You may have seen this statistic circulating online:

About 38% of couples who receive marriage counseling divorce within four years.

Nearly 70% of couples with similar problems who do not seek counseling divorce within four years.

Some people point to this and conclude that couples therapy “doesn’t work.”

That conclusion misunderstands what the numbers are actually telling us.

“Shreking” as a dating strategy

On social media, “shreking” isn’t primarily about liking ogres.

It’s about dating “down” on purpose—choosing someone you perceive as lower in the dating hierarchy (looks, status, polish, social desirability) so you can feel safer, more in control, less at risk of being left. 

The strategy’s pitch (usually implied, sometimes stated) goes like this:

• “If I’m the ‘more desirable’ one, I won’t have to compete.”

• “If they’re lucky to have me, they’ll treat me better.”

• “If I pick the ‘safe’ option, I can relax.”

And the punchline term—“getting shrekked”—is when you run that strategy…and still get hurt, rejected, or humbled by the person you assumed would be grateful. 

For years, relationship culture focused on insight.

Understand your attachment style.
Name your triggers.
Communicate clearly.
Do your work.

That era is ending—not because insight was wrong, but because it was incomplete.

The defining relational problem now is not ignorance.
It is load.

And the concept that explains why some relationships bend under load while others harden is permeability.

Belief in Santa Claus used to be a childhood rite of passage.
Now it’s a cultural negotiation.

In 2025, no one simply believes in Santa anymore.
They manage Santa.

They contextualize him.
They annotate him.

They quietly debate him in group texts at 11:47 p.m. on December 23rd.

Santa hasn’t disappeared.

He’s been demoted—from metaphysical truth to symbolic operating system.

Most relationship problems are explained as failures of communication, empathy, or commitment.

That explanation is incomplete.

A more accurate diagnosis is often this: the relationship has lost permeability.

Relational permeability describes whether influence can still move between two people without triggering defensiveness, shutdown, or collapse.

When permeability is high, small inputs create meaningful change. When permeability is low, even sincere efforts bounce off the system.

T

his concept explains why insight often fails, why therapy stalls, and why couples can understand each other perfectly and still remain stuck.

Ever wonder why understanding yourself doesn’t automatically repair your relationship?

Most modern couples arrive in therapy highly informed.

They know their attachment styles.
They can name their triggers.
They understand where their patterns came from.

This is not a failure. It’s progress.

But it is also where many relationships quietly stall.

What individual insight actually does well:

Individual insight operates at the level of intrapersonal clarity. It helps a person:

• Make sense of their emotional reactions.

• Reduce shame by providing coherent narratives.

• Interrupt self-blame or character attacks.

• Feel calmer, smarter, and more compassionate.

Insight is emotionally analgesic. It lowers pain.

That is why it spreads so well in books, podcasts, and social media.

And why couples often say, “We understand each other so much better now… but nothing is changing.”

They are not wrong.

Most couples don’t come to therapy because they never talk.

They come because they talk beautifully.

They use careful language.
They take turns.
They nod at the right moments.

They can summarize the conflict with the clarity of a graduate seminar.

And still—nothing changes.

The same issue returns.
The same distance reappears.
The same repair works briefly, like a painkiller with a short half-life.

This is not a failure of communication.

It is a failure of storage.

Most relationships do not end anymore.
They stabilize.

They become polite, functional, emotionally solvent—and internally bankrupt.

What follows is a deep dive into the core concepts underneath what I’ve called the attention cliff.

Not metaphors for effect. Mechanisms. Patterns that repeat across couples, especially intelligent, self-aware, high-functioning ones.

What is the Attention Cliff?

The attention cliff is the point at which one partner reduces emotional investment—not because of indifference or cruelty, but because full engagement has become unsustainably expensive.

This is not leaving.
It is downshifting.

The relationship remains intact structurally, but the quality of attention—curiosity, responsiveness, initiative—drops sharply and then plateaus at a lower, safer level.

Emotional cuckolding does not involve infidelity in the traditional sense.

No affairs. No secret texts. No dramatic reveal.

It describes a quieter rupture: when a partner remains physically present in the relationship but consistently stops turning toward you emotionally.

They are still there.
They still participate.

But their emotional allegiance has drifted elsewhere—toward work, friends, ideology, children, hobbies, or an interior life you are no longer invited into.

What makes emotional cuckolding so destabilizing is its ambiguity.
The relationship has not ended.
Nothing “wrong enough” has happened.

And yet the bond is no longer reciprocal.

Emotional cuckolding occurs when one partner stays in the relationship while redirecting emotional attention, intimacy, or prioritization away from the primary bond—leaving the other partner relationally displaced but officially partnered.

It hurts precisely because it is difficult to name.

Most neurodivergent couples do not come to therapy saying,
“We don’t love each other.”

They come in tired.

Not dramatic tired.
Not collapse-on-the-floor tired.

The quieter kind.

The kind that shows up as flattened tone, reduced curiosity, shorter conversations, and an unspoken sense that everything takes more effort than it should.

They are not failing emotionally.
They are overdrawing relational capacity.

What they are experiencing has a name.

Neurodivergent Relationship System Overload.

A condition in which a relationship is not broken, but a wee bit overextended.

Emotional Exhaustion Is Not a Personality Issue

A team of psychologists has done something that feels less surprising than inevitable: they analyzed Taylor Swift’s entire musical catalog to examine what her lyrics quietly teach listeners about romantic relationships.

Not as art.
Not as autobiography.
But as psychology.

What emerged was not a single emotional worldview, but two distinct ones—depending almost entirely on where in the relationship timeline the song is set.

When Swift writes about relationships that are ongoing, her lyrics tend to model emotional security, realism, and mutual care.

When she writes about relationships that have ended, the emotional logic shifts sharply toward anxiety, anger, grievance, and hostility.

Same voice.
Same pen.
Two very different psychologies of love.

This is not inconsistency.
It is phase-dependence.

New psychology research shows that folks are not primarily attracted to physical strength—but to a partner’s willingness to step in and protect them when something goes wrong.

That distinction matters more than it sounds.

For most of human history, danger was interpersonal and immediate.

There were no institutions reliably coming to help. Protection came from alliances—friends, family, romantic partners—who decided, in real time, whether to step forward or step away.

Attraction evolved inside that reality.