When Love Became a Nervous System: How Attachment Culture Changed Modern Relationships (opens in new tab)

A woman in yoga pants is whispering into her phone in the parking lot outside Target. “I just think he’s emotionally avoidant.” Twenty years ago she would have just said: “He never talks.” That is the shift. The language of therapy escaped the therapist’s office and entered ordinary life. Now everyone appears to possess a partial graduate education in Attachment Theory acquired through social media, heartbreak, podcasts, and twelve hours on Reddit at two in the morning. “He’s avoidant.” “She’...