Field Notes
The conversations most couples wish they'd had earlier.
Practical, evidence-informed essays on the decisions that quietly shape a relationship: moving in, money, conflict, trust, commitment, and the ones nobody warns you about.
The library
113
articles · updated regularly · by Evan Evans
Guided Pathways
Start with the problem you are trying to solve.
Trust has been broken
Rebuilding after cheating, secrecy or betrayal.
Follow this pathwayI am dating and deciding whether to get serious
Exclusivity, red flags, chemistry, compatibility and choosing without losing yourself.
Follow this pathwayWe are thinking seriously about marriage
Readiness, engagement, doubts, money, family, faith and the future before the wedding.
Follow this pathwayI keep excusing red flags
Control, contempt, power, attachment and the difference between unhealthy patterns and ordinary imperfection.
Follow this pathwayWe keep having the same argument
Conflict patterns, repair and communication.
Follow this pathwayI do not know whether to stay
Clarity when leaving and staying both feel difficult.
Follow this pathwayMoney is becoming a relationship issue
Disclosure, debt, contribution, income gaps, dependency and financial power.
Follow this pathwayWe are thinking of moving in
Money, privacy, expectations and sharing a home.
Follow this pathwayChildren are part of the relationship
Dating, parenting, exes and blended-family pressure.
Follow this pathwayOur intimacy has changed
Desire, rejection, closeness and sexual expectations.
Follow this pathway
The Library
More field notes
Each piece is designed to leave you with something to recognise, discuss or do, not just another relationship opinion to consume.
The Relationship Health Map: What Actually Makes a Relationship Work?
Most relationship problems do not live in one neat category. This practical map helps you examine trust, commitment, connection, conflict, fairness, respect, intimacy and autonomy without reducing your relationship to a single label.
The 7 Questions Every Couple Should Ask Before Moving In Together
Moving in together changes more than your address. These seven conversations uncover assumptions about commitment, money, conflict, family, responsibilities and exit plans before they become problems.
In Love With Someone You've Never Met? When Online Romance Moves Faster Than Reality
A relationship can feel serious long before you've shared a room. Before you promise forever to someone you know through a screen, look at what you know, what you hope, and what needs time.
When Reassurance Becomes Control: The Relationship Warning Signs You Should Never Ignore
When repeated reassurance turns into accusations, pressure and loss of personal boundaries, here is how to recognise the warning signs before marriage.
Is This Relationship Healthy, or Does It Only Feel Familiar?
Familiarity can feel safe even when a relationship is unhealthy. Learn how to separate comfort, history and attachment from the evidence of a healthy partnership.
Are You Loving Each Other or Trading With Each Other?
Tony Robbins describes three levels of relationship: selfish, conditional and unconditional. The useful question is not which label sounds best. It is what happens between you when giving, fairness, sacrifice and reciprocity get tested in real life.
Love Is Not Enough: The Eight Things a Relationship Still Needs
Love matters, but love alone does not run a relationship. This guide identifies eight other things a lasting partnership still needs.
The Six Needs Hiding Under Almost Every Relationship Argument
Tony Robbins teaches that people organise much of their behaviour around six human needs. The framework is not established psychological science, but it can become a useful relationship lens when you translate each need into observable behaviour and compare it with what research says about autonomy, relatedness and relationship functioning.
Are You Building a Relationship, or Maintaining an Arrangement?
Some couples stop building and start operating. Learn how to tell whether you still have a relationship or mainly an arrangement that keeps life moving.
Your Love Language Is Not the Whole Story
Love languages gave millions of people an easy vocabulary for affection. The research does not strongly support the idea that everybody has one primary language that a partner must match. A more useful question is whether your relationship has enough range, responsiveness and accountability for love to be recognisable when life gets difficult.
The Invisible Contract: What You Both Agreed to Without Ever Saying It
Every couple has unwritten rules. Problems begin when each person is living by a different invisible contract and assuming the other agreed.
Masculine and Feminine Energy in Relationships: What Are We Actually Talking About?
People use “masculine” and “feminine” energy to describe attraction, leadership, safety, receptivity and polarity. But those labels can hide very different relationship problems. This deep dive translates the language into behaviour and separates useful insight from stereotype.
When the Relationship Looks Fine but Feels Wrong
A relationship can look stable on paper and still feel wrong inside. This guide helps you investigate the feeling without dismissing it or treating it as automatic proof.
Does the Age Gap Matter, or Does the Life-Stage Gap Matter?
A 12-year age gap tells you the distance between two birthdays. It does not tell you who has the money, power, experience, health risk, fertility pressure or social leverage. This guide helps couples examine what the age difference actually changes in real life.
Compatibility Is More Than Chemistry: The Full Relationship Compatibility Audit
Chemistry answers whether you are drawn to someone. Compatibility answers whether the two of you can build a life that works.
Love Is Between Two People. Culture Comes Into the Room Too.
Interracial and intercultural relationships are not automatically less satisfying. But race, family, religion, language, discrimination and cultural expectations can create pressures that love alone does not erase. The work is learning what belongs to the couple and what the outside world has brought into the room.
The Relationship Operating System: How Two People Actually Build a Life Together
Strong relationships need an operating system, clear agreements for decisions, money, conflict, intimacy, household life and the future.
Why Do I Miss Someone Who Was Bad for Me? Trauma Bonds, Attachment and What the Term Actually Means
Missing someone who hurt you does not prove the relationship was healthy, and it does not automatically mean you have a trauma bond. This guide separates grief, attachment, intermittent reinforcement, abuse and the difficult experience of longing for someone you know was bad for you.
Why Attraction Changes After Commitment
Attraction often changes after commitment because the conditions around desire change. Learn what is normal, what deserves attention and what couples can adjust.
When You Love Them but No Longer Desire Them
Love and sexual desire do not always move together. This guide helps you identify what changed before you decide what the change means.
Why Familiarity Sometimes Kills Attraction
Familiarity can reduce novelty, but it does not have to kill attraction. Learn where routine helps love and where it quietly flattens desire.
Attraction, Admiration and Respect: Why Desire Needs More Than Love
Desire is easier to sustain when attraction is joined by admiration and respect. This piece examines what happens when one of those three disappears.
Why You Want Them More When They Pull Away
Distance can intensify desire, but wanting someone more when they pull away is not proof of compatibility. Learn what the chase is doing to your judgement.
Moving In Together?
Do not guess whether you are ready to share a home.
Take the free 5-minute Move-In Readiness Assessment for a personalised score and the conversations that deserve your attention before you move.