We are not always home, nor always gone. Some of the most important moments in our lives happen in the hallway.

This is the strange territory of liminal space—not here, not there, but between. You’ve been here before. Maybe you didn’t have a name for it, but you felt it in your bones.

It’s the airport at 3 a.m., the months between the diagnosis and the treatment plan, the awkward first weeks after a breakup when the bed feels too big and the world too small.

Liminal space is the threshold. It is the place where identity is unstitched, reality destabilized, and the old rules no longer apply.

Victor Turner (1969) wrote of it as a “betwixt and between” zone, where the self is disassembled in preparation for reassembly. There is no furniture in this room. You are not supposed to get comfortable. You are meant to pass through, not unpack.

But not all in-between spaces are empty or disorienting.

Some are richly furnished with contradiction, stocked with the tools of synthesis. These are third spaces—and they don’t ask you to choose between here or there. They invite you to sit at the table and make something new.

The Mall Is Dead. Long Live the Mall.

This is not just a story about retail. It’s about us.

Our dreams, our loneliness, our bad haircuts and ill-fitting Aeropostale hoodies.

It’s about a building that pretended to be a town square and a culture that pretended to be a family.

The American mall wasn’t just a place you went.
It was a place you performed—your identity, your class, your hunger.

And now it’s a corpse.

Or is it?

What Are Aura Points?

In the post-pandemic swirl of wellness culture, emotional labor fatigue, and spiritual rebranding, a curious meme quietly ascended: Aura Points.

They're not real—yet everyone online seems to be gaining or losing them.

Aura points are a symbolic currency for vibes-based virtue.

They measure not just what you do, but how subtly and spiritually you do it.

You don't just recycle—you reflect on the intergenerational trauma of consumption while recycling, and preferably post it with gentle lo-fi music playing in the background.

Welcome to Aura Capitalism: where worth is earned in silence, curated in aesthetics, and spent on social approval.

Your partner slams the fridge, muttering under their breath.

You look up from the couch and whisper gently:
“Okay, Bombardino Crocodilo, let’s not summon Tralalero Tralala over oat milk again.”

They snort. You both laugh. Conflict de-escalated. Affection restored. Therapy avoided—for today.

Welcome to Italian Brainrot: the nonsensical, AI-born meme that has become a wildly effective emotional lubricant in modern relationships, especially for younger and neurodiverse couples.

What began as surreal internet humor now functions like a relational toolkit dressed up in spaghetti-sauce chaos.

It’s stupid. It’s brilliant. It’s working.

What Is Italian Brainrot?

Some couples tell their love story at weddings.

Others tell theirs in therapy, right after saying something like, “I don’t know why I can’t leave. It’s like we’re addicted to each other.”

That’s not romance. That’s trauma reenactment dressed up as chemistry.

One of the most volatile and heartbreakingly common toxic relationship patterns is the pairing of a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) traits and a partner with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) traits.

On social media, it’s described in hashtags like #traumabond or #clusterbhell. In the therapy room, we call it a relational crucible—and sometimes, the beginning of actual healing.

But first, let’s unpack how this dynamic works.

Once upon a time — and by "once" I mean approximately the mid-2010s — we were all but commanded to turn ourselves inside out for public consumption.

Overshare! Trauma dump! Be "authentic" until you emotionally flatline. It was, frankly, a little grotesque.

Now, in a world groaning under the weight of too much information, a quieter rebellion is underway: emotional minimalism.

Think Marie Kondo for your feelings. If it doesn't spark mutual respect, you thank it for its service and leave it at the curb.

What Is Emotional Minimalism?

Ghosting used to be rude.
Now it’s practically a civic hobby.

But hyperpersonal ghosting?

That’s something crueler, stickier, and infinitely more confusing:
When someone learns the tender topography of your emotional wounds —
and then vanishes anyway.

Not because they didn’t know how much it would hurt.
But because they did.

There was a time when the end of love meant setting fire to each other’s letters, telling your friends everything, and maybe composing a bitter ballad if you had the pipes for it.

Now?

You’re expected to act like an ex-CIA agent.
Smile politely.
Protect state secrets.
Never reveal the codes.

Emotional NDAs — Non-Disclosure Agreements of the heart — are the latest invisible norm emerging from modern relationship culture.

No lawyer drafts them.
No one signs them.
But you break them at your peril.

What Happens in the Relationship Stays in the Relationship?

What Are Emotional NDAs?

There are breakups no one asks you about.

No casseroles. No sad Taylor Swift playlists delivered by well-meaning friends.

Just you, sitting alone with a grief you’re not sure you’re allowed to have —
because the relationship you’re mourning technically never existed.

Welcome to situationship grief: The Grief That Dares Not Speak Its Name
The silent funeral for the love you almost had.

Once upon a time, a breakup was loud.

You changed your relationship status. You boxed up sweatshirts.
You either had a messy friend intervention or a defiant "I’m finding myself" solo trip to Tulum.

Now?

You just archive your wedding photos on Instagram.
Maybe post a picture of your brunch — just you, a mimosa, and the implied absence of betrayal.

Soft launch divorce is here.
And it’s the weirdest, calmest social ritual Gen Z and Millennials have ever invented.

What Is a Soft Launch Divorce?

Forget soulmates.
Forget "Facebook official."
Forget putting a ring on it.

The new romantic currency?
Buying milk together.
Not because you're building a future.
But because, somehow, you both needed oat milk at the same time, and that felt... intimate.

What Are Micro-Commitments?

Micro-commitments are the modern answer to our cultural allergy to labels:
Small, repeated acts of loyalty that simulate relational depth — without triggering existential panic.

Once upon a time, “fasting” meant food.
Now? It means you’re declining the emotional buffet — the bread, the wine, and the text messages from someone who doesn’t know how to spell “available.”

Attachment detox is the deliberate, sometimes reluctant, but ultimately sacred practice of stepping away from relationships that light up your old abandonment wounds like a Christmas tree.

Not forever. Maybe not even out of anger.

But out of a strange, painful kind of loyalty — to your own nervous system.