wants a relationship. We’re hooked instantly because almost everyone has experienced someone like this in real life. Someone they couldn’t quite reach.

Then enters Hannah. She’s awkward, warm, kind of embarrassing at times and ultimately non-threatening. We either see ourselves in her or feel comfortable through her. Think Belly from The Summer I Turned Pretty. These girls are designed to feel emotionally accessible.

But here’s the trick. The “special sauce.”

The girl becomes the only person in the world capable of changing the guy. She’s the exception. The one person who can make the emotionally unavailable boy vulnerable. The one who makes the bad boy settle down, open up and fall in love.

That’s the fantasy.

Not just being loved, but being chosen above everyone else. Add in hot sex and we can’t stop watching. Because it’s not just us that’s addicted, it’s our hormones.

The same kind of thing happens in Heated Rivalry with Shane and Ilya, with Shane becoming the only person Ilya is willing to truly open up and “settle down” for, although there are far more layers at play. Heated Rivalry uses this addictive formula like a Trojan horse. It captures audiences through the sex, tension and addictive relationship dynamics, but underneath all the fantasy, it delivers an important message about shame, vulnerability and sexuality in professional sport.

We see touches of this in Off Campus too, with Hannah navigating and overcoming her own sexual trauma. And to its credit, I think the story handles those themes surprisingly well. That kind of representation matters, especially in stories reaching huge mainstream audiences.

So as we enter this new era of romance books being adapted for television, I just hope the industry doesn’t keep recreating the exact same tropes without saying anything new. It’s easy to see something work and endlessly repeat it because it makes money. But moving forward, I hope more of these stories use those addictive dynamics as a Trojan horse. Give audiences the chemistry, the yearning, the fantasy and the sex, but still deliver something deeper underneath it all.

Use familiar romance formulas to explore meaningful themes and difficult emotional truths, instead of simply recycling the same heightened fantasies we’ve already seen a hundred times before.

So how does this tie into The Drama and storytelling in general?

Well, a good story gives us a kind of false first-hand experience. When done well, it takes us inside someone else’s body and mind and makes us feel what they feel. If a character is nervous, we feel nervous. If they’re uncomfortable, we feel it too. We don’t just feel for them, we feel with them.

And because of that, we begin to understand decisions we would otherwise judge. We’re shown a version of determinism in action, the chain of events that led someone to act in a way we might never have imagined ourselves.

That’s the true power of a story. It can move us from standing outside an issue with an opinion, to being inside the experience itself.

This becomes especially important when it comes to big cultural issues that divide people. Because opinions are shaped by experience. If two people can’t see eye to eye, it’s often because they’ve lived entirely different chains of events that led them to believe what they believe.

Take something as controversial as gun violence. It’s often framed as pro-gun or anti-gun. Which then begs the question, is it the individual, or is it the culture? Should the focus be on removing guns, transforming gun culture, or on personal responsibility?

A story like The Drama doesn’t try to answer that cleanly. Instead, it places us inside the grey. We feel Emma as a child. We begin to understand her from the inside and begin to experience how a ‘normal’ person, a child, could get caught up in something so absurd and disturbing. At the same time, we experience Charlie’s fear and judgement. And through Emma’s friend, we feel the opposing belief that it’s entirely the individual’s fault.

We’re not told what to think. But we are made to feel it.

In other stories, we’ve seen how powerful this same principle can be in shifting our worldview. After Heated Rivalry went viral, there was a noticeable increase in visibility around gay relationships and culture. And I think part of that came from being taken inside Shane and Ilya’s intimacy, their shame, their love, their relationship.

We didn’t just observe it, we experienced it. We felt with them.

And because of that, it became easier to relate to other couples who may have had similar experiences with coming out or navigating shame around their sexuality, regardless of if we’d gone through that ourselves or known anyone personally that has.

It’s almost like storytelling creates new emotional associations. When we’re given a nuanced, human, and loving portrayal of gay relationships, we begin to associate those same feelings with gay culture more broadly. Which is incredibly positive, and long overdue.

Especially when you consider how historically, media has often done the opposite, reinforcing harmful stereotypes rather than dismantling them.

Stories don’t just tell us things. They give us experiences. And those experiences quietly shift how we see the world.

But what The Drama does just as powerfully is ask a completely different question within all of this:

What is love, actually?

At the beginning of the film, Emma gives Charlie a second chance, letting him start over with a new introduction. It’s awkward, but it reveals something essential about her. She believes in second chances. And later, we understand why.

Then we see the couple trying to write their wedding vows. It’s soft, slightly awkward, centred around the usual ideas of love. First dates, attraction, good moments, good sex. All the things we think love is supposed to be.

But the film slowly strips that away.

What it suggests is that love isn’t about the polished, easy parts at all. It’s about witnessing the ugliest parts of each other. The parts we would rather hide. The parts that are uncomfortable, confronting, even disturbing.

We see this in Emma. But we also see how her darkness triggers something equally dark in Charlie. He’s analytical, black-and-white, judgemental, and under pressure, he spirals. We watch him unravel, cheating, collapsing, humiliating her, exposing the worst parts of himself.

Maybe what the film is really suggesting is that love requires a kind of acceptance of determinism. That to truly love someone is to see the chain of experiences that made them who they are, even in their worst moments.

Is love about being able to sit in those moments, to understand where they come from, to see the chain of experiences behind them, and to find some form of compassion anyway?

It reframes love as something much harder. Not the shiny, romantic version, but something rooted in understanding. In staying present with someone’s story, while also confronting your own.

But then it pushes even further:

Where is the line between compassion and self-protection? Between understanding someone and allowing yourself to be hurt by them?

And that’s what makes The Drama such a smartly constructed film. It doesn’t just give us an empathetic, almost first-hand experience of a controversial issue like gun violence, shifting how we see the individual versus culture debate, it weaves that into something deeper.

A commentary on love.

Not as something light, easy, or glamorous, but as something uncomfortable, triggering, and at times deeply ugly. And yet, if we can move through that discomfort, if we can hold both our own darkness and someone else’s, there is the possibility of a deeper, more honest kind of love at its core.

Which is in complete contrast to what we often want love to be. Laughter, great sex, and two people being consistently good.

But this is not how our nervous systems work in love and relationships, especially for women. Traditionally, women are not built for speed but for a slow-burn yearning. Biologically, this makes sense. Women’s attachment systems are often wired to pair sexual desire with emotional familiarity and safety. The nervous system needs time: time to assess predictability, trustworthiness, and reliability, and only then can desire compound into deep attachment. Men can also experience this, of course, but on average, their nervous systems are more attuned to novelty, immediacy, and quick assessment. Perfect for a dating app?

Think back to Romeo and Juliet. Their attraction is forbidden, dangerous, and full of opposing energy: rival families, high stakes, intense chemistry. That story is part of who we are now. But it is short, tragic, and fast. Also, written by a man. Modern storytelling, especially works written by women, has taken that blueprint and adapted it to what we actually need: time. They have added yearning and stretched it out. Think Twilight, The Summer I Turned Pretty, and of course Heated Rivalry. These all create the perfect conditions for cult like obsession: intense attraction, danger, and then the long, drawn-out yearning.

This slow build is crucial. The longer we are given to observe, anticipate, and engage with a person even fictionally, the more our nervous system responds with anticipation, uncertainty, and attachment. If the desire is just out of reach or a little dangerous, it fuels obsession. Attraction heightens because it is not fully received, yet we are given the time to develop the emotional familiarity needed to form true emotional connection. The perfect storm.

In Heated Rivalry, Ilya’s crass dominance and Shane’s restrained politeness create a classic polarity that draws the viewer in, but it is the seven-year-long slow burn of yearning that makes the chemistry feel alive. Watching them navigate tension, vulnerability, and emotional growth over years gives the audience exactly what we need: time.

This is also why these stories feel almost like a drug. Our nervous systems are wired to respond to anticipation, desire, and emotional familiarity through reward and bonding pathways, which involve hormones like dopamine and oxytocin. And unfortunately, modern dating unfortunately rarely gives us that.

The answer is much simpler than it seems. And it has far less to do with whether you like boys or girls, and much more to do with the story itself.

At its core, Heated Rivalry is a very good story. But why it is so widely loved, regardless of sexual orientation, is because it taps into something deeply universal. It is a story about love where there is an imbalance of energy.

Confident versus shy.
Arrogant versus sensitive.
Hard versus soft.
Rude versus kind.
Ilya versus Shane.

Add in the fact that the relationship is forbidden, and the stakes immediately rise. The electricity increases. There is risk, danger, and the fear of being seen or caught. At that point, it no longer matters who is in the relationship. What matters is how it feels. Most of us have been in some version of this dynamic before. Opposing energies, sexual tension, and just enough emotional withholding to make it addictive.

What Heated Rivalry does exceptionally well, and why it has created such a strong reaction, is that it builds complex characters and allows us to watch them change.

When we first meet Ilya, he is cold, closed off, and emotionally unavailable. Any time Shane tries to talk about family, work, or anything personal, Ilya redirects the conversation back to sex. He feels unattainable and emotionally unsafe, yet deeply magnetic.

This is incredibly familiar.

Many of us have been in relationships or situationships where someone gives us just enough connection to keep the chemistry alive, but not enough to feel secure. Our nervous system recognises this pattern instantly.

Then, slowly, we watch Ilya’s walls come down. He begins to soften. He starts to fall in love. He opens.

Psychologically, this is where the story becomes so powerful. When we watch a character experience the same emotional pain, avoidance, or fear that we have felt ourselves, our brain mirrors it. We feel seen. And when that character begins to heal, to open, to choose vulnerability, our nervous system experiences that shift too. It creates relief and hope. It tells us, quietly, that change is possible.

We have seen a similar arc with characters like Conrad in The Summer I Turned Pretty. The emotionally unavailable boy who slowly learns how to express love. Watching someone move from hardened to open is deeply satisfying because it resolves a wound many of us carry. It allows us to imagine that love does not always stay stuck, that people can soften, and that connection can deepen.

And then there is Shane.

Shane starts out insecure, rigid, and perfectionistic. He is trying to control his world in order to feel safe. Over time, we see him relax. He drinks a beer during the season. He expresses his feelings. He learns how to hold emotional space, not only for Ilya, but for himself.

This journey is just as universal. Most of us go through a phase where we believe we must be perfect in order to be loved. Watching Shane grow out of that, and into a more embodied, grounded version of himself, feels rewarding because it mirrors our own desire for freedom.

From a psychological perspective, stories like this work because they let us process our own experiences safely. We watch characters take risks, feel rejection, open up, and be met with love. Our brains treat this as emotional rehearsal. When vulnerability is rewarded, something in us relaxes too.

Add in the cinematography, the soundtrack, the technical execution, and the quality of the acting, and the emotional impact only deepens. The characters feel real because they are written as real people.

As for why so many people are surprised by how hot they find it, that is a conversation for another piece. But the real reason Heated Rivalry works, I believe is way more than that.

Love is love.
Sex is sex.
Good writing is good writing.

And Heated Rivalry really does have all of it.

It’s an anonymous relationship column where people write to me about what’s actually happening in their love lives: the confusing parts, the exciting parts, the situations they replay over and over in their head and where they feel stuck or need advice. Each week, I’ll respond to one letter with real insight, perspective, and practical advice you can use in your own life.

Think Sex and the City, but real life.
This is Sex In YOUR City.

I wanted to create this because most of what I know about relationships didn’t come from experts or books. It actually came from conversations. It came from sitting with my girlfriends and talking things through, sharing the tea and asking “is this normal?”. I learned from each other’s mistakes, patterns, and breakthroughs as I worked through my own.

And that’s how I’ve grown the most in my twenties. The more we talk, the more we understand. The more stories we hear, the more clearly we see ourselves.

And I realised how powerful that kind of shared space actually is. A place where we can talk honestly about the things that confuse us, scare us, and excite us in relationships. A place where we do not have to pretend we have it all figured out.

So this is that space, but digital.

Here is how it works: When you subscribe, you get access to the weekly series. You also have the opportunity to write to me anonymously with a question, a situation, or something you want advice on. Each week, I will choose one letter and respond publicly, while keeping everything anonymous.

I will unpack what is really going on, share some patterns I notice, offer psychological insight that feels human and grounded, and give you small, accessible things to try. Ways to communicate differently. Ways to understand yourself better. Ways to move forward with more clarity.

Even if you never submit a question yourself, you still get so much out of it. You get to read the tea. You get to hear real stories from real people. You get to learn from situations that are not yours. You start picking up language, perspective, and skills that quietly change how you show up in your own relationships.

It is comforting, interesting, and genuinely entertaining. Like a reality TV show, but actually real life. And instead of watching from the outside, you are learning and growing alongside it.

If you have ever felt confused in love, unsure how to communicate, curious about your patterns, or just relieved to know you are not the only one thinking these things, this is for you.

There will be one article every week and cost is $4.50 AUD per month, which is just over $1 per week.

If this sounds like something you would look forward to reading, I would love to have you in it!

Subscribe now

This is about learning together, sharing stories, feeling less alone and getting a little wiser about love as we go.

Love,
Field Notes on Girlhood xx

It’s been a very confusing time to be a straight woman as Heated Rivalry continues to have its viral TV moment. We’re all obsessed, but also a little curious. Why is it so good? And why is watching two men kiss on screen so hot? Does it mean?

I’ve seen a lot of takes online saying women love watching men with men because we secretly want to be equal to men, same gender, same power, same respect. And sure, maybe that’s something. But for me, that explanation never quite hits. Or at least, it’s not the whole story.

I think Heated Rivalry works for two much simpler reasons.

First, it’s just really good storytelling. Good writing is good writing. If the actors have chemistry, the attraction feels believable, and the story is packed with tension and longing, especially forbidden longing, you’re going to be locked in. It stops mattering who’s kissing who, you’re already emotionally invested.

And of-course, it helps that it was written by a woman. You can feel it. The story doesn’t skip over the parts most women actually care about: the slow burn, the emotional risk, the vulnerability, the wanting. It’s sexy, but it’s also deeply intimate. It doesn’t feel empty or rushed.

But I think the second reason is the one people aren’t really talking about.

When women watch straight romance on screen, there’s almost always this background noise happening in our heads. You’re watching the woman as much as the story. We compare ourselves to her. Her body, her face, how desirable she is, how effortless she looks. Even if you like her, there’s still that quiet self-surveillance running underneath it all. Just look at how we all reacted to Sydney Sweeney in the Housemaid scene.

And that absolutely kills desire.

When it’s two men, that just drops away. There’s no woman there to compare yourself to. No internal audit of whether you’d measure up. No wondering if you’d be chosen. You can just sit in the attraction without turning it back on yourself.

Men have been watching girl on girl porn forever for basically the same reason. Two people you find hot, without competition. The only difference is that mainstream media has only recently made space for the reverse, in a way that’s accessible to women, emotional, and actually well written.

And because Heated Rivalry isn’t just sex, it’s a love story, it goes deeper than surface level lust. There’s longing, tenderness, emotional stakes. It’s hot, but it’s also romantic in a way that doesn’t punish you for watching.

This is why it sits in the same category as Call Me By Your Name. And it’s also why the ‘women just want to be equal to men’ argument kind of falls apart. This story isn’t about equality at all. The characters are wildly unequal. Age, power, size, culture. And yet the chemistry is insane. What’s erotic isn’t sameness. It’s tension.

I think what really turns women on is longing, deep love and great storytelling. And honestly, it doesn’t hurt when that love story involves two very hot men kissing, without asking you to watch yourself at the same time.

What if your goal is to find a boyfriend, a husband, a partner? Or to be asked out on a date? What are the actions here? Other than paying an Etsy witch, how do you actually move towards something that requires someone else choosing you?

The uncomfortable answer is that you can’t. And I think one of the quickest ways we get stuck is by placing our dreams into someone else’s hands.

Often when our goal is to have a partner, especially with a specific person in mind, it backfires. And there is solid psychology behind this. Our sense of autonomy is a core human need. When we lock in and try to manifest a specific person, we quietly remove their sense of autonomy. Our nervous systems are wired to protect our sense of choice and self direction. So when the goal becomes getting this person to fall in love with me, the other person can usually feel that pressure, even if it’s never spoken out loud. You might not be saying I want you to be my boyfriend, but people are very good at reading intention. When someone feels that subtle pressure, it can make them feel less in control of their own life, which often causes them to pull away.

Think about how you’d feel if someone you weren’t that interested in yet was manifesting you, visualising you, energetically trying to pull you towards them. Even if they never told you, you’d probably feel it. You’d feel slightly trapped. That instinct to retreat is autonomy doing its job. But what is they were super passionate about building their dream life?

So while it can feel empowering to write ‘this year I will find a partner’ and then fixate on a specific person, it often does the opposite. It narrows your world. It puts you in a waiting position. It turns connection into something you’re trying to extract from someone else.

What actually works is much less dramatic, but far more effective. I’ve learned it really comes down to two things.

The first is becoming deeply invested in the progression of your own life. But before you roll your eyes, this isn’t ‘love yourself first’. It’s more like ‘move your life forward first’. Don’t say I’ll go travelling, buy beautiful underwear, go to new restaurants, develop cooler hobbies, or build a better life when I get a partner. Do it now. Live your dream life now.

There’s a well known psychological theory called self expansion theory, and it shows that we’re attracted to people who expand our sense of self. People whose lives feel alive, interesting and in motion. While people often say that independent, successful women deter men, neuroscience actually backs the opposite argument. When we encounter someone who represents growth, excitement and possibility, the brain lights up in motivation and reward centres. People feel more attracted to us because being around us feels expansive.

Sometimes I like to imagine my future partner talking about me to his friends. If I were the best version of myself, what would he say? That I’m curious, passionate about my work, building something, living in a way that feels intentional. Thinking about this motivates me to show up as that person in my everyday life.

It also protects you once a relationship begins. When your life feels stagnant or empty and a person enters it, it’s easy to make them your whole world. When your life is already moving forward, a relationship becomes something you integrate, not something you cling to.

The second part is your environment. You do need to make your surroundings possible for connection to happen. It’s not that you can’t naturally meet someone, but when we put ourselves in the right environment for connection, we send an important message to the universe: we are open. Maybe this is: download Hinge, go to events, start new hobbies you’re genuinely interested in, talk to people. Not because it guarantees you’ll meet your partner there, but because it means you're not just staying home, your environment is open for connection.

It’s a bit like a plant. Yes, you can manifest /visualise it growing, and that can help you remember to care for it. But what actually matters is choosing good soil, watering it, and placing it in the right conditions. Not too much sun, not too little. If you do that, growth happens naturally.

So feed yourself good things. Make your environment rich for relationship growth. Stay open. It will happen because, just like the plant, it’s almost impossible for it not to.

On top of that, I was deficient in iron, protein, vitamin C, and the list went on.

As I started researching this and working with my doctor, I realised the problem was not just one thing. It was a chain reaction. All the systems in my body were out of alignment. And yet I thought I was doing everything right. I was eating “clean,” working out six days a week, going to the sauna, meditating.

But when I really looked at it, I realised I was also waiting until I felt so hungry I felt faint, then eating so fast I barely digested anything. I was drinking a lot of caffeine and barely any water. I was living on protein bars. I was trying so hard to be healthy that I was stressed, rushed, and quietly destroying my gut health.

Poor gut health was affecting my hormones, which then affected detox pathways, the lymphatic system, the nervous system, circulation, and even breathing patterns. Trying to pinpoint one single root cause felt impossible. Every issue fed into the next, which then looped right back to the beginning. I also just felt like a hormonal bitch pretty much all of the time.

One effect of all this that really surprised me, and that I do not hear talked about much, was how it seemed to be affecting my dating life.

During this time, I noticed I was mainly attracted to men who felt safe and familiar. It did not really matter whether they treated me well or whether I genuinely enjoyed spending time with them. The idea of meeting someone new felt completely out of the question. Going on a date with a stranger felt genuinely awful.

The strange part was that a lot of the men who felt safe were not actually good for me. And yet I found myself longing for them in this weird, helpless way. Looking back, it was not because they were right for me. It was because they felt familiar and predictable.

At the same time, I was also swinging in the opposite direction. Chasing adrenaline. Messaging old exes impulsively. Looking for that wired, high-energy feeling that matched the amount of coffee I was drinking. A lot of my dating behaviour felt reactive and self-destructive.

As I started working on healing my gut and breaking the cycle that was going on in my body, things slowly began to change. I started slowing down when I ate and supporting digestion before meals. I focused on cooked, nourishing foods and rebuilt nutrients with things like minerals, amino acids, and gut-supportive supplements under medical guidance. I reduced caffeine and stopped pushing myself through heavy training sessions when my body clearly was not recovering well, especially with low iron.

Instead, I focused on gentler movement. Pilates, slow jogs outside, breathing properly, getting sunlight, and supporting my lymphatic system. I rested more.

Gradually, my energy improved. The bloating eased. My body felt lighter. My eyes looked brighter. And without really expecting it, my dating life shifted too.

I was no longer so focused on safety or familiarity. I had the energy and nervous system capacity to meet new people. I felt calmer and more grounded. I was less impulsive and less likely to spiral or take a self-destructive risk just for a hit of stimulation.

As my hormones started to rebalance, my libido returned in a different way too. It was not tied up in that desperate, anxious kind of longing. It felt steadier, more embodied, and more confident.

It made me start wondering whether what we eat, and how we eat it, does more than just influence our mood. We know diet directly shapes the gut microbiome, and the gut microbiome affects stress levels, inflammation, and hormone regulation. All of those things influence how safe we feel in our bodies, how much energy we have, and how open we are to connection and dating in general.

Whether we are single or in a relationship, could part of the answer to a healthier dating life sit in what and how we eat, and in the quality of our hormones and gut health? And could different diets (high protein / vegan / Mediterranean) also influence our guts and then the kinds of people we are drawn to? I don’t know. The research is not there yet. But it’s an interesting thought.

So maybe attraction is not just about chemistry. Maybe it is also about physiology, and the state of our gut and hormones. Maybe what we eat does affect who we like. And yes, I mean eating food.

In the past, I often channeled this anxious energy into planning for the year ahead: setting rigid goals, being stricter with myself, and dragging my tired body through things I did not want to do, all in an effort to ;get myself together next year’.

While ambition and high standards are valuable, the way we speak to ourselves does not need to be cruel. I used to believe that without harsh self-talk, without beating myself up, I would sink into contentment, lose drive, and fail. But this is simply not true.

What I have learned over the years is that ambition and self-criticism are not the same thing. You can push harder, strive for big goals, and hold yourself accountable without being a bitch to yourself. The two things are not the same. And in untangling them, I’ve learned to never give up and keep striving while actually speaking nice to myself while doing it. For example:

“This is really hard, but I have got this.”
“I feel uncomfortable about this, so I am going to try again. It is okay, I’m going to be okay. I can do hard things.”

The idea that we must snap ourselves out of it with “I cannot believe you have let yourself go”, “this is horrible, you are disgusting, you need to change” actually comes from outdated models of discipline, often learned from parents or societal pressure. So sorry Skinnytok but modern neuroscience tells us something different.

Research on self-compassion and neuroplasticity shows that negative self-talk does not motivate in the way we think. In fact, it can:

• Increase stress hormones like cortisol, which impair decision-making and learning

• Activate the amygdala, the brain’s threat centre, keeping us in a fight-or-flight mode rather than a growth mode

• Reduce dopamine signalling, which can make tasks feel harder and diminish motivation

On the other hand, positive self-talk, encouragement, and the belief that we can manage challenges, even when uncomfortable do help us achieve more. This kinds of thoughts engage the prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for planning, problem-solving, and self-regulation. This allows us to persist, learn from setbacks, and approach goals with resilience. Being kind to yourself does not mean being soft; it means being strategic.

Thinking differently is hard because our brains are wired to conserve energy. Habits, including thought patterns, are energy-efficient; the brain prefers repeating familiar loops. So how do we shift our mindset while still pursuing ambitious goals?

Through my own experiments: therapy, meditation, breathwork, I have found the most effective method is actually affirmations paired with physical movement. Movement activates the body’s stress response and engages the nervous system. When you pair positive, encouraging thoughts with physical challenge, you create a neurological association between effort and optimism. I like to think of it like classical conditioning in action.

To test it out, I’d try this on your next workout. First, think the usual negative thoughts: “I suck, this is too hard, I will never get better.” Notice how it feels physically and mentally. Now, switch to positive reinforcement: “This is hard, but I can do this. I will not give up on myself.”

You will likely notice something pretty immediate. Your muscles feel more capable, your perceived exertion decreases, and your endurance improves. And then over time, your brain starts to automatically link effort and challenge with confidence and resilience, much like Pavlov’s dogs. Your body learns that discomfort does not equal failure and your mind internalises that lesson.

So as we approach the end of the year and prepare our journals, reflect, and set goals, remember that ambition does not require cruelty. You can analyse, plan, and dream big without beating yourself up along the way.

You cannot hate yourself into happiness. But you can think yourself there, through positive reinforcement, self-compassion, and practice. This year, try approaching yourself with kindness and watch how much further you can go.

“He’s just not that into you” is a lie!! Or at least, just a self-fulfilling prophecy. And here is exactly how to break it. You don’t need to meditate on it, you don’t need an Etsy witch to cast a spell, and you definitely don’t need to manifest it under the full moon. This is the science backed psychology hack that will transform your dating life once and for all.

Firstly, we need to acknowledge that dating makes us anxious. You put yourself on the line and into the unknown, not knowing if you are going to be rejected or loved back. To our nervous systems, this is a huge risk. Risk + vulnerability = our nervous system’s worst nightmare. It hates uncertainty. So we try to get ahead of the discomfort by predicting the future before it happens. We analyse, we overthink and we fill the gaps with the worst case scenario long before we know the truth.

This is not just modern dating. It is evolutionary psychology. Our brains learned to fill in the unknown with danger because assuming the worst once kept us alive. But when we keep doing that as adults, especially while dating, we trap ourselves in the same picture. The same story. The same pattern. We keep colouring our lives with fear and calling it intuition.

Take something small. He does not text back for six hours. Immediately the mind starts colouring in the blanks. He met someone else. He likes her better. You imagine what she looks like. You overanalyse. Or maybe you think he likes you too much and that is why he is pulling away. You think you know exactly what he is thinking. You spiral. Then he finally messages and you read it four times. He seems off. You reply in a weird tone. The next time you catch up the vibes are completely off. He never messages again. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

It becomes the opposite of the old He’s Just Not That Into You advice. That only becomes true if you decide it is. If you decide he is not into you (or worse, he loves you so much he’s avoiding you) and start acting like it, people can feel it. They sense the fear, the lack of grounding, the anxious energy. That energy repels. Not because you are unworthy, but because you are expecting rejection so strongly that your behaviour shifts around it. And then it becomes real.

This is the key. It is not just attachment styles. It is expectation.

What you expect shapes how you show up, and how you show up shapes what actually happens.

And this is backed by science. The famous double slit experiment in quantum physics showed that tiny particles behave differently when observed. Their movement changes simply because someone is watching. This is the observer effect. Attention alters outcome. Expectation influences reality. Psychology shows the same thing. What you expect changes your tone, your posture, your warmth, your timing and the signals you send. People mirror whatever you project.

Think of your life as a blank page you are colouring in. Every belief is a brushstroke. When you pick up the black pen and fill the empty spaces with fear, you ruin the picture long before anything real has happened. You script an ending that was never inevitable. And when those old voices start talking, you can drop the black pen and channel Rachel Sennott and tell those voices to shut the fuck up.

The best part is you do not even need to believe it in the beginning. Treat it like a game. Pretend you are the most beautiful, confident, self assured person on the planet. Expect people to respond to you that way. Act as if. And just like Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty, everything around you starts shifting the second your expectations do. Just try it and see what happens. And then one day you might just wake up and realise you are no longer pretending. You became the person you were acting like.

And when he does not text back, you assume it has absolutely nothing to do with you. You are beautiful and smart and confident. You expect people like you. You keep living your life. You meet someone new. You assume he genuinely likes you, and the energy reflects it. He does like you. Then the first guy comes back wanting to see you. Now you have two guys after you. You stopped energetically clinging to rejection and your life opened up.

Do not fill the gaps with fear. Leave them open. Let them be filled with something better.

But the truth is, when those first date fireworks burn off, when the adrenaline drops and you finally exhale, it is the actual person standing in front of you, not the version you hoped they would be, that your nervous system will be spending time with. Paying attention to how they make you feel physically, emotionally and energetically is far more important than how good you feel being seen with them or how flattering the attention is. I mean their body language, their actual words, their energy.

I have had my fair share of dates, and I have also been completely blinded. Every time I look back, there is always one thing, one red flag, that I missed. It is the one that always ended with me running for the exit as soon as I realised. The red flag was there from the beginning, I just didn’t see it.

It’s competitiveness. Not with sports, or with themselves. Not ambition or drive, we all have this. Competitiveness with me.

It often looks charismatic and funny. You share something good that has happened at work, something you are proud of. They congratulate you, but it is followed almost instantly by a joke that undercuts it or reframes your success as a threat. It sounds like this: “Good on you! Careful though, if you keep this up I will have to beg you for a job.” Or, “Congrats, so you have no life now?” Or, “You look amazing in that outfit, how much did it cost, the average yearly wage?”

These comments are funny, he is laughing. But that is the danger. Humour is the perfect disguise. Sarcasm slips under the radar. And when using self depreciating humour towards in himself in the face of your success, run. Pay attention to that one, the sort of comment where your achievement makes them instantly joke about how they will never measure up or how you have overtaken them. It sounds harmless but it is still competitiveness in disguise. It is still about ranking. It is still about hierarchy. It is still about positioning your success as something unsafe to them.

Psychology research shows that unhealthy competitiveness in relationships is linked to low self esteem, insecure attachment and what is called a ‘zero sum’ mindset. This is the belief that if someone else rises, you must fall. Their nervous system responds to your wins the same way it responds to a threat. They compare, they brace, they self monitor. As intimacy increases, this often becomes minimising, dismissing, sarcasm or playful one upmanship. Not because they do not care about you, but because part of them is wired to believe that love is a competition and losing is dangerous.

The antidote is self assurance. Self assured people still want to achieve and grow, but inside a relationship they feel safe in themselves. Their internal belief is simple: “I am fundamentally okay. I believe in my own ability to make success so other people don’t threaten me.” Psychologically, this is linked with secure attachment. A sense of inner stability. A calm baseline in the body. A nervous system that does not interpret someone else’s joy as danger. These partners celebrate your wins with ease. Their response is simply, “Wow congratulations.” And that’s it. Just a compliment. No uncomfortable humour.

This kind of steadiness cannot be forced or faked, and you cannot coax it out of someone by reassuring them, praising them or shrinking yourself so they feel comfortable. This is why I find this particular red flag one of the hardest to overlook. Some red flags soften with communication. Some are trauma responses that ease when someone feels safe. But competitiveness towards your success is usually a deeper pattern. Sometimes it is a stage of life they are in where they feel insecure or unsure of their path. Sometimes it is woven into their personality or built from childhood where achievement and love were tightly linked. Either way, it is not your responsibility to fix it and, in my experience, it rarely shifts quickly.

If you share something important to you and the response is sarcasm, minimising humour or self depreciating jokes, that is your sign to go. Run. Run, run, run.

Self help is powerful, but it has a shadow side. When we constantly chase improvement, it is easy to internalise the belief that our current self is fundamentally unworthy. Then our goals turn into conditions. I will get the job when I fix my limiting beliefs. I will meet someone when I lose weight or when I heal every wound. Life becomes one long list of prerequisites and we never actually let ourselves live.

This mindset shows up most painfully in romance. We convince ourselves we must look or act a certain way to deserve love. But this is a myth. What people genuinely fall for is authenticity, the presence that lets them exhale and feel real. Attractive energy comes from being yourself, not being perfect. The people we love the most are rarely flawless. Their beauty comes from the way they make us feel safe, seen and welcomed.

There is also biology behind this. Humans are social creatures. Our nervous systems literally regulate in the presence of other people. Oxytocin, the bonding hormone, reduces stress when we are physically or emotionally connected. Co regulation, where two nervous systems sync, is one of the strongest predictors of emotional stability. Sociologists have shown for decades that community buffers anxiety and increases resilience. We were never meant to self optimise in isolation. Locking yourself in your room to manifest, journal, meditate and fix every part of yourself alone can actually increase pressure on your system. It can make you feel like you must be perfect before you deserve connection. There is nothing wrong with those practices, but they were designed to complement connection, not replace it. They work better when paired with real human relationships, starting with friends and family and slowly allowing yourself to lean into romance.

True love is not created through polish. It comes from meeting someone in a deep place. The feeling of having a partner or an ally in the world comes from openness and vulnerability. Armour blocks intimacy. The guard we keep up while we are still improving actually prevents us from being met and supported. Letting someone in before you feel perfect is the real prerequisite for connection. It is often the missing piece. The contradiction is that in doing so, you often find the internal confidence you were chasing through self improvement in the first place.

When I look back at my younger self, I just want to shake her!! Go out into the world!! I was so scared, and I put so much pressure on myself to have everything perfect before I let myself live. I thought I had to love myself completely, fix every insecurity and feel proud of every part of me before I deserved to go on dates or even talk to boys. It simply is not true. Relationships, friendships and family can help us love ourselves. They reflect us back to us in ways we cannot do alone. We do not need to be finished. We just need to be authentic and open. We need to be who we are right now. It does not mean abandoning growth. It means not doing it alone. And never doing it at the cost of actually living.

When we feel unworthy, we often try to fix the outside with more routines, more manifesting and more discipline. But what we are actually craving is love and connection. The biggest lie is the phrase you must love yourself before anyone else can. Humans do not work like that. We heal through closeness. We regulate through touch, laughter and shared presence. When I was in chronic pain, it was not the perfect diet that helped. It was laughing with friends and hugging my mum. Love from others often teaches us how to love ourselves.

When we isolate ourselves because we think we are unworthy, we cut ourselves off from the very thing that could heal us. The antidote is not waiting until we feel perfect. It is acting anyway. Showing up to the date. Saying yes to the invitation. Letting people see the unfinished version of you. Self improvement is good, but it cannot replace living.

Of course there is a disclaimer here. This is not about dating while you are in the middle of a breakdown or abandoning your own stability. We all need a basic level of emotional steadiness before we invite someone into our lives. But there is a big difference between being stable and being perfect. You do not need to be healed, flawless or operating at your highest self. You just need to be grounded enough to show up as who you actually are. When we are genuine in our imperfection, we attract people who are genuine too. Toxic relationships often grow out of insecurity and pretending to be someone we are not. Healthy connection comes from the calm energy of everything is okay, I am here, and that is enough for now. That energy invites the right people in and repels the ones who only respond to performance.

So ultimately, stop postponing your life. You do not need to be a perfect version of yourself to deserve connection or partnership. Love is created through openness, vulnerability and letting someone meet you where you truly are. Perfection is not the doorway to connection. Authenticity is. Let yourself be seen before you feel finished. What you discover might be the love, worth and safety you have been trying to earn on your own.

What you can do is manifest yourself.

This is where people get manifestation wrong. Manifestation is not about controlling external outcomes. It is about shaping your own internal world so your brain, behaviour and energy start aligning with the life you want. When you feel love in your body and carry it in your behaviour, your Reticular Activating System begins to shift what you notice, what you’re drawn to, and how you respond. Manifestation is simply you training your brain to recognise what matters to you.

But this only works when you focus inward. Trying to manifest another person is like trying to grab the sunglasses off someone else’s face to swap out their lenses. You can’t. They see through their own filters and their own life experiences. The only lenses you can change are the ones you’re wearing. When you shift your own filter, the world looks different, you show up differently, and the people who match that feeling become visible to you naturally.

Most people try to manifest others because they’re scared of the unknown. They want certainty, reassurance, a plan. But other people are unknown. That’s the point. Love feels good precisely because it’s unpredictable. You’re not meant to control it.

So instead of gripping onto a specific person or outcome, bring the attention back to yourself. Feel love in your chest. Let it settle in your body. Show up as the partner you want to be. Build a life that is warm, calm, open and grounded. Keep dating. Keep meeting people. Stay open. Just stop trying to control someone else’s path or mind.

You can’t rewrite someone else’s neural pathways. But you can update your own. Once your brain is filtered for self-worth and possibility, you move differently, choose differently, and respond differently. And that’s when you meet someone whose filter matches yours. Suddenly it looks like destiny, but really it’s alignment.

Maybe it’s just our “type.” Or maybe it’s something much deeper that sits beneath the surface. Yet while our instincts and patterns can be powerful, we aren’t powerless to change them. With awareness and emotional maturity, we can choose which connections to nurture and which to release.

And when it comes to that choice, there’s one quality that deserves to be at the top of your list. It’s something to look for in others and to cultivate within yourself, because we also tend to attract what we practise ourselves. So what is it?

Emotional vulnerability paired with responsibility.

Emotional vulnerability means being able to show who you truly are, even when it feels uncomfortable or exposing. It’s being honest about how you feel without hiding behind performance or perfection. Think of someone expressing love, fear, regret or sadness without trying to look cool or detached. Vulnerability takes courage, and psychologists like Dr Brené Brown have shown that it’s the foundation of genuine intimacy and connection. But on its own, vulnerability can also be chaotic. When we open up without responsibility, our emotions can spill onto others and become their problem to fix.

That’s where responsibility comes in. Emotional responsibility is the ability to feel and express emotion while still regulating it ourselves. It means taking ownership of our internal world instead of handing it to someone else. Research on self-regulation, such as studies by Dr James Gross at Stanford University, shows that people who can acknowledge their emotions while managing their reactions experience greater wellbeing, lower stress and stronger relationships. It’s a skill rooted in self-respect: the quiet belief that our feelings matter, but they are ours to care for.

A partner who’s emotionally vulnerable but not yet responsible might say, “I love you. You’re the only person I can talk to, the only one who really knows me. You can’t ever leave.” It’s raw and real, but it carries quiet pressure: love tangled with fear. Think Normal People’s Marianne and Connell: two people who share everything but don’t yet know how to hold themselves. Their honesty is deep, but without the self-awareness or emotional tools to keep it safe.

Whereas responsibility might sound more like, “You’ve made me feel safe enough to be myself, and I want to start bringing that version of me into all my relationships.” That’s still love, but it’s rooted in self-respect, not survival.

When emotional vulnerability and responsibility coexist, relationships feel safe but alive. In simple terms, emotional responsibility means saying how you feel and looking after yourself at the same time. It doesn’t mean you can’t rely on each other, I think you absolutely can. But there should always be two people looking after you: you, and the person you love. Never just one.

So when life feels messy or uncertain, our algorithms tend to mirror our fears. Suddenly, we’re knee-deep in videos telling us how to fix, improve, optimise, or reinvent ourselves. We’re so busy trying to patch the leaking hole at the bottom of our cup that we forget to actually fill it.

Enter Benny Drama and Mary Beth Barone, and their podcast Ride.

Somehow, amidst the noise of modern self-improvement, Ride manages to be the most healing thing of all: funny. But not the biting, cynical, or mean kind of funny. It’s warm funny — the kind that makes you giggle. It isn’t roasting anyone, or self-deprecating to the point of pain, or trying to make a political point. It’s light, affectionate and deeply human. And I think that’s because their friendship is built on a real, down in the dirt, through everything kind of love.

This current of affection is beneath every absurd tangent and every “well, of course” in response to something completely out of pocket. And it’s that love that makes the humour feel safe, and that safety is what our bodies are craving more than ever.

Because scientifically speaking, laughter isn’t just entertainment. It’s a biological reset. Research shows that laughing lowers cortisol (the stress hormone), boosts dopamine and serotonin (the chemicals linked to motivation, mood and connection), and even supports immune function. When we laugh, our bodies enter a state of parasympathetic calm: the same state we reach in deep rest. It literally tells the nervous system, you’re safe now.

This is why comedy matters. Especially this kind of gentle, silly, friendship-based comedy. It reminds us that joy doesn’t have to come from achievement or progress. It can come from play. And in a world that constantly tells us to do more, be more and fix more, laughter becomes an act of self-preservation.

Of course, self-help has its place. Reflection, growth and learning are valuable. But when consumed in excess, even good advice can raise stress levels. The brain starts to associate constant “improvement” with a sense of danger — as if we’re perpetually not enough. So while self-help teaches you to cope, humour teaches your body to breathe.

What Ride does so beautifully is balance that levity with ambition. Mary Beth and Benny are both incredibly talented, successful and driven, yet they never take themselves too seriously. They prove you can chase your dreams without losing your sense of play. That’s a rare and necessary reminder — ambition with softness, success without ego, humour with heart.

But mostly, it’s just funny. The kind of laugh-out-loud-on-public-transport funny that catches you off guard. I’d advise caution when listening in public.

It seems as though there’s endless conversation about career growth and romantic love, but not nearly enough about the life-saving power of friendship. Ride has taught me what it means to be a good friend — how to listen, tease, support and love. Listening feels like gaining a friend, but also learning how to be one.

So maybe what we need right now isn’t more content about fixing ourselves or levelling up. Maybe we just need more Benny and Mary Beth.

I mean, well, of course we do.

We all know it’s scripted, edited, and designed to portray people in specific ways. It’s not real reality. Yet we talk, analyse, judge, gossip, and obsess over it as if it were the most important reflection of real life. But why?

I think we love reality romance because of the control it gives us. In our own lives, when it comes to love and dating, we have far less control than we’d like. We can hustle in our careers, build our wealth, sculpt our bodies, curate our wardrobes, and perfect our makeup. We can shape ourselves into whoever we want to be. But when it comes to relationships, it’s never fully up to us.

Love requires surrender. Dating demands vulnerability. We have to open up to someone else, give our time and energy without any guarantee it will work out. The risk is huge: heartbreak, the deepest kind of pain, but the potential reward is everything: connection, partnership, love.

And no matter how hard we try, we can’t control people. They’ll love us, leave us, disappoint us, or surprise us. Relationships are messy, unpredictable puzzles, and the uncertainty of it all can drive us mad. Everyone around us is falling in and out of love, and we want to act — to do something — but how? Who’s the right person, the best risk, the greatest reward? How are we supposed to cope with so much unknown?

Enter Love Island. The Bachelor. Married at First Sight.

We become flies on the wall of other people’s romantic chaos, people who feel the same emotions we do, only louder, brighter, and more extreme. Beneath the gloss and drama, the core emotions are familiar: lust, admiration, insecurity, jealousy, hope, heartbreak. But we get to experience it all from a safe distance.

We know exactly what everyone is thinking, thanks to the one-on-one confessionals. We see every angle, every betrayal, every “what if.” From this elevated position, we become omniscient: like gods of the villa. It’s comforting. The uncertainty that plagues us in real life doesn’t exist here. We can finally know it all: who’s lying, who’s genuine, who’s doomed. From this place of certainty, we can judge, critique, and reassure ourselves that we would do better.

The producers know this, and they lean into it. They serve us maximum drama, heightened emotion, and storylines that keep us on edge but still let us feel like we know what’s coming. That’s the sweet spot. We get to say, “I told you so!” and feel smart, safe, and in control.

Because maybe that’s what reality romance really offers us: a break from our own uncertainty. A world where we can pretend to know what love looks like. And in doing so, convince ourselves that, somehow, we’ll be okay too.

When we’re rejected, we almost always use it to confirm our deepest fear. If you get broken up with, there could be a hundred reasons why it happened. But if your biggest insecurity is that you’re too emotional or too needy, you’ll decide that’s why it ended. You’ll think, If I could just fix that part of me, this wouldn’t have happened.

The same thing happens with jobs. We don’t really know why we weren’t chosen, but we assume it’s because we’re too scattered, too inexperienced, too something. We put on glasses tinted with our worst fears and see everything through them.

But what if we could take the glasses off?

Psychologists have found that rejection activates the same parts of the brain that register physical pain. It doesn’t just hurt emotionally, it shakes our sense of belonging and control. That’s why rejection can make you feel lost. It’s not only about losing something; it’s about feeling like you no longer have a place or a say in where you go next.

Here’s an example:
Imagine someone gets turned down for a job they really wanted. They tell themselves it’s because they weren’t confident enough in the interview, or didn’t have the right qualifications. They replay every moment, turning it into proof that they’re not capable. But what they don’t see is that the company hired someone less experienced so they could pay them less and still meet their budget. The rejection wasn’t a reflection of their worth, it was timing and circumstance. Yet because it hit that deep fear of not being “good enough,” it felt like a personal failure.

But this is what rejection does. It holds up a mirror.

Because here’s the truth: that mirror doesn’t show us the world. It shows us our beliefs about the world: the stories we tell ourselves about why things didn’t work out. The reflection isn’t always real. It’s just our fears staring back at us.

But mirrors are only useful if we look at them with honesty, not hatred. If we scowl at ourselves or turn away and blame the world for being unfair, or pound on the glass trying to make it open like a door, we miss the lesson completely.

We need mirrors to understand ourselves, not through hate or self-blame, but through compassion. When we look clearly, we see what we’ve been believing. And once we see it, we can change it. We can choose to believe in something better.

Because rejection isn’t proof that the world is against you. It’s just reflecting back what you already think about yourself. And while you can’t always know why things didn’t work out, you can know how you feel. And this is how we learn, grow and evolve.

Researcher Brené Brown found that every story of courage she’s studied shares one thing in common: vulnerability. The willingness to sit in emotional exposure and stay open is what makes growth possible. Rejection invites that same kind of vulnerability. It’s an opportunity to look inward, to notice what hurts and why, and to build courage around it.

Because rejection isn’t redirection.
It’s a reflection.
And that reflection isn’t of the world working against you, it’s the mirror showing you what you believe. Once you see it, you can choose differently. You can stop staring, turn toward what’s possible, and go find a door.

The truth is, girls now have something previous generations didn’t: space to talk and platforms to share what we’ve learned. TikTok has become an open forum for therapy language, self-awareness, and storytelling. If I’d had access to the kind of videos that exist now when I was in high school, I would’ve learned so much—and probably could have avoided a lot of bad experiences. I didn’t even know what consent meant at sixteen.

Now anyone with a phone can hear stories that connect across experiences and continents. It’s like we’ve all been in a years-long group chat comparing notes, and the result is collective education. Women are more emotionally fluent, more self-aware, and much harder to fool.

On top of this, women are writing more stories—and good ones, too. Through movies and TV shows, we’re getting characters we now use to define and decode relationships. Barbie showed us what it looks like to wake up from Ken’s spell: overcoming the charming, insecure guy who performs confidence but has no depth. The Summer I Turned Prettygave us Conrad Fisher—emotionally complex, protective, kind. These stories don’t just entertain us; they shape how we see real life. We finally have the language, the metaphors, the characters to talk about the types of men we meet and the relationships we want. And we have TikTok, where we can go online and talk about it. Not just with our friends, but with the whole world.

Because of all this, the culture has shifted. I think we’re less blinded by bad behaviour now. It’s less “boys will be boys” and more “well, this is actually coercive control.” It doesn’t mean it’s easy to walk away, but it’s easier to identify, name, and label the kinds of things guys do. So it’s not that it’s no longer sad to be single; it’s just far more embarrassing to be in a relationship that’s obviously bad for you. Why would you, when you know better?

As for posting relationships online, it’s the same story. When everyone was sharing their “Conrad Fisher dupe” boyfriends after The Summer I Turned Pretty—guys with that quiet kindness and maybe even the same wristwatch—we loved it. We went crazy for it, actually. But if you post some guy who’s clearly dulling your energy, it’s embarrassing. Because now, we all see it for what it is: you’re under Ken’s spell, trapped in the Mojo Dojo Casa House, waiting to wake up. And honestly, we’re craving authenticity online more than ever. So those perfectly curated swipes of your boyfriend holding your hand is kind of cringe. But no more than any other overproduced post that tries too hard.

That said, I don’t think we’ve gone so far as to say love isn’t still the goal. I still think the idea of the “crazy cat lady who never marries” scares the shit out of most of us. Deep down, we all still want love. Maybe now more than ever. We just want it to mean something. We want the real thing: a good guy who loves us, who’s emotionally vulnerable but takes accountability. We want Conrad Fisher. And if you don’t, if you settle for a guy like Ken, well then, that’s kind of embarrassing.

And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

When we talk about being cheated on, most of the time we follow the same script. Rightly so, we feel hollowed out. But we also start wondering: what did we lack to cause this? We think: I wasn’t exciting enough. I wasn’t attractive enough. I’m aging too fast. If I had been better, this wouldn’t have happened.

It’s a scene we’ve watched play out on screen too. Think of Emma Thompson’s character in Love Actually, discovering her husband’s affair. She stands frozen in her bedroom, holding a necklace meant for someone else, tears silently falling as Joni Mitchell plays. She believes she’s old, dull, invisible. It’s as if her husband’s disloyalty confirmed this.

But what if that’s not the story at all?

Cheating, in most cases, has absolutely nothing to do with the one who’s been cheated on. It’s about the cheater: someone who lacks the maturity or emotional regulation to resist an impulse. Most of the time, they feel lust, attraction, or emotional pull, and they’re weak to it. Despite everything, they give in to their bodies. They don’t act out of power but out of weakness. It’s like someone addicted to junk food. It’s a regression into their teenage self with an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. An inability to stay regulated when faced with desire. It’s embarrassing for them. Really.

Lily Allen really captures this inversion perfectly in Pussy Palace. Obviously, in her case it was extreme (her ex-husband was a literal sex addict), but it still feels culturally relevant. She sings about his apartment as a “pussy palace,” which I think frames it as a space he devoted to his “queens,” the women’s bodies he couldn’t help but worship. He was completely powerless in the face of them. But in describing it that way, she flips the dynamic: he isn’t dominant. He’s diminished. Weak, not powerful.

Historically, male infidelity has been framed as proof of virility: boys will be boys, men have needs, she let herself go. The woman becomes the tragic figure; the man, the rogue who couldn’t help himself. And he always gets what he wants.

But in reality, cheating is the opposite of power. It’s a collapse of integrity. A failure to self-regulate. It’s giving in to physical impulses despite having real-life commitments and responsibilities. It’s immature and weak. A man unable to control himself isn’t powerful, he’s embarrassing. And that’s what Pussy Palace sounds like: a public outing where power is lost.

And maybe that’s a good thing. Because girls who get cheated on now will hopefully not sit in their bedrooms crying to Joni Mitchell, but instead play Pussy Palace and think: Ew. That’s disgusting. You’re weak in the face of women’s bodies, and their power.