The Love & Couples desk takes long-term partnership seriously and short-term dating equally seriously, because both shape the people we eventually try to stay with. We cover the research, Gottman, Johnson, the attachment literature that actually replicates, without turning it into a self-help tic, and we report from inside long marriages, second marriages, the queer couples who built the etiquette from scratch, and the long-distance pairs running their relationship across six time zones.
Less ‘spice it up,’ more ‘here is how repair actually works when one of you is exhausted.’ The reading reflects how love is talked about now: candidly, specifically, and without pretending the hard parts aren’t structural.
What 40 years of capitalization research actually says, vs. what your TikTok therapist says it says
The “low-information apology” is what most people give. It almost never works.
May 2026 Editor’s Letter: why we relaunched, what we are building, and what we are reading
Long-distance relationship communication: the three rituals that protect closeness
Active listening: the four-move framework that actually works
How to write a love letter that they will keep
What 20 years of research actually says about the good-morning text
How to apologize over text when you have actually done something wrong
