In Unreasonable Women, van der Leun follows three women whose experiences challenge familiar narratives about crime, punishment, and victimhood. Through years of dogged reporting, court records, and interviews, she traces how domestic violence, childhood trauma, poverty, and systemic failures shaped the choices these women made—and the harsh sentences many received.

I spoke with van der Leun over Zoom about criminalized survivors, the limits of self-defense law, and what it would take to create a more just system. Here is our interview, condensed and edited for clarity.

Hope Reese: You set out to discover how many women in U.S. prisons fall in this category of “criminalized survivors.” What drove you to research this yourself?

Justine van der Leun: I was reading a report called The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline by an organization called The Human Rights Project for Girls, looking at the way that girls—in particular, Black girls—who were in the juvenile justice system had been sexually abused, often severely, before being incarcerated.

I was really interested in this idea of punishment, this further state punishment for this thing that had happened. But it was really hard to report on kids, to get permission—especially kids who don’t have parents. I abandoned that; I just didn’t know how to get in.

Then I learned about the idea of “survived and punished” from the group Survived and Punished. I ended up on Nikki’s case. And then I created this whole ridiculous project—in retrospect, what was I thinking?—to find how many criminalized survivors are there now.

HR: What did you learn? How many respondents reported experiencing abuse before entering the prison system?

JV: There’ve been studies that show that in certain facilities, up to 94% of women in prison have histories of domestic or sexual violence. And, anecdotally, I never really talked to somebody who didn’t—it’s almost everybody.

My research shows that 30% of respondents are criminalized survivors, and that’s probably like a vast undercount because I didn’t prime them. I didn’t ask specifically, “are you a criminalized survivor? Or “did you experience abuse or violence?”

One thing that I cannot know is how many women get off. How many times do prosecutors not charge? If you don’t get convicted, there’s no record of anything. So if a woman did, say, defend herself and they chose not to press charges—or try and they fail—then there’s really no way for me to find that person and then look at their characteristics and compare them. Everything is down to these individual DAs, for the most part.

HR: A recurring question, when it comes to these women and other victims of abuse, is “why didn’t she leave?” Can you address this?

JV: It’s a natural question that people who haven’t lived through this have. People think, “Well, if someone’s raping me, strangling me, putting me on Pornhub, or whatever, I would just go.”

Anyone who’s been through it knows that you can’t.

The simplest answer, looking at these situations, is that it’s not about if she decides to leave—it’s about if he lets her leave. So the decision is really not the survivor’s, the victim’s decision. It’s always the decision of the abuser.

We put the onus on her to leave, but in almost every single case that I’ve looked at, she wants to leave. But in domestic violence situations, the person being abused is so intricately aware of their abuser’s triggers and how they will react to everything. They know what will happen if they do. It’s not like you can make the free choice just to walk out.

Furthermore, as Nikki said to me once, “If he had thrown me on the ground and raped me the first date, I wouldn’t have been with him.” But the abuse is so gradual.

Also, when people have children and when people have lives together, it becomes so hard to disentangle yourself from these people—who’ve also convinced you that you’re worth nothing.

Gemma is one of the women in my book. She said it doesn’t matter how strong you are. It doesn’t matter what a badass you think you are. If somebody, day after day, isolates you and tells you that you’re a terrible mother, you’re going to lose your children, you’re worth nothing, nobody will want you—you start to believe it.

An abuser isolates you—or identifies someone who is already isolated—and gloms on to them. And when kids are involved, women wonder: How do I extract my child? Will he come for my child? Will the state come for my child? How do I remove my child from this life that they have with their dad?

Tanisha, she wanted to leave, but she would have been homeless if she did. So she stayed while trying to get her life together. And it’s not really a free choice, it’s like the other choices, like sleeping in your car, you know, are untenable.

For the other three women, everything that happened occurred when someone had left or was trying to leave. That’s the most dangerous time.

HR: Of children who have been abused, 77% face abuse in adulthood. Can you talk about how you observed this pattern in the women you wrote about?

JV: I haven’t been able to untangle it to the degree that I would like to. One expert said that the way they deal with trust is profoundly altered—they either trust too much or they don’t trust at all. The compass guiding them is a little broken.

Tanisha had been abused so much as a child, she almost took it as a given that a man would do this to her. She was abused in all of her relationships. I don’t know that she ever thought she was worth anything more, or knew that she was worth not getting abused—because that was her only experience in life.

Nikki’s childhood abuse—in all cases, actually—was never dealt with properly. So they couldn’t find healing. It was denied or like swept under the rug. And when you don’t heal from that, I don’t know how you can go forward and create healthy relationships when you have sexual trauma—stuff that you never got treatment for.

Even people who get treatment find it really hard to have healthy relationships later. So people who live on the margins have a lot of self-hate, shame, and worthlessness that they carry. Abusers are often really good at identifying that and coming into the lives of people like that, as well.

HR: And violence isn’t always registered by the person experiencing it. Gemma, for example, had been thrown against a glass coffee table that shattered—but she didn’t note it as abuse. Why do you think this happens?

JV: She told me, “That year was good.” Gemma would say that, first, she loved him and she got involved—and then he was abusive. The more I looked at it, the more I saw that he forced her into the relationship and the marriage—by strangulation and abuse, and by tracking her and stalking her. But because she felt that there was an inevitability to it, she may have tried to create, in her mind, a more pleasant reality in which she was choosing this and loved him.

Because the alternative was that she was being like forced and raped and strangled into a relationship. I think she wrote off a lot of things because she kind of had to, to live her life and to keep going. Including the coffee table incident. She had created a bit of an alternate reality.

HR: Beginning in the 1970s, lawyers defending or helping women with cases of criminalized survival advised them to plead insanity rather than self-defense. Why is self-defense so difficult to prove?

JV: I called the book Unreasonable Women because for a long time, the jury was tasked with deciding if a defendant acted as a hypothetical “reasonable man” would have acted. They were supposed to put themselves in the person’s shoes and answer, “Would a reasonable person have done the same, knowing the same things, having the same fears?”

There was never really a reasonable woman. Later it was turned to the “reasonable person standard.” So self-defense has typically been conceived of as the idea of like two men outside of a bar, equally sized, having a fight—would a reasonable man in that situation have reacted thusly?

A woman in a domestic violence situation—what is reasonable to her, knowing what she knows—is quite different.

Then there’s the issue of imminence in self-defense—the threat had to be so imminent that you had to react with force. It’s often required that it be in that exact second, in hand-to-hand combat. But if it were hand-to-hand combat, women would usually die. She won’t be able to defend herself. So imminence looks different for women—and that’s rarely considered historically and legally.

HR: How is Tanisha’s story a prime example of criminalized survival?

JV: Tanisha was dealing with not having housing. She ended up meeting a guy at a club, and he had a room, and she didn’t want to sleep in a car, and she didn’t want to impose on friends. She ended up going and moving in with him. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He was just a roommate. But he abused her.

Quickly, he took over her life. She wanted to leave, but he also took over her finances, so she couldn’t leave very easily. So she decided she didn’t want to sleep in the car, so she would make it work while she stayed.

He then killed a man in their shared apartment. She was there at the time. She ran out. He put a gun to her head. He put a hand to her throat. And he basically told her to get with the program and do as he said—or he would kill her, as well.

She did as he said. She helped wrap the body of this young man that he had killed. Then she ran for years. She was really scared of him. She was scared of the police. Finally, her conscience got to her. She came forward to help solve this cold case and help the police so that his family would have closure.

HR: She’d had faith that the system would protect her. What actually happened?

JV: Alisa Bierria says something like, “Black women are used as pawns to demonstrate justice and then disposed of.” I certainly saw that. If we consider justice convictions—which I think prosecutors often do—these women are often used to testify.

Tanisha came forward—but she was promised immunity, according to her. She had a bad lawyer, and she didn’t get it. They needed to build their case. They said, to make her believable to a jury, she couldn’t have gotten any deal. They used her as a witness so that they could win their conviction. And so they threw her life away.

HR: Efforts such as New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act address criminalized survival. What would it take to overhaul the system?

JV: Survivor justice laws provide openings for people who are in prison to get their cases heard. Oklahoma, Illinois, New Jersey—and, more recently, Georgia—have passed such laws. The laws allow for a person who can show that abuse was a significant contributing factor, for the judge to have discretion on sentencing. They’re also retroactive. So if you’re in prison, you can have a chance of getting your case heard again.

Those laws are really important, but I can’t sugarcoat it: It’s a systemic issue. It’s generational, it’s enslaved people who came before these women were born, and these ideas that people learned about these communities, what they’ve been through.

It’s clear that the narratives we’re told about people, and the labels that are put on them—by the criminal legal system, prisons, even media—have nothing to do with who they are, the real context of their lives, or what really happened.

Some really remarkable people are locked up on murder convictions. It’s changed how I understand being a woman in America. This is baked into our culture and society; it’s what we all experience on some level. This is all by design.

To open the clickable calendar, click on the image below. (Please note: If you are having trouble clicking on calendar links with the Chrome browser, try these tips to fix the issue or try a different browser.)

{embed="happiness_calendar/subscribe"}

View our other calendars!

• June 2026 Happiness Calendar (Greek)

But so many of us don’t, especially when it comes to strangers. We pass by opportunities to extend ourselves even a little to people who cross our path, looking away rather than engaging, staying isolated rather than interacting.

In his new book, A Little More Social, Nicholas Epley explains why that happens and how we can overcome our hesitation. In study after study, his research has shown that we consistently underestimate the benefits of connecting with others, which leads us to reach out less often than we should. By sharing stories of making a choice to engage more regularly with strangers from his own life and from others’ lives, he aims to inspire us to be more sociable and reap the benefits.

“Unlike more punishing self-improvement goals like exercising more or eating better, practicing to become a little more social is a surprisingly positive experience,” he writes. Even for introverts!

Why we resist reaching out

According to Epley, the reason we don’t connect more with others is that we’re afraid of what might happen. Perhaps we’ll be poor conversationalists or other people will reject our attempts—or maybe they’ll just turn out to be jerks!

However, Epley has found that once you do seize opportunities to open up to people, even those who seem unapproachable, they will more than likely respond positively to your efforts. But, he writes, three things tend to get in the way of us testing this out. 

1. Exaggerated uncertainty: our tendency to not like uncertainty and anticipate the worst outcome

We can’t predict exactly how an opening salvo will land; the future is always a little uncertain. But these uncertainties are generally exaggerated, writes Epley, because, as humans, we are primed for reciprocity—of responding to people the way they respond to us. If you approach someone in a warm, interested way, they are likely to return the favor. He writes:

How a social experience unfolds is . . . not as uncertain as we might imagine, generally ending up in a way that is consistent with how it began. If you reach out and treat someone like a friend, then they’re likely to reach back and treat you like a friend in return. If you treat someone like a stranger and ignore them, then they’re likely to ignore you right back.

His research has found that, over and over again, people worry about conversations with strangers being awkward—but they rarely are as awkward as people anticipate.

2. Mismatched perspectives: judging ourselves more harshly than we would others, thinking we’re less competent

People usually judge others by their competence and warmth. But we tend to gravitate toward warm people before learning if they are competent or not, because we assume a likable person can be trusted and has good intentions. Yet, when thinking of starting a conversation with someone new, we can get overly critical of our competence, when that’s less important in that moment.

“Failing to realize that we look at ourselves through a lens of competence while others are evaluating our warmth can leave us underestimating just how positive reaching out can make others feel,” he writes. 

3. Confusing environments: not reaching out becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

If you let your pessimism become a hindrance to testing out hypotheses about what might happen if you talk to a stranger, you end up concluding it will be a negative experience before even trying. This means you can’t learn and grow from real-world encounters, which would otherwise expand your idea of how warm and friendly people can generally be.

“When your beliefs about how others might respond are guiding your decisions about whom to reach out to and whom to avoid, then they’re also constraining the data in ways that make it a confusing source to learn from,” writes Epley.

Talking beats digital communication

Even understanding these hindrances may not be enough to convince you to change. For many of us, engaging with strangers just doesn’t come naturally, especially now that so many of us work and shop online. We’d rather text with our friends or play on social media than risk meeting someone new.

But using our phones to text or email to socialize is less ideal than you might think, even with friends, writes Epley. That’s because when you communicate with someone through writing, you lose the instant feedback, as well as the emotional tone of someone’s response, that can be best understood by talking—both of which foster more closeness.

“Being constantly connected through our phones and the internet, the tools we use to stay constantly connected to others elsewhere can lack the rhythm of synchrony and sound of the human voice that makes interactions as enjoyable, informative, and connecting as they could be,” he writes.

For example, in one study where Epley compared communications between friends and between strangers using texting, emailing, or voice-based ways of connecting (phoning and video), he found that people who used voice-based communication felt more connection with friends and with strangers, alike, despite their expectations to the contrary. This points to our mismatch between what we’re seeking and what we do in real life.

“Although you’d be much happier getting to know someone by actually talking in conversation with them, not appreciating this beforehand might leave you choosing the ease of email or one-sided social media to connect with someone instead,” he writes.

Talking also helps bring connection in situations where we are trying to engage across perceived social divides, like between people of different ages, races, religions, or political affiliations. Interacting with people who are different from us can lessen animosity and stereotyping, creating more warmth and, potentially, happier communities.

Even when there is vehement disagreement (such as in discussing polarizing political issues), Epley writes, people humanize each other more and have more constructive conversations when they hear each other’s voices and exchange information in real time, rather than reading arguments in written form. In this way, conversations can help bridge differences in ways that texting or social media can’t.

“The value of sitting down and talking directly with someone isn’t a new remedy for strengthening our connections and increasing our happiness,” writes Epley. “What’s new is that in order to use this age-old remedy, you increasingly have to choose it.”

How we might connect more

So how can we learn to be just a little bit more social? Recognizing our hesitancy is ill-founded can help us take the initiative and try reaching out. Even bringing up “boring” everyday subjects has been found to be more enjoyable than people expect it be.

It’s also true that we can try to go a bit deeper with people, beyond simple chit-chat, and gain more out of a conversation, writes Epley. His research has found that conversations with strangers don’t have to be as shallow as you may think and, in fact, people feel better when they aren’t (despite predictions to the contrary).

One of the more heartwarming stories in Epley’s book involves trying to enact this magic during a presentation to a group of finance executives. During his talk, he surprises his audience by randomly pairing up participants to have an intimate conversation based on four prompts: what they were grateful for, what they’d want to know about their future if they had a crystal ball, what they looked for in a close friend, and when they’d last cried in front of someone—all pretty revealing topics.

The crowd’s initial reaction was a collective groan—one guy yelled out, “Oh shit!” But, once they got going, the whole room became animated and energized with conversation; there was smiling, laughing, hugging, and even tearing up, in one case. Everyone enjoyed the conversations much more than they’d expected, based on before-and-after surveys.

Of course, Epley was not too surprised. Similar exercises modeled on Arthur Aron’s “fast friends” intervention have been done with a wide variety of groups showing similar, positive results.

How can we move from experiments like these to taking action in the real world?

Epley suggests a few approaches. The easiest and simplest way is to just say hello and smile. Often that’s enough to get the ball rolling, and you can let it go from there, perhaps remarking on something you and another person are both doing at the moment, like standing in line at the grocery store or taking a plane trip to the same city.

There are other prosocial ways to help you initiate conversation with someone. You might try offering them a compliment (“I like your outfit!”), show a bit of kindness (“Would you like to go in front of me in line?”), or express gratitude (“Thanks for making that coffee just how I like it”). If offered genuinely and sincerely—i.e., not as manipulation or to sell something—compliments, kindnesses, and gratitude invite a warm connection with other people. Not only with strangers, but with those we know well, too.

Trying to make reaching out habit-forming is good for us, says Epley. You don’t have to jump off the deep end right away and become a social butterfly. You can start by being just a little more open to noticing easy opportunities to engage. Leave your cell phone, earbuds, and other social distractions out of reach, and pay attention to the world outside, he advises. By experimenting with initiating connection often, and sometimes more deeply, you’ll soon see that talking with a stranger is a gift that will bring you more joy in life and create a warmer, friendlier world, besides.

“Testing your doubts . . . is the first step to learning where misplaced pessimism might be keeping you from doing a little more good in your life by being a little more social,” writes Epley.

Even so, most Americans marry eventually; 87% of women have wed by age 54. In For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage, historian Stephanie Coontz outlines the truths and fictions when it comes to the institution, and how the myths are polluting our ideas of what marriage should be.

Marriage today has new rules, argues Coontz, director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. She shows how nostalgia for the past relates more closely to economic anxiety than anything else—and how our outdated views fail to serve us. I spoke to Coontz about the state of marriage and what it really takes to make a successful union today.

Here is our interview, condensed and edited for clarity.

Hope Reese: What is the real purpose of marriage now? Why are people getting married?

Stephanie Coontz: We are still trying to figure that out, because you don’t have to get married, and you can have a very good relationship without marriage. Women don’t need it the way they used to. Increasingly, men are prepared to do the cooking and home life and stuff that they used to marry a woman to get done for them. So what do we want from marriage? We’re getting a lot of different messages.

One message is that it should be the most important relationship in your life. You should get most of your satisfaction from it. Another is that marriage is a way of supporting each other, and bringing our separate social networks and connections to bear. In a sense, we are doing what marriage developed to be in band-level societies—creating more relatives and more social connections.

HR: Which relationships are replacing marriage?

SC: Living together doesn’t replace marriage. Very few people who cohabit think of it as an alternative to marriage. For many people, cohabitation is a prelude to marriage or a fallback after a marriage fails. We need to think about diversifying rather than replacing.

The majority of people still want to marry, but they only want to marry under circumstances that mean that they can do marriage a little differently and be more confident in it than they have been able to for the past several decades.

HR: Marriage has been transforming for a while. How can history help couples today?

SC: We have new values, but we also have problems putting them into place. A lot of things going on in the economy now really make family life more fragile, more tense, and more difficult.

It’s not new experiments with gender and sex and different living arrangements that are the problem. There are historical origins. For instance: I spent most of my career telling people they should not be nostalgic for 1950s families. A tremendous pain and sense of loss and discouragement drives this nostalgia. But the pain won’t be solved by getting rid of new gender norms and new marriage norms.

A historical perspective can help people who support those new norms not to demonize the people who don’t—to understand where they’re coming from.

HR: Where are they coming from? What are some of these myths we’ve internalized?

SC: You hear all the time—from progressives, as well as people who oppose the changes—that “men are like this” and “women are just like this.” That women pay more attention to emotions. That men either have to adjust to our caring, or we have to adjust to their inconsideration.

But this isn’t the way it has to be. Men have been doing emotional work in many societies through the ages. They’re quite capable of it. But for at least a century and a half, they’ve been told that it makes them unattractive to women if they do it. And it makes them a target for other men. We women have only had the reputation of being altruistic for about 150, 200 years. Before that we were thought to be more ambitious and more selfish and more self-centered than men are.

HR: I found it interesting that one of the myths is that men cannot express themselves emotionally, when, in fact, they were doing that earlier.

SC: There are tons of letters from the Revolutionary era—men exchanging these letters, crying, complaining the way women are thought to complain. We also have letters that historian Richard Godbeer and others have looked at where men will write like “I’m not hearing from you enough,” and “Don’t you care about me anymore?”

Through a whole lot of history, it was not women’s job to massage men’s egos and take care of the home. Patriarchy was brutal on women, but there was no expectation that men were not emotional, not capable of keeping track of obligations. There was no expectation that women would massage all men’s egos, even their husband’s egos.

They were partners in what was a business, whether it was a small farm or a great big political alliance. Women were considered just as shrewd and ruthless and business-like as men, not particularly that much more emotional.

HR: Really? When were women considered more selfish and ambitious?

SC: Early Christians talked about women’s selfishness, and many societies across the world have talked about women being the ones you can’t really trust, that they’re going to put their own individual and their kids’ interests first. We shouldn’t be glorifying these aspects of our personality and thinking that somehow the men need to catch up with us. We have to be patient with ourselves and our partners and those around us, because these myths have been drilled into our heads.

These are ideas that, ironically, developed with our transition to democracy. As we began to think that all men are created equal, we weren’t quite willing to let women do that. We began to develop these more benevolent excuses for the male dominance.

As men went into the labor force and women had to stay and do things around the home, there began to be this romanticization of women’s domestic expertise. A lot of women began to develop their whole ego and pride around that domestic expertise. It’s a lot to shake off.

HR: You write about the latest period of marriage starting in the ‘70s. What was happening then?

SC: By the 1950s and ‘60s, people were discontented with the idea that marriage should be something where the woman was the homemaker and the man got all of his identity from being the breadwinner. As it changed, even though some women wanted to go to work and some men wanted to have more egalitarian relationships, earworms from the past were present.

Up through the ‘70s, if a woman earned more money, had more education than her husband, that was a divorce risk. If a woman did less than half the housework, which is now kind of our goal, that was a risk that her marriage would dissolve.

Sexually, men and women were turned off if they had too many egalitarian roles. That showed that all of the ways that we had learned to make marriage work had been internalized in our psyches, that even our sexual ideas were reflecting it.

For complex historical reasons, men decided that they had to be the teachers. They had to be the ones who were stronger. They earned, they were the ones who gave the money. They learned to confuse showing off with showing love.

One of the good points of the changes that have been wrought by feminism and by increasing acceptance of some of the principles of gender equality is that men are beginning to not define themselves purely in terms of knowing more and earning more than their partner.

It’s no longer a divorce risk when a woman outearns her husband, or has more education. And men and women sharing child-rearing are the most sexually satisfied in their lives.

HR: What are the most important insights for couples who want a successful marriage today?

SC: Marriage does not save anyone, economically or psychologically. The most important predictor of whether you’re going to have a successful marriage is if you can organize a successful, satisfying personal life, where you have friends; you keep commitments to friends; they keep commitments to you. And you’re basically happy with what you’re doing. If you find somebody who is also happy, and with whom you enjoy doing things, you’re going to get better.

Another false belief is “cocooning.” The best way to build the kind of rich, supportive relationships we want is to go out and get outside input that you can bring back. Mounting research shows that when couples engage in such egalitarian relationships, their love grows over time instead of the tensions beginning to rise.

HR: What are the practical barriers to marriage today? How can couples make it work?

SC: Because we have much higher standards of marriage than in the past, it takes more negotiation, more time, more attention to one’s own work and expectations of support for that work and attention to your partner’s work and ideas. Marriage is much more personally involved than marriages of the past were, or had to be.

You need patience, you need time—and you need work schedules that allow you to take the time. So a lot of the barriers are in the economy. The increased work pressures that we face and the economic precarity that we face undermines those kinds of skills. Financial insecurity is a bigger predictor of negative communication in marriage than having divorced parents or what happened to you in your childhood, because it pulls your attention away from the things you need to keep going.

HR: Marriages from the ‘50s didn’t have the personal satisfaction prerequisite, but the economics were easier, right?

SC: People look back to the 1950s with nostalgia. You certainly should not feel nostalgia for any of the marriages of that period. But that was a period when real wages were rising, when every economic expansion up to the early ‘70s gave 90% of its benefits to the bottom 90% of the population. The rich were not getting richer.

All of those economic and social changes that we think of as separate from our personal lives have really big ramifications now that we are trying to build personal lives that really involve this kind of patience, gratitude, love, and reaching out. A study of families and marriages during the big financial crisis and housing crisis found that domestic violence reports from the most educated, secure women soared up to the levels of their less educated and less secure peers.

HR: How can you explain the nostalgia for an earlier period? What do you make of the trad wife movement?

SC: Well, I used to be pretty contemptuous of it. But I’ve gotten softer in my old age and after seeing what’s been happening over the past 30 years or so. I’ve come to believe that this nostalgia is kind of “referred pain.”

Our brain has trouble figuring out where pain originates. It often gives us the wrong messages. It will tell us that our neck hurts, when in fact we ate too much and the stomach is pressing on the diaphragm. Physicians call it referred pain. You think it’s in one location, but treating it there is not going to work at all.

That is a delightful analogy for what’s happening with so many of the pains that people feel, and the nostalgia they feel for 1950s families. It occurs at a deeper place in the body politic and in the economy. It occurs in these changes in the economy and in the increasing development of a K-shaped economy where the rich are getting richer and the poor and the middle class are getting poorer. With these things, it’s easy to say, “what went wrong?” and to think “maybe it’s because we don’t have those families that we used to be able to watch on TV and look at how well they organized their lives and how happy they seemed.”

HR: What does it take to build the kind of mutualistic relationship that people want today?

SC: Historical perspective and sociological perspective could be one of the best therapeutic tools that there is. We often treat our male partner as an unskilled assistant, telling him what to do. It’s called gatekeeping. I’ve talked about gatekeeping in my research all my life, but my husband still catches me doing it sometimes. He finds it easier to accept this behavior, which is quite insulting, when I explain to him what an ingrained habit it is, and that I know it’s a bad habit and am trying to shake it.

Historical perspective on where these things come from won’t solve everything, but can create a space in which you can discuss them without having to decide “is this a symptom of some deeper problem in this individual or in our relationship?” It creates space in which you can depersonalize it and say, “But what needs to change?” And let’s stop saying, “Why are you doing this, you bad person?” or “you inconsiderate person?”

You are doing this because it’s been ingrained in you that you should do this.

HR: Basically, things don’t need to be as they are today.

SC: That’s the point of all historical and anthropological research. Once you examine the variety of ways that people have experienced and expressed emotions, and related to each other, it gives you a bigger sense of how much of a straitjacket we’ve been put in. Especially by the stereotypes that we inherit, that we’re dealing with now—the manosphere and ideas about toxic masculinity and all of these things—things that make it seem much more permanent and much less changeable than it actually is.

This is what’s known as “anticipatory grief”—a reaction to loss that hasn’t yet occurred. While it’s fairly common to experience it for a loved one facing a terminal illness, you can also experience it in other potential loss situations, like retiring from a fulfilling career, a child going away to college, or divorce. It often involves a liminal state of being, like what I experienced, that can wreak havoc with your well-being and interfere with your ability to be present.

While similar to after-loss grief, anticipatory grief has its own issues and trajectories that can make it hard to manage, says Alan Wolfelt, director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition and an expert on the topic. While you may lean toward ignoring or pushing away these complex emotions, denying your grief and suffering silently will probably not help you or your loved ones cope better.

“Too often, people are trying to be happy at times when they should be sad, and that inhibits their ability to fully integrate a life transition into their world,” says Wolfelt. “We can better cope with realities we face by acknowledging them.”

Anticipatory grief, like after-loss grief, can be painful. But by understanding what it’s like and giving yourself permission to explore its many facets, you might be able to mitigate some of the pain and move through it with more intention.

Similar and different from regular grief

Like grief after a loss, anticipated grief can involve strong and varied emotions. You may feel happy, sad, angry, confused, worried, relieved, guilty, and more, and the feelings may arise at seemingly random moments, sometimes overwhelming you. Your feelings can be hard to explain even to yourself, let alone others.

For example, imagine your teenage son is applying to colleges. Suddenly, you’re hit with the reality that he’ll be leaving home soon and your life will change dramatically. You may feel sad anticipating losing your son’s everyday presence, look forward to a new, freer chapter in your life, or both. You may feel pride and joy for his bright future, but fear losing your close relationship and your role as his parent.

These myriad emotions can be disorienting—but it’s important to honor them, however they show up, says Wolfelt.

“The more open acknowledgement you can have of what your genuine, authentic emotions are, the better,” he says.

While grieving a death may seem natural and expected, anticipatory grief may come with some resistance, like telling yourself (or other people telling you) there’s no reason to feel what you’re feeling. However, according to Wolfelt, denying your pain only adds to it, negatively affecting your everyday well-being. A better way to handle anticipatory grief is to own it and process it through mourning.

“Grief is the internal response, the thoughts and feelings inside,” he says. “In contrast, mourning is the shared social response or grief gone public; it’s taking your grief and putting it into action. That creates change or movement.”

The importance of mourning

There are known, socially acceptable ways to mourn someone who’s died, like funerals, sitting Shiva, Dia de los Muertos, and other rituals. While there may be fewer structured ways to manage anticipatory grief, we can help ourselves through the experience by understanding the importance of mourning in processing grief.

“Mourning helps you integrate loss and be transformed by your grief,” says Wolfelt. “You get stuck if you grieve but don’t mourn.”

The very nature of anticipatory grief (or any grief) is that it can feel different from one moment to the next, and from one person to another. That means our mourning needs may change over time. No one needs to follow a specific pattern, says Wolfelt, but we all need to pay attention and take our grief seriously.

This may be easier or harder, depending on several factors. How close you were to a person, your cultural or spiritual beliefs, and differences in your personality and gender can all influence how you mourn and how effective you are at managing grief versus staying stuck in it.

“If you have low social support, a history of anxiety, a history of a [strongly] dependent relationship with the person (for example, you haven’t expanded your social support system beyond the person who’s dying); those are risk factors that research clearly shows can make it more challenging for you,” he says.

A healthier way to mourn

While no one needs to mourn in the same way, Wolfelt suggests in his guidebook on the topic that people try to meet six specific needs to get through the experience:

1. Acknowledge that you are grieving and the reality of your loss. You may feel it’s too hard to acknowledge the impending loss, but denial doesn’t help. Instead, acknowledging all emotions is a better path toward well-being, even in the midst of grief. Facing your reality more squarely can help you figure out what you need.

“Thinking of yourself in this way will help you be both self-compassionate and honest about how challenging your current circumstances are,” he writes.

2. Embrace all of your emotions, pleasant and unpleasant. Anticipatory grief is marked by changing, intense emotions. Naming them can help to tame them, making them less overwhelming. You can also try reframing the meaning of your feelings to make them less problematic, such as recognizing grief as a facet of loving someone deeply.

If you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed by grief, Wolfelt recommends dosing it—meaning, letting yourself fully experience your emotions, but limiting how long you do that. When not focusing on your grief, it’s fine to distract yourself, evade thoughts, or do whatever you want to keep your grief from being so dominant, he adds.

“There’s a balance to be had between doing the work of anticipating loss and in balancing that with the ability to stay present in the here and now,” he says.

This may be especially important when taking care of someone you will be losing, as caregiving often requires a more outward than inward focus. Having a way to care for your emotional needs outside of that role can be helpful.

3. Explore memories of the love or attachment you’re losing. This may seem like a step to avoid, but Wolfelt says it’s important for managing anticipatory grief. Reviewing past memories allows you to create a narrative around what is happening, something humans need to help make sense of their lives and feel congruency. Research suggests that allowing ourselves to feel nostalgia for the past has many benefits, including putting us in touch with our authentic selves and what matters in life.

“The more time and attention you devote to exploring memories and sharing and discussing them with others, the more your sense of peace will grow,” writes Wolfelt.

4. Develop a new self-identity. Often our relationships are part of our identity—we are a partner, a mother, a daughter, or a colleague. Our impending loss may make us question who we are in the world. It’s important to recognize that and address it.

For example, if you’re losing your wife of many years, through divorce or death, your friendships may be affected and your social circle may shrink; once-shared activities may no longer appeal or be possible. While you may grieve this transition and the changes it brings, it also opens up possibilities to embrace new roles in life.

“Change is often both a loss and an opportunity, even if it’s an opportunity you would never willingly have chosen,” writes Wolfelt.

5. Search for meaning in the experience. When facing loss, many of us begin to question the meaning of our lives. “It’s important to focus on meaning and purpose, both in the attachment that is ending and in your continued living,” writes Wolfelt. This might take you into spiritual territory, stimulating questions about why you exist, what it all means, and how you can go on.

Seeking meaning from your experience can help one cope in the present with difficult future losses as well as later on, after the loss has occurred. To help explore that, Wolfelt suggests reading inspiring texts, meditating or praying, talking with spiritual advisors, journaling, or spending more time in nature. Whatever puts you closer to your own sense of meaning will help you find peace, and more reasons to get up in the morning if you are feeling dragged down.

6. Reach out to others for support. As mourning is an outward experience of inner pain, finding other people who can listen as you grapple with your emotions, memories, and questions about life’s meaning can be soothing and helpful.

“You might feel undeserving of attention because the ultimate loss hasn’t really happened yet. But I’m here to tell you that your current grief is completely real, valid, and necessary. And there are others who will understand,” he writes.

Look for someone who can listen empathically without trying to guide you (or bully you) into feeling better, he says. No one experiencing anticipatory grief should ever be pushed into something that doesn’t feel right or given pat phrases that discount their pain.

“Cliches can be very painful to somebody who’s experiencing grief—trite comments like, ‘You’re holding up so well, time heals all wounds, think of what you still have to be thankful for,’” he says. “While well intended, they’re often misinformed and are a projection from the outside in.”

Choosing whom exactly to share with can be tricky. But you can look to family and close friends, support groups experiencing the same types of anticipated loss, spiritual advisors, or professional counselors, writes Wolfelt.

“Find people that can walk into the metaphorical wilderness of grief and honor that you’re in a liminal space, without feeling the need to pull you to the left or right or to pull you out,” he says. “Those are the genuine, compassionate people that we need in our lives.”

If approaching someone with your grief feels too daunting, you can still help yourself by just being around people more generally. We all need social connection for our health and happiness, and having a fun night out with friends, small interactions with neighbors, or a coffee at the local café can make you feel less alone, even if you don’t explicitly talk to anyone about your grief.

Dealing well with grief is a life skill

We will all face loss at some point in our lives—but we’ll only anticipate grief when the loss involves someone we love. Love and grief go hand in hand, says Wolfelt, making it central to a life well-lived.

“The capacity to give and receive love means we will likely mourn someday,” he says. But living in a “mourning-avoidant, emotion-phobic” culture, he adds, we don’t always have the right tools handy for guiding ourselves or others through it.

To be better prepared, it’s wise for us all to cultivate the skills that will serve us well in times of grief and loss. Having greater emotional intelligence, mindful attention, meaning and purpose, social connection, and hope can all help, says Wolfelt. Fortunately, these can all be deliberately practiced long before a loss comes along, helping us lead healthier, happier lives overall.

“These are central needs. The more you can befriend those needs, the more you integrate loss into your life,” he says.

For example, more people of all ages are meeting on “the apps”—and, not unrelatedly, more of them are complaining about the exhaustion of modern dating. Perhaps as a result for some, many say they are happily single and have no interest in finding a romantic partner.

There’s another change we’ve seen over the past few decades that has been less noticed—many of the people still interested in dating and long-term relationships aren’t in their 20s and 30s (who are often seeking to marry and maybe have children), but rather are middle-aged and older. There are more later-in-life singles than ever before, thanks in part to the rise of “gray divorce”—people in their 50s and older who are divorcing faster than any other age group.

Perhaps in response, we’re starting to see reality-TV shows about this group like Later Daters, The Golden Bachelor, and The Golden Bachelorette. In popular culture, we’re seeing high-profile people in their 50s and older partnering up, including author Anne Lamott, who married for the first time at age 65, and model and pro-aging activist Paulina Porizkova, who recently got engaged at age 61.

In fact, a cultural shift seems to be taking place—the idea that there is no expiration date for the desire for love and sex, or at least romantic companionship. Even so, there are some challenges to finding love later in life, especially for women, who tend to live longer than men and outnumber their male counterparts as they age. Just knowing in advance about these challenges can help you to navigate them—but the bottom line might be that the path to dating happily in later life is to let go of the hopes and expectations you held at a younger age.

Gender and sexuality

The first challenge that may come to mind is a common (and not completely inaccurate) belief that most men prefer youthful beauty. It can be harder for a woman in her 60s and older to find an age-appropriate male romantic partner—often referred to as “silver foxes”—as many tend to skew younger, often 10 years or more, when partnering again. That tendency may no longer be restricted to men, as we see the rise of “the cougar”—older women seeking younger men—which seems to be experiencing a moment.


Older gay men, too, often experience ageism in a dominant gay culture that also elevates youth, fitness, and beauty, which makes partnering a challenge. There’s even some evidence of age gaps in lesbian relationships.

But the desire for youth and beauty isn’t the overwhelming reason why many later in life adults aren’t romantically partnered. Actually, there are many reasons, all of which deserve greater scrutiny—and honesty.

Perhaps surprisingly, they tend to touch upon things like family and gender roles.

A big barrier is caregiving. In social scientist Lauren E. Harris’ 2023 study of how family caregiving responsibilities among single men and women aged 60 to 83 affects their desirability to someone of the opposite sex, an unexpected pattern emerged.

The men often found women in their age group to be less desirable if they were heavily involved in caregiving their adult children or grandchildren or both. The women, however, found men in their age group who were close with their families to be more desirable, perceiving their carework “as a sign of good character and family orientation.”

While the men stated they wanted to be a romantic partner’s top priority, most of the women didn’t demand the same. They did, however, have one major concern—taking care of the men, especially if the women already had caregiving responsibilities.

“Older single women were quite aware of the ways men may require their time, attention, and care,” Harris writes. “Though they were looking for romantic relationships and companions, women prioritized performing less carework over a relationship that required carework like raising a man’s children or nursing him through decline.”

Family matters

There are other family issues that pop up for those dating later in life.

Understandably, having minor children in the house might impact a parent’s re-partnering decisions. But it doesn’t necessarily change when the kids reach adulthood. Although a young child might not have much control over whom their parent dates, lives with, or marries, adult children and stepchildren have much more power in the decision and often aren’t afraid to exert it.

When author Eve Pell married a widower when she was 71 and he was 81, his adult children were resistant at first. She didn’t expect that. But in interviews with later-in-life couples for her book, Love, Again: The Wisdom of Unexpected Romance, many had similar experiences.

Some shared that their adult children liked their family “as is,” with their divorced or widowed parent or parents remaining single. Some adult children didn’t want to let go of their childhood memories. Others feared that a new romantic partner would take time or inheritance or both away from them and their children.

Adult stepchildren can be as disgruntled as younger stepchildren, writes Wednesday Martin in Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do.  “As the kids get older, issues like estate planning and inheritance can come into play, adding an extra layer of anxiety and resentment.”

In fact, the desire to pass on wealth to their children is why many older single parents won’t marry a new romantic partner, research suggests.

Some adult children who no longer live with their parents react poorly to a new partner and may limit the number of times they visit their parents, not allow their children to visit their grandparents, especially if the new couple moves in together, or refuse to forge any type of bond with the new partner, as a study of middle-aged divorced and widowed people in the Netherlands finds. Some even severed their relationship with the parent altogether.

This is why, the study notes, some single parents choose to be in a live-apart-together (LAT) relationship with a new partner, although not always happily. But even that didn’t always guarantee things went well.

As one 78-year-old woman in a long-term LAT relationship told the researchers, her daughters wouldn’t visit her if her new partner was over, and she was not invited to his granddaughter’s wedding.

While they wanted to enjoy their new love, their adult children’s negative reactions made them feel sad and stressed.

“Children of all ages feel betrayed and abandoned when their parents divorce because their cozy nest is disrupted. This even upsets kids who are already out of the nest,” says psychiatrist Dr. Carole D. Lieberman. “The message their parents are sending is that it is more important for them to have a life of their choosing than to remain in their prior, primary role of mom or dad.”

Not all adult children and stepchildren create complications for their parents, however. In a 2025 study, family sociologist Cassandra Cotton found that two-thirds of the adults (aged 55 to 92) she interviewed shared that their children, grandchildren, or siblings were generally supportive of their search for a new partner. Some even set up a dating profile for them or helped them navigate online dating.

Still, that means about a third of those surveyed experienced some pushback by family, which may prevent them from re-partnering even if they want to. And they tended to see their prospective partner’s family—not their own—as being potentially problematic.

Facing the stress of dating

Beyond family concerns, there are other barriers to a new relationship later in life—they’re stressful, at least at first, according to a 2025 study.

Exploring how later daters manage conflict in newer dating relationships, the researchers found that many struggle to find a way to merge their daily lives and get their routines in sync. Without the history of shared positive experiences and trust that long-married couples typically have, later daters were quicker to have negative feelings about a new partner and often saw small annoyances—ones that might easily be ignored by long-term couples as a way to keep the peace—as threats to the relationship’s future.

While both men and women suffered physically in the early throes of a new relationships when there was tension, women also suffered emotionally, reenforcing what previous studies have found: Women tend to carry a heavier emotional burden in a heterosexual relationship and often are more sensitive about handling conflict.

Still, the study found that while later daters’ well-being may suffer in the beginning, it could be beneficial in the long term as it might prompt them to leave an unhealthy relationship or one in which they have different dating goals—marriage, cohabitation, LAT, something casual, or a committed monogamous relationship—quickly.

Different dating goals is another barrier to later-in-life partnering. Single men in their 60s and older often want and expect to cohabit with or marry their female romantic partner but many women did not, stating that they were unwilling to give in to the “structural commitments” of cohabitating relationships such as cooking, cleaning, and caregiving. While those women said they dated for companionship, they indicated they were willing to be lonely before sacrificing their independence. That often led to the end of otherwise satisfying romantic relationships.

Some struggle more than others

While some of the complications to dating later in life seem to be universal, there are some that are unique to people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) people, adults with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and other marginalized people.

Some lesbians often feel a need to go back in the closet as they age for fear of discrimination, making finding new potential partners a challenge, North Carolina State University professor Paige Averett tells me.

Growing up at a time when society was less accepting and more stigmatizing about being LGBTQ+ than today could influence boomer lesbians’ self-image and thoughts about forming romantic relationships, she shares. Some LGBTQ+ people who came out in mid- or later life, often after having been in heterosexual relationships, feel that they’re inexperienced in dating. It can be hard to put oneself out there and so they often don’t.

For African American women, who are the least likely to marry, dating later in life can be challenging, sociologist Cheryl Y. Judice discovered while doing research for her book, Interracial Relationships Between Black Women and White Men.

There just aren’t that many available single Black men to date, she notes, and they have longer life expectancies compared to Black men. Older Black people are twice as likely as their white peers to live below the poverty line, which has an impact on dating possibilities. In addition, health factors in: Black women have higher rates of disability than white women and both Black and white men, which also can create challenges to finding a romantic partner.

So, too, can socio-cultural issues. For older divorced or widowed Mexican-American women, who make up a substantial portion of the older Latinos in the United States, seeking a new partner could possibly lead to vergüenza (sexual shame) or culpa (guilt) in a culture where a woman expressing her sexuality in later years or outside of a church-sanctified marriage is frowned upon.

Finding a romantic partner can be challenging for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) of any age due to barriers such as caregiver control, often removing the ability for them to make decisions on their own; limited social opportunities; a lack of privacy;  and the potential loss or reduction of essential federal programs such as Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid if they wed or even if they live with a romantic partner.

Because more people with IDD are living longer than ever before, the population of those aged 60 years and older is growing and projected to reach 1.2 million by 2030. Many will have lived much of their adult life without a romantic partner.

Letting go of old scripts

Ultimately, researchers find that later-in-life dating and partnering, while often desired, can be complicated.

“There are many unanswered questions regarding the role of gender, age, and family in the dating process that deserve to be addressed,” Harris writes. “At present, practitioners need to be aware of the hurdles, as well as the stigma, that single older adults face in seeking a romantic partner.”

That said, older singles don’t have a romantic script to follow as many of us do when we’re younger, often without realizing that we are. We all know that script: meet, fall in love, move in together, maybe put a ring on it, and pop out a few kids. Once you’ve hit your 50s and beyond, many have been there, done that. It’s perhaps the first time in life when we can create our own script without societal pressure.

That’s why many embrace the LAT lifestyle. Others seek casual relationships to satisfy their needs—or even embrace polyamory, the practice of cultivating multiple, simultaneous romantic partnerships. As one 84-year-old woman in an ethical non-monogamous relationship shares in the 2023 anthology Gray Love: Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60:

No longer are there many plans for the future or discussions around raising a family. No longer do I feel the need to live with someone or be in an exclusive relationship. … the need for companionship, intellectual connection, warmth, holding, and sex are all still present and central to what I call “old love.”

In other words, our desire for love, intimacy, companionship, and connection doesn’t go away just because we’re older, but it can take on new forms if our expectations of what a romantic relationship “looks like” become more expansive. If you’re looking for love in your later years, perhaps the most important takeaway is to be open to the various ways you may find it.

What he was missing was harder to name. It was not a lack of activity or ambition. It was a lack of connection.

So he started something small. A philosophy group. No curriculum, no credentials required. Just people gathering to discuss a single idea at a time. One word, one question, and whoever showed up.

What began in apartments quickly outgrew them.

Within a year, the New York Philosophy Society was drawing well over a hundred people on a typical night, sometimes many more. Conversations unfolded in small circles across bars, restaurants, and event spaces, rotating every thirty minutes so that strangers could engage deeply and then meet someone new. The group now relies on a team of volunteers to host and facilitate, and has become one of the more surprising social phenomena among young New Yorkers looking for something more meaningful than a typical night out.

But what makes it compelling is not just the scale. It is the tone.

People show up not to perform or network, but to think together. To ask questions about truth, love, purpose, and meaning. To be taken seriously by people they just met.

“It was only after I started doing it,” Ren says, “seeing not only my own life changing, but also the people around me… that I realized the importance of connection.”

What began as a way to fill a gap in his own life became something much larger. A place where people who felt disconnected could experience something rare. Not just being around others, but being known by them. Ren’s story is not unusual.

Points of connection

Across the country, people are creating their own versions of Ren’s gathering. A weekly yoga gathering that grew from 20 people to hundreds showing up in a park. A fitness group where the real friendships form afterward over brunch. A community dinner where strangers end the night sharing stories they didn’t expect to tell.

Participation is not limited to one stage of life. While people in their 30s and early 40s participate at the highest rates, engagement is meaningful across all age groups, including those over 60. The desire for connection, and the ability to build it through shared activity, does not age out.

For many of us, connection used to be built into daily life. School, work, and family created regular opportunities to be around the same people again and again. Over time, relationships formed almost without thinking about it.

That structure has weakened. People move more often. Work is more transactional or remote. Fewer shared activities organize our time. As a result, connection is no longer ambient. It requires intention.

What is emerging in response is not just more socializing, but something more specific. People are building what we call communities of play, groups organized around shared activity.

That is one of the Six Points of Connection, a simple framework created by us at the U.S. Chamber of Connection to capture what people need to build a fully connected life. The six include having someone nearby you can rely on, consistent one-to-one relationships, a sense of belonging to a shared identity, a third place, a role in contributing to others, and being part of a group that gathers around a shared activity.

Among these, community of play often acts as the entry point.

Impact of connection

To understand its impact, we studied more than 2,000 adults across the United States, comparing those who regularly participate in activity-based communities with those who do not. We then interviewed 20 community builders and surveyed nearly 100 leaders like Ren to understand how these groups actually function.

We identified some distinct groupings, and the differences between them are significant.

People who participate in these communities are 28 percentage points more likely to report strong social support and 33 points more likely to report high life satisfaction. They are also more likely to trust others, to form relationships across differences, and to feel a sense of agency in their lives.

And yet only about 30 percent of people regularly participate in any kind of shared activity community.

Most people are not opting out because they do not want connection. They are running into friction. In our data, people who are not part of these communities are far more likely to say they feel uncomfortable showing up, unsure how to start, or worried they will not fit in. Cost and time play a role, but the biggest barriers are social and psychological.

This gap points to something important. The issue is not that we do not know how to build connections. It’s that most people are not engaging in the kinds of structures that make it possible.

One reason activity-based communities are so effective is that they lower the stakes of showing up. You do not have to arrive ready to connect. You arrive ready to do something.

Some are built around fitness or food. Others are built around ideas. Some are intentionally a little strange.

“I’ve always been interested in bringing people together to do kind of little weird things,” one builder says.

From there, connection can emerge more naturally.

This reflects a deeper insight from the science of play and social behavior. Researchers like Stuart Brown have argued that play is a primary way humans build trust and social bonds. It creates a state of openness and shared attention that makes people more receptive to one another. When people move, create, or learn together, they begin to synchronize, both emotionally and behaviorally.

Other researchers have found that shared activities accelerate what might otherwise take much longer to develop. Instead of relying on conversation alone, people build connection through experience. They have something to reference, something to return to, and something that brings them back again.

One community-builder describes it simply: The activity gets people in the door, but the real connection happens afterward, when people stay and talk.

That pattern shows up again and again: The activity is not the point—it’s the invitation. And for many people, that’s the easiest place to begin.

Changing relationships

The impact of these communities is not limited to individual well-being. They also shape how people relate to others.

In our study of community-builders, a large majority reported that their groups regularly bring together people across differences in age, race, socioeconomic background, and political identity. This kind of interaction is increasingly rare in everyday American life.

Sociologists often distinguish between bonding and bridging social capital. Bonding brings together people who are similar. Bridging connects people across lines of difference. Both matter, but bridging is especially important for building trust and resilience in a society.

What is notable about activity-based communities is that they often do both at the same time.

People come because of a shared interest, which creates an immediate sense of familiarity. But because the groups are open and fluid, they also create opportunities to encounter people who are different.

One participant described arriving at an event feeling isolated and unsure, only to realize that others felt the same way. There was a whole group of people who felt like that. They felt less alone immediately.

Another described how, over the course of an evening, conversations moved beyond small talk into something more meaningful. People began sharing stories about their lives, their families, and their struggles, often with people they had just met.

These are the moments when connection shifts from surface interaction to something more durable.

While much of the research focuses on the benefits for participants, our interviews highlighted something else. The act of creating community has its own impact.

Many of the builders we spoke with did not set out to become leaders. They were trying to solve something in their own lives. They wanted more connection, more meaning, or simply a place where they could belong.

In creating that space for others, they often found a deeper sense of purpose themselves.

One builder described finding a handwritten note after an event. Someone had written about how much the community meant to them and how lonely they had felt before finding it.

Experiences like this can be transformative. They shift how people see their role in the world. Instead of waiting for connection to appear, they begin to see themselves as someone who can create it.

Worth the effort

At the same time, this work is not effortless. Many builders invest significant time and energy, often without financial support. Some described the tension between wanting to participate as a member and feeling responsible for holding the space for others.

“I have a tendency to self-sacrifice,” one builder said. “I think at times I wish people knew what I’m putting into it.”

This tension points to something important. These communities are doing meaningful work, but they are largely unsupported.

For individuals, the lesson from this research is not that everyone needs to start a community. It is that connection is more accessible than it often feels.

The most effective entry point is a shared activity. Something simple, repeatable, and easy to join. A walk in the same place each week. A standing dinner. A regular gathering around a shared interest.

The goal is not to create instant closeness. It is to create a setting where familiarity can grow over time.

Psychologists have long emphasized the role of repeated exposure in forming relationships. Seeing the same people again and again, even in low-stakes settings, increases the likelihood of connection.

Activity based communities create that repetition in a natural way.

There is a tendency to look for large scale solutions to the problem of disconnection. New programs, new technologies, new policies.

Those may have a role to play. But what is already happening across the country suggests a more immediate path.

People are creating small, consistent spaces where others can gather. They are building connection through shared experience, not abstract intention.

Platforms like Heylo now support more than 20,000 of these communities, and the number continues to grow. Taken together, they represent a quiet but significant shift in how connection is formed.

Ren’s philosophy group is one example. It did not start as a solution to a national problem. It started as a response to a personal one.

That may be the most important insight.

If you want more connection in your life, the first step may not be to search for it. It may be to create a place where it can happen, and to invite others in.

So, why do we still crave these committed, romantic relationships when they can be so fragile? And how can we make them work better and remain satisfying over time?

To find out, I spoke with evolutionary biologist Justin Garcia, director of the Kinsey Institute and author of the new book The Intimate Animal. In his book, he explains some of the biological forces acting upon our most intimate relationships and how that affects everything from modern dating to marriage to polyamory, and more. Below is an edited version of our conversation.

Jill Suttie: In your book, you make a case that intimacy is a biological drive, akin to other biological drives, like hunger or sex. But most of us don’t think of it that way. Why do you?

Justin Garcia: By training, I’m an evolutionary biologist and anthropologist, and I think a lot about the role of evolution and selection in shaping who we are. That means thinking about the reality of our being a social primate.

We know we have a desire to engage in sexual activity for reproduction; it’s important for existing into the next generation. And so much of human social life, reproductive life, and sexual activity is couched in terms of long-term bonds. If we think about sexual desire as one lever that selection is acting on for survival and reproduction, then we also have to recognize that long-term bonds—within which a majority of sexual activity occurs for most humans around the globe, historically—had to be selected for, too.

My goal in The Intimate Animal was to really dive into that and take the role of intimacy in relationships seriously. For me, the social and the biological contexts of relationships are one and the same. There’s so much about connection, whether physical or emotional, that is tied into our story as mammals and, particularly, as social primates. Too often we ignore that to our detriment.

JS: There seems to be a widespread view that men and women have different sexual needs. Is that supported by science?

JG: This debate happens in the public sphere, but it’s also one that happens in academic journals. There’s a wonderful argument and series of articles by the feminist psychologist Janet Hyde called the Gender Similarities Hypothesis. Her work shows that many of the psychological sex differences we talk about between men and women aren’t very big. In large samples, something like 5% can be statistically significant, but does it tell us something meaningful about differences between men and women? Not really.

One of the more consistent findings, though, is that men on average have a larger interest in casual sex than women. So, there are some differences around sexual behavior, particularly around sexual desire. But it’s not as large as people think. Similarly, 20 years ago, everyone said that men engage in infidelity more than women. But in newer studies that are asking the questions in more complex ways, we actually see very small gender differences. So, short answer, there are some differences, but men and women are much more similar than we are different.

JS: One of your arguments in the book is that we are biologically wired for monogamous intimacy but not for monogamous sex. What do you mean by that?

JG: When people talk about monogamy, they often mean a monogamous relationship or a monogamous person. In behavioral and evolutionary biology, though, we don’t talk about monogamy as one term. We talk about two elements: social monogamy and sexual monogamy. Part of what I wanted to do in this book was bring that framework to our understanding of humans and relationships.

Social monogamy is a relationship structure, what we call pair-bonding, involving mutual territory defense, nest-building, and raising of offspring. That mutual piece is the key element of a pair-bond that’s different from sexual monogamy or sexual fidelity with one partner. And the reason we separate that is because there are different mechanisms, including in the brain, and different evolutionary pressures shaping them.

In some species, including ours, these are not totally aligned, although often partners attempt to enforce sexual fidelity in social monogamy. But when we look at the genetic parental evidence and make behavioral observations, we see that many animals that form pair-bonds sometimes sexually stray. By separating these pieces out, it gives us a new lens to think about our relationships and the tensions that exist between the safety that comes with deep intimacy and the excitement that comes with sexual variety.

So, say you’re in a long-term bond, where you feel intimacy, you feel connected; but you have this craving for excitement pulling you away from your primary relationship. Sometimes we can bring that tension into our relationship and harness it, instead. In our studies on couples that have long-term passion, they take vacations, have rituals, and do novel things with each other. There are ways we can integrate that into our relationship, to keep a sense of passion and excitement.

Too often, though, we move around like zombies, being pulled by the pressure in our romantic and sexual lives without understanding where it’s coming from and without consciously making decisions. It isn’t only about love, connection, safety, or the quality of a relationship. It’s about these multiple drives that have evolved to serve different functions.

JS: So, these tensions help explain why there is a lot of infidelity in the world. But at the same time, 85% of the world considers adultery immoral. So, is infidelity bad or should we accept it as a consequence of our biology?

JG: I think infidelity is a problem, because it’s a betrayal of a relationship agreement. That can include people who are in open relationships. You can also have infidelity in those contexts, because in polyamory or in sexually open relationships, most people still have a set of rules they’re abiding by. And those rules can be violated, whether that’s a rule about not having sex with someone in your friend network or always using condoms with someone else.

One of my goals was to explore the tensions, but also let people know they have options that don’t involve betrayal, whether that’s saying a relationship doesn’t work for you and separating, or experimenting with an open relationship, or—instead of letting the desire for spontaneity and novelty pull you away from your primary partner—finding ways we can integrate that into our relationship.

Betrayal almost always causes damage, often for both people—and often to their social networks, as well. When people ask me about infidelity, they often assume it happens because there’s something wrong with their relationship. But in our studies, a lot of infidelity happens for reasons that have nothing to do with whether or not someone loves their primary partner. That doesn’t make it any less painful. But it is a good reminder that sometimes it’s about things outside of your primary connection. When we understand that, we can manage our behaviors and relationships better, I hope.

JS: Polyamory seems like it could be one way to solve that tension. But you argue that many of us are not prepared to enter polyamorous relationships. Can you say more about why not?

JG: Different relationship structures work remarkably well for people, whether it’s being socially and sexually monogamous, in a polyamorous relationship, or single and enjoying singlehood. But we have a tendency to sometimes think that the grass is greener. We may think being poly has all these advantages, and we can romanticize those and forget that, just like in any relationship structure, there are people with high and low satisfaction, people that it works well for and people it doesn’t work well for.

Researchers used to call polyamory “ethical non-monogamy;” then they started calling it “consensual non-monogamy,” because whose “ethics” is it? But consensual is kind of a loaded term, too—are both partners always totally consenting to this? Now, increasingly, researchers are calling it “negotiated non-monogamy” or “disclosed non-monogamy.”

JS: I guess that sort of points to the problem…

JG: Exactly. It points out that often there are asymmetries in the desire for these different relationship structures.

In our studies, we found that about one in five Americans have at some point had some version of a disclosed non-monogamous relationship—whether it’s sexually open, like swinging, or polyamory love. In the case of polyamory, it’s interesting. It’s different than a sexually open relationship in that you’re attempting to manage multiple pair bonds. We find there are some people who do it remarkably well. It really satiates their desire for emotional connection and sexual connection. But, for other people, it’s a challenge to maintain multiple relationships—to balance jealousy, gift giving, quality time with multiple partners, etc.

It’s not that polyamory is good or bad. But, as I wrote about in The Intimate Animal, I’m cautious about the way we imagine different relationship structures to be great without recognizing that they just come with different kinds of effort, negotiations, and compromises.

JS: I’m at an age where many of my friends have young adult children looking for romantic partnerships. But it seems more fraught than it was for us at their age. Why is that? And what advice would you give young adults today?

JG: Dating culture has changed dramatically and in a relatively short period of time. That includes the trajectory of a relationship. Just a few decades ago, for instance, young people would often marry fairly early in their courtship process, and marriage was about starting a grand adventure with someone that you were attracted to and could imagine a future with. Young people today think of marriage as the finale, after you already know everything about someone and have fully investigated them.

We did a study with the Match Group, and we found that about 80% of Gen Z-ers said that they believe they will find true love in their life, but about 45% said they don’t think they’re ready for a relationship—they need to work on themselves first. This highlights that they think being ready is a linear process. If you just go work on yourself, one day you’ll wake up and be ready.

But that’s not how we really show up socially or romantically or sexually. In the best case, your romantic partners are there to help you take risks, explore the world, catch you when you fall. That goes back to the mutual part of all pair bonding, of having a copilot to experience life with. When we put too much emphasis on having to be perfect before being in a relationship, we neglect the fact that relationships are containers within which we can grow and make mistakes and experience the world.

This is a challenge that’s showing up on dating apps and in the offices of matchmakers. Dating apps are a remarkable opportunity to find someone with the same hobbies, kinks, religious background, but it’s more data than the human brain can process. We have an information overload. And that means we’re seeing fewer people interested in second and third dates and getting to know someone. After a first date, they’ll say: “Well, you were wonderful, but you held your fork a little funny during lunch, and I can get back on my app and find someone who doesn’t.”

When the brain has a sense of an unlimited resource, we keep going back to the well to find someone who’s perfect. But if we understand that our brain is playing a dirty trick on us, then we can say, “I found someone I like, and, yes, they did this funny thing with the fork, but I’m going to go on a second date with them anyway, because there’s a whole lot that I liked about them.” We have to grab biology by the horns in those moments and focus more on the deal-makers than the deal-breakers.

JS: Many people believe that what’s hurting them in the dating market is that they’re not attractive enough. What does science say about attraction?

JG: In our Singles in America study, we ask people what they’re looking for in a partner. And what’s been heartwarming for me is that in the last few years, in particular, the number one thing that single men and women are looking for in a romantic partner is someone they can trust and confide in. Yes, people say attraction, humor, sexual confidence, and intelligence are important. But number one for men and women is having someone you can trust and confide in.

I think it’s a powerful reminder, but it’s also something hard to determine on a first date. Often it takes a little time to really see if you can trust and confide in someone. It also goes back to why infidelity is such a problem. Betrayal corrodes the number one thing so many people want in a relationship, a partner you can trust.

JS: Are there other practical implications of your work you want to share?

JG: I’m not a clinical psychologist or physician, so I’m often cautious about giving advice. I’m in the business of “how come,” not “how to.” But I do think that when we understand more about ourselves, we can change our approach to our romantic and sexual lives.

One way is by having a lot more empathy for ourselves and those around us. Especially in the case of breakups and romantic dissolution, when people ask, “Are you ready for someone else?” or “Why don’t you get back into the dating market?” or “Try to focus on the things you didn’t like about the person.” We wouldn’t say that to someone who was going through bereavement. But, for some reason, people will tell us we can just move on. We all have to recognize the intense grief people go through when they lose a relationship. It’s why we’ve found 50% of people have a yo-yo relationship; they go back after they breakup.

Another thing is when we’re first dating and falling in love, feelings of limerence [infatuation] are a complete mind-body experience, impacting the brain, hormones, heart rate, and how we perceive our beloved’s behavior. This colors our understanding of what’s going on around us and the decisions we make. Are you making risky decisions or thoughtful ones? Are you balancing the intensity of first excitement with long-term intentions?

I believe that the more that we understand ourselves, the better decisions we can make in our intimate life, really prioritizing the role of close connection. These relationships hold the answer to our loneliness epidemic, to our accumulated anxiety about everything—including the environment, politics, the economy, and health. It all comes down to the power of meaningful, intimate social connections.

But a new book by journalist Lewis Raven Wallace, Radical Unlearning: The Art and Science of Creating Change From Within, argues we can’t always think our way out of our biases. Rather, loving relationships and community more reliably provide the foundation for shifting our views and unlearning bias and oppressive thinking.

Wallace is an Abolition Journalism Fellow at the organization Interrupting Criminalization, author of The View From Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, and host of the podcast The View From Somewhere. I spoke with them about research related to unlearning, stories of change from the tiny to transformative, and strategies for all of us to open ourselves to other ways of thinking and being. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis: Why don’t we start with the question of what do we as individuals, and as a society, need to unlearn?

Lewis Raven Wallace: I came into this project about unlearning thinking about transphobia and racism because those are two areas that immediately affect my life and my activism. I’ve dealt with a lot of learning and unlearning around transphobia within my family as a trans person who came out quite young. I also have been in a many decades-long process of my own unlearning around racism. I’ve always been really interested in family roots, and I come from a many generations white family in South Carolina, where there’s a lot of tension and unspoken challenges around racism, and that’s something that I was interested in surfacing through conversations with my mother and my grandmother.

I’m not interested in telling other people what they should unlearn. For me, it’s been a lot about the systems that underlie the harms we’re experiencing today. Even underlying systems like transphobia and racism, it’s capitalism and ideas about private property and individualism and all the structures and assumptions that make up so much of the day-to-day toxicity that circulates in U.S. society. I wanted to understand more about what is required of us when we want to unlearn, especially things that are ongoing, systems and structures that we’re still living with.

KRL: Can you talk about the role of love when it comes to unlearning?

LRW: One of my first interviews was with Adrienne Johnson Martin, a Black woman in her 50s. What created the conditions for her to unlearn around policing and anti-Blackness was her connection with her family, in particular her son, who has a disability. Through her love for her son, she had undergone all this transformation that she identified as a big part of what made her open to unlearning throughout all parts of her life.

As I read the psychological and neuroscience research for the book, a lot of that was about the neuroscience of connection, the hormonal reactions that happen, and the neuroplasticity that we can access when we’re in loving, connected relationships, how that lays the foundation for unlearning. A lot of that research is actually about trauma, trauma healing, and unlearning trauma.

More and more over the last couple decades, researchers have been finding that it’s not enough to talk about your trauma, it’s not enough to just revisit your trauma, you have to actually experience different kinds of connections and relationships. That can be in a therapeutic relationship, or it can be in a loving relationship in your life. Trauma healing is actually love and unlearning in one.

That was so inspiring to me because trauma is probably the hardest thing to unlearn. It’s really, really deep; it creates these automated reactions in us. It’s uncomfortable to look at; it’s painful. The ways in which experiences of connection to other people can facilitate trauma healing, to me, that was a clue on this journey of trying to figure out the science of unlearning overall.

Every single person that I interviewed, in one way or another, talked about love, connection, community, and relationship. Not necessarily just romantic love, not just familial love, but experiences of connection as an aspect of their own learning.

KRL: Can you talk about attunement and co-regulation as motivating forces that facilitate unlearning?

LRW: There’s this really wonderful thing about human design, how we are made to survive together. Obviously you see it in parenting relationships, the phenomenon that the baby comes and you have to change as a person, you have to change all your lived patterns, you have to give up sleep and sacrifice a lot. So we’re actually neurologically designed to feel this sense of connection and interconnection in a way that makes us more open to change. At a neurological level, they call it rewiring the brain.

The more you use a certain circuit, the more likely you are to react in that same way in the future. We have these windows of opportunity where we are more open, more flexible to changing our reactions. Those windows can be created by oxytocin and the other hormones that are associated with love and connection and attunement. It opens us up at a biological level.

The way that humans tend to react to new information that contradicts us is one of two paths. Either we shut it down and shut it out, and that’s a very common and likely reaction, or we try to resolve the contradiction. The discomfort that’s required by trying to resolve the contradiction is very hard to go through on your own, especially if you’re going through a loss of identity or loss of sense of self. It’s hard, maybe even impossible to do that without a sense that other people are going to be there with you. It’s not just that being in relationship with other people can introduce you to new ideas, but it can actually make you a more flexible person.

So feelings of safety are a really important condition for long-term unlearning. You don’t have to feel safe the entire time, but you have to have some feeling of safety that you can go back to in order to process the things that are hard.

KRL: Your grandmother had a lot of unlearning to do, and your mother to some extent. Can you talk about the tension that you describe in the book between love and fear around your gender identity, and how that came to play in their unlearning?

LRW: When I was coming out as queer and then trans in the late 90s and early 2000s, for my grandmother, who was born in the 1920s, it was just confusing. And she’s a very loving person and she’s also, like a lot of people, kind of stuck in some of her ways. For my mother, it was more an experience of fear. She wasn’t particularly homophobic and there wasn’t really such a thing as transphobia in the way that there is now, because people just didn’t know what it was.

One of the few preconceived notions at the time was this would be a dangerous life, this would be a hard life, to be trans. Both of them had to do a lot of inner confrontation with discomfort and fear in order to relearn how to love me and stay in connection with me. That was not at all an overnight process.

KRL: Talk a bit about the role of generative somatics in unlearning.

LRW: Our bodies and minds are interconnected. We can’t just think our way out of things. In order to re-track our brains, we have to change our practices. Sometimes we even start doing the different thing before we’re totally mentally comfortable. That happens a lot around something as simple as pronouns. People might feel like, “I don’t really feel comfortable with it. I don’t really see it, but I’m just going to practice saying the right word.” And the more that you practice, the more it becomes second nature.

The field that I looked at, of politicized somatics, is taking this idea that change happens in the body and engaging with that as a political act. So asking, how can we strengthen our movements for justice? How can we strengthen our processes of unlearning? How can we become better listeners and unlearners ourselves through developing a kind of awareness of breath, of body, often very subtle things like, “Where do you feel tension as you talk about this? Or where does the energy in your body focus?”

I had experienced something traumatic with a group of people, and we went through a politicized somatic healing process collectively. We had this really incredible experience of somatically releasing an acute, traumatic event, which had been a physical assault by police. I actually felt in my body, I felt the experience of release.

It sounds complicated, and maybe a little woo-woo. But in some ways, it can actually be a shortcut compared to talking about something for years and years in therapy. To get into the physical embodiment of it, you then break the pattern in your body.

KRL: I’d love you to tell the story of Adrianne Black and how she evolved and unlearned the neo-Nazi beliefs of her community and her family of origin.

LRW: She had been raised by a family of activist white nationalists in Florida, and then she had gone to school at the New College of Florida, which is a public, alternative kind of college. She essentially was confronted, often in a very harsh way, by people who said, “Your beliefs and your family’s beliefs are not OK.” On the other hand, a small group of people embraced her and spent a lot of time with her, getting to know her and facilitating this unlearning and trying to talk her out of being a white nationalist.

The year after her graduation, she publicly renounced her family’s views. She alienated herself from her whole family of origin and apologized to a lot of people for the many years that she had spent holding these beliefs that she had come to see were really harmful. She changed through this combination of love, friendship, being loved by these people who spent time with her, and very uncomfortable confrontation, which she’s really come to terms with. She came out as trans a couple years later, so in some ways, her unlearning around racism and white nationalism had opened her up to a whole other world of who she would then become.

KRL: I’m curious about how you reconcile living in our flawed reality, while recognizing that there’s a lot of past inequity and harm that has not been resolved?

LRW: I grappled a lot with what I was going to say about settler colonialism in a book about unlearning. As somebody who’s living on stolen land, I own a home. I almost want to put it in quotes, “own.” I don’t believe that land should be parceled out and owned by people. How do I speak about unlearning something like that, when here I am sitting with all the privileges of it? Nonetheless, what I came to for myself is that there is no reconciliation. You actually remain in an acute awareness of the cognitive dissonance. Let that be motivating in trying to make change at every step. Sometimes those changes are really small and marginal, making a donation or paying a land tax, but over time, I think there’s something to be said for just not trying to resolve cognitive dissonance, letting it be really uncomfortable, and that is emotionally harsh.

Often, people who are in the settler position, or the colonizer position or the white position, we don’t have a lot of tools for looking at and actually feeling the pain of contradiction inside of ourselves, that I will never walk this earth in the kind of right relationship that I want to be in. That part of the story always brought me back to my grandmother and how, as she was essentially on her deathbed, she was still grappling with the impacts of her own internalized oppression, and it was painful to her. She wanted to feel this love and openness, she wanted to feel connected, she wanted to not be racist. But she couldn’t quite let go of all these things. There is a cost, even to the people who are privileged by it and who benefit.

KRL: What would you like readers to take from this book?

RLW: I want it to be a reminder that unlearning is really possible. It’s work that any of us can do. I want it to be a tool for people who want to have these unlearning conversations in their communities and with their families. It’s a very different kind of tool than the dominant narrative of We should talk to each other across the aisle. I find that framework very limited because it doesn’t acknowledge the kind of trauma that may be playing out in some of those interactions. It doesn’t acknowledge the painful fact that we’re not talking about systems of oppression that have ended. We’re talking about ongoing, structural harm. A different set of tools says, Hey, let’s start with ourselves. Let’s start with people right around us that we love and trust, and let’s build outward from there. It’s really possible for anybody to help cultivate these conditions.

Maybe you and your mom are long overdue for a conversation, or maybe you and your best friend haven’t been acknowledging something, or maybe in the work that you do, there’s room to cultivate just a little bit more space for unlearning. I want it to be empowering for people to think about the diversity of ways that we can create those conditions. I certainly have let go of the idea that unlearning is just a hard, crappy slog, and I want other people to feel that.

Some studies are finding support for this idea. For example, one study done with consumers using digital companions trained to respond with empathy found that doing so helped them alleviate their feelings of loneliness immediately after the interaction. As the researchers found, “being heard” and supported seemed to help people in this regard, and chatbots could mimic that well—in some ways, better than humans.

Another recent study found that people felt as good chatting with a bot as they felt talking with people face to face or online (though they felt more similar to and liked their human chatter better). Since better moods can be helpful for reducing loneliness, chatting with a bot could have an indirect impact on helping people who feel isolated. Research also suggests people may prefer talking with chatbots to people, particularly in the short term and in certain situations (such as when the real people in your life don’t seem very supportive).

These results are promising for sure. However, some even newer research should give us reason for pause. These studies are showing us that, despite expectations, chatbots don’t reduce loneliness in the long term. In some cases, interacting with artificial intelligence (AI) may even hurt our social well-being.

Chatbots don’t reduce loneliness over time

In one 2026 study, 275 first-year students at the University of British Columbia reported on how lonely they felt, their sense of social isolation, and their mood. Then, they were randomly assigned to send at least one meaningful message a day (for two weeks) to either a randomly selected student or to a chatbot named Sam that had been trained to be empathic and responsive. A third (control) group of students were told to write a short summary of their day each day in a private chatroom, to see the potential benefits of self-reflection.

At the end of every day, the students reported on how socially connected they felt while interacting with their conversation partner (or writing in their journal), as well as on their positive and negative feelings. Then, at the end of the two weeks of texting or writing, they reported again on their loneliness, mood, and social isolation.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that only students interacting with a random student felt more positive emotion and less loneliness and sense of isolation after the two weeks. Those interacting with a chatbot or writing in their journals didn’t.

Lead author Ruo-ning Li of the University of British Columbia says her finding suggests that a chatbot is a poor substitute for a real person—even if that person is a stranger.

“A low-tech, simple intervention—just texting with another random human peer they didn’t know before—reduced loneliness significantly after two weeks, while the highly supportive chatbot we designed didn’t even move the needle,” says Li.

In many ways, this finding surprised Li. She’d thought a chatbot that could provide validation to people and be available anytime would mimic the benefits one gets from interacting with people you don’t know well—a type of connection sometimes called “weak ties” by researchers. These kinds of interactions have been shown in the past to help people feel more connected and less lonely. But in this study, she found that chatbots don’t provide the same advantages as weak ties with humans.

“We set up this experiment to compare whether AI can bring us as much benefit as talking to a weak tie. It cannot,” she says. “Even with all of these features that have been shown by relationship science to make people feel good and connected, an AI simulation doesn’t really translate into a long-term psychological benefit.”

Interacting with a person improves mood better than chatbots

Students who interacted with humans and chatbots tended to feel better right after the interaction. But only those interacting with a human had overall positive feelings at the end of the two weeks, suggesting people still hold an edge over AI.

On the other hand, chatting with a chatbot did reduce negative emotion as much as chatting with a person over time, a potential benefit. Li thinks this suggests chatbots could be useful in certain situations or with certain populations that are more isolated. In situations where someone needs immediate comforting, perhaps chatting with a chatbot would be better than nothing, she says, though probably not a good long-term solution.

In a post-study analysis, she and her team went back to participants to see if they’d continued journaling or chatting with chatbots or strangers a week later. She found that significantly more people continued interacting with their human partner (33%) than with their chatbot (14%), with only 3% continuing to journal.

“This is super interesting, because it seems like human interaction doesn’t only reduce loneliness, it sustains connection,” she says.

Though Li hasn’t conducted this study in other settings yet, she suspects her results would hold in other circumstances where someone might be feeling disconnected, like moving to a new town or starting a new job. If so, she says, lonely people might also benefit temporarily from interacting with a chatbot, but get more out of interacting with a real human.

“If you just go out to talk to anyone around you—someone at work, your neighbor who walks their dogs, or a coworker you’ve never talked to—it can [likely] help you reduce loneliness better than AI chat bot,” says Li.

Why chatbots don’t cut it

Li doesn’t know why people get more out of chatting with strangers than a chatbot, but she believes it could have to do with how chatting with a real person makes interactions more dynamic and rewarding. While chatbots seem to have the advantage of always being available and empathic, they don’t initiate contact themselves, she says.

“With a human, both sides have the opportunity to start the conversation, which is more likely to sustain engagement.”

There’s also something about connecting with a real person that carries more emotional weight for people, she says. Chatbots don’t have to take time from their busy schedules to talk to you, making their interactions less valuable. Plus, they can’t be vulnerable or share any real emotion like people can, something useful for creating real intimacy.

Li adds another reason humans may have the advantage: People often have an extended social network, which could help someone expand their own social circle.

“Introducing you to a broader social network makes you feel connected and gives you even more opportunity to build new, deeper, better connections,” says Li. “That’s a fundamentally unique [aspect] of human interactions that the advanced technology cannot replicate yet.”

The future of chatbot companionship

While Li’s results aren’t the last word on the matter, they add to a growing body of research that suggests caution when trying to replace human interactions with AI companions. People using AI can form unhealthy dependence, sometimes leading to harming themselves or others.

For example, another 2026 study found that the way chatbots are designed to use sycophancy (agreement, flattery, and validation) to increase people’s willingness to engage with them can have detrimental effects on their well-being, social interactions, and decision making.

As part of the study, people were given an opportunity to check out whether some of their past misbehavior was questionable or not by getting feedback either from AI sources or from a group of humans (from a Reddit forum, “Am I the asshole?”).  Researchers found that “AI affirmed users’ actions 49% more often than humans on average, including in cases involving deception, illegality, or other harms.” This suggests that AI, by being too agreeable, is inadvertently promoting anti-social interactions and even self-destructive behavior.

Additionally, the researchers in this study found that people preferred AI feedback to human feedback. This doesn’t seem too surprising—after all, who wouldn’t want to be told that they’re right or that they aren’t the “asshole” in a situation? But that suggests sycophantic AIs may be giving people an unearned sense of validation, leading to poorer self-understanding and less accountability in their interactions with others. This could, ultimately, hurt people’s well-being and ability to form relationships.

While quite different from Li’s study, research like this points out how tricky it can be to design AI chatbots to be both helpful for users and better for real-world interactions and the common good. Now that there are a series of lawsuits around chatbots, the Federal Trade Commission is seeking more information from companies about how they assess potential harms of using AI chatbots, especially in children, who may not have the sophistication to understand potential pernicious effects.

For now, though, the question remains about the benefits of using chatbots to alleviate loneliness. Li, for one, is not giving up on their potential, but based on her findings, she’s considering alternative uses for them. Rather than substituting for human interaction, a chatbot could be designed to encourage users to initiate conversations with real people, build confidence in their ability to interact, or help them rehearse difficult conversations—all skills that could strengthen real-world relationships, she says.

“Even the most highly supportive chatbot by design couldn’t match the interaction with a random paired human peer,” she says. “So, rather than design it to be the best companion, maybe the future of AI should be to help us build connection with each other.”

The realization that dating can be a valuable activity in and of itself, rather than a zero-sum game where a “bad” date means a waste of time, led me to become a dating coach in 2020. I became a different kind of dating coach. Not one who says, “let’s figure out how to manipulate someone into wanting you,” but rather someone who cheers you into viewing every single dating interaction as an opportunity for empowerment. And fun, too, because that’s an essential part of dating successfully. If the goal is to create a fun and fulfilling relationship with another human, the process should reflect it!

But in a world where humans often treat each other as objects of entertainment, disposable ego-boosts, or “needs-fulfilling machines,” what does it actually look like to date with integrity and meaning? Are there steps and principles for creating a hopeful paradigm of dating? Taking things a step further—can dating be used for the greater good?

As a scholar and a coach, the most satisfying thing in the world (at least, to my brain) is to create frameworks that bridge theory with practice. To take big problems, and to be able to say, “I’ve got a framework for that.”

Enter my framework: The six pillars of mindful dating.

In this context, mindful refers to one’s commitment to awareness and integrity, versus the outdated rulebooks, automatic responses, and bad behaviors that often prevail in the dating sphere.

Practicing mindful dating is about letting go of old scripts around love, seduction, and roles, and instead, using the entire process of dating—online and offline—as a playground for developing the authentic presence and relational skills you need to love well in each moment.

Mindful dating actually lays the ground for relationships that are based on truth rather than performance, and true intimacy rather than transactionality. It is particularly resonant for people who practice mindfulness elsewhere in their lives—but might feel at a loss when it comes to dating with integrity rather than self-abandonment.

Deep visioning: owning your WHY

Hiroko came into my virtual office declaring she was ready to get married. She wanted to find her person, and to live the dream of a wedded life—yesterday. She had decided to recruit a dating coach to help her locate her future husband.

Her dating life had been a self-proclaimed disaster so far. She went on many dates, but they never progressed into any kind of commitment. I started asking questions about her deeper motivations: “Why do you want to get married?” Hiroko responded emphatically, “Because it’s that time of life! All my friends are getting married, and I want it too. The wedding, the dress, the Instagram pictures… It seems like the right thing to do. I’m 30 years old!” I further inquired: “What kind of relationship would you like to have? How do you feel about living with someone under the same roof and sharing the mundane parts of daily life?”

The response was illuminating. She expressed that she was dreading the daily realities of partnered life. Part of her was afraid of feeling stuck with the same person, of entering a “boring, sedate life.” She also wanted a life of inspiration, the freedom to focus on her art, and the freedom, potentially, to have more than one partner. At the same time, she craved the social advantages of traditional marriage.

Hiroko wanted two things at once: the social approval, validation, and status that would come with marriage as a major marker of “success” at her stage of life. Another part of her wanted to retain her autonomy, be free, and live alone.

The first step in developing a mindful dating approach with Hiroko was to come to terms with what she wanted from a deeper place—and getting clear on her personal and relational values. After a few sessions, she owned a deeper truth: she wanted the perks of marriage, but not the reality of it. She would redirect her dating efforts towards finding romantic partners with whom she could embody her values of freedom and independence, rather than attempting to fit herself into the traditional mold.

Owning our truest WHY for dating is the first step in creating an aligned dating life. If you are dating on auto-pilot and feeling disappointing results, ask yourself: Why am I dating? What does love and intimacy really mean to me in the spectrum of my life’s purpose? What am I hoping to experience? What are my socially conditioned values, versus my chosen values? Would dating with more integrity require disrupting a social script, and if so, am I willing to do so?

There are no right or wrong answers here, but a sincere inquiry into these questions leads to deeper intentionality with dating, and more aligned results.

Cultivating an empowered self-concept

A big part of dating, online and offline, is deciding how to communicate about oneself. Research shows that how we conceptualize ourselves, and particularly, with what degree of clarity, directly impacts our chances of selecting a compatible mate. Two retrospective studies by McGill University graduate students in experimental psychology found that people with lower self-concept clarity experienced more challenges making dating decisions and were more likely to date incompatible people.

Of course, what we believe about ourselves is going to deeply influence our communication. Many of us have learned to conceal our tender and vulnerable sides in order to be accepted by others, so we show up on the dating scene hiding our true selves. While that’s completely understandable, too much hiding means that no one can truly see you—making it nearly impossible to generate vibrant emotional intimacy.

Mindful dating is an opportunity to practice empowered self-expression, beginning with adopting an empowered self-narrative.

For example, one of my dating coaching clients was an exceptionally funny, bubbly, and spiritually engaged gay man who practiced meditation regularly. When I initially looked at his dating profile, I was shocked to see overly generic statements. It read something like this:

“I’m an accountant, financially stable. I like walks on the beach and travel, and I’m looking for a long-term relationship.”

Also, he was wearing sunglasses in all his pictures—making it impossible to see the brilliant spark in his eyes. When I pointed out he seemed to be hiding his true self from potential suitors, he revealed that he had repeatedly been rejected and mocked for his spirituality and humor—both by his family of origin and by previous partners. He realized that he was now preventing folks who would honor and adore these qualities in him from finding and recognizing him. He then courageously took steps to show the broader range of his true self—adding clear photos of him meditating, being goofy, and reading books, and disclosing his wide array of interests and passions within the profile. Almost instantly, the quality of matches and connections he experienced on the app started to rise!

Learning to embrace and express an empowered self-concept is not arrogance. It’s about leading with your gifts—and what Ken Page would call core gifts in his book, Deeper Dating. According to Page, core gifts are those precious parts of us that we often learn to repress during childhood, to make people around us comfortable—for example, our thirst for love, our sensitivity, our empathy, or our exuberance—but these are the parts that constitute our deepest spark, and are foundational to our ability to experience true intimacy.

Removing the veil from one’s wholesome expression is a healing journey that begins with self-reclamation, and leads to much more compatible dates. Sharing one’s gifts in dating can be vulnerable, but it can be a definitive movement away from old patterns of self-repression, and towards a commitment to authenticity.

Developing an authentic dating strategy

The third pillar is all about action! As you clarify your dating why and develop an empowered self-concept and narrative, the next question becomes: How do I integrate dating into my life in a way that is congruent with my values, interests, and lifestyle?

Forgive the financial analogy—but my recommendation is to develop an aligned dating portfolio. This is about selecting an assortment of ways you can meet new people, so that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket (just like stocks!)

This will most likely include online and offline components.

For example, one of my dating coaching clients decided to attend two in-person events per week, prioritizing dating events—and to use a dating app for 10 minutes per day. He also reached out to his community to ask for introductions to single friends they would vouch for and match his criteria. That way, he would avoid focusing entirely on online dating, and would try out different events where he could also meet new people locally—art openings, volunteer days, dinner clubs, hiking meetups, and singles’ nights. He would use this time not only to scan the room for possible love interests (although that was definitely part of it), he also utilized these opportunities to practice communication skills like asking powerful questions and listening more deeply.

As you might guess, this client built a rich social life and met lots of single women, with common interests, both online and offline. By not over-relying on dating apps, he kept dating fun, vibrant, and alive.

Practicing mindful swiping

I get it: Online dating can feel soul-sucking and dehumanizing. Algorithms gamify dating and make us feel as if we are products on a shelf, rather than whole, complex human beings with intrinsic values. Psychology researchers have even coined a word for this transactional mentality: Relationshopping. Adding the prevalence of dating app burnout to the mix, it is fair to say that dating technologies have an uncanny ability to throw us into swirls of negativity and powerlessness.

That said, most couples do meet online nowadays—and, remarkably, some research shows that relationships originating from online dating are more successful than those that started offline. In a nationally representative sample of 19,131 respondents, the late social psychologist John T. Cacioppo and colleagues found that marriages that began online were slightly less likely to result in a breakup, and reported slightly higher marital satisfaction than their offline counterparts. Perhaps a reason to not ditch dating apps just yet?

I argue that it is crucial to develop a mindful approach to social technologies—and this pillar can help you do just that. Even if you do not select online dating as part of your “dating portfolio,” you may use the principles of mindful swiping to bring mindfulness and digital hygiene into any technology use, particularly social media.

Mindful Swiping is a framework to help us use online dating as a mindfulness practice. I have created an entire workshop and blog on this, but here are the Cliffs notes.

Ritualize your use of the apps. Stop swiping “mindlessly” (dopamine-seeking, addiction-like, or angry swiping)—and create a ritual time and space around your use of the apps. I recommend turning off notifications, so that you are in charge of when and where you swipe. Every time you use the apps (and I suggest no more than 15 minutes per day), breathe deeply; be aware of your somatic state and physical posture, and reconnect with your intentions.

Creating an authentic and empowered profile. Your profile is your canvas! Use the process of profile creation as an act of genuine and truthful self-expression. Pick photos that feel like the real you, and tell a visual story. In the writeup, communicate unique qualities, interests, and values that convey the breadth and range of who you are.

Practice discernment while swiping. When swiping, use your rational mind AND your embodied intuition. What types of emotions, character, and values do they convey? Do these align with yours? Observe yourself and why you tend to swipe right or left. Remind yourself what you’re looking for.

Practice loving-kindness. Online dating is an opportunity to practice loving-kindness—a Buddhist meditation focused on sending goodwill to oneself and to others. It can rehumanize online dating by helping us remember there is a three-dimensional human on the other side of the app—a soul, a heart, a body that’s longing to be loved, just like you.

Communicating to connect

Communication in early dating can be tricky. When a connection is new, it is naturally precarious, and ripe for misunderstandings. The fact that most people rely on texting to connect with new love interests means the non-verbal elements of early interactions easily get lost. That’s why learning to communicate with clarity, authenticity, and deep curiosity is one of the most crucial skills in developing trust and intimacy.

Before you can communicate truthfully, you have to discern what it is you really feel, want, and need—not imagining and complying with what other people expect you to say. In psychological terms, that ability is called differentiation of self: It is at the core of having a sense of agency and empowerment, and is vital to building healthy partnerships and relationships of all kinds.

Once you identify your needs and feelings, you must gather the courage to express them directly (and kindly, of course). Stating your real desires means you might hear “no” for an answer, which can be terrifying. Many people do not communicate clearly because they are sensitive to rejection. On the other hand, hearing “yes” might be just as terrifying—but oh, so exciting!—because that means actual intimacy, and being seen in your truth, is within reach.

In any case, communicating with clarity is an act of kindness—to yourself, and to the other. It is a crucial part of laying a path for success no matter the outcome!

Navigating challenging emotions and integrating learning

Dating has a way of bringing up challenging emotions: Rejection, comparison, loneliness, shame, disappointment, envy, jealousy, judgment, anger, hopelessness. There is no way to completely avoid challenging feelings while keeping one’s heart open.

However, what we can do is change our relationship to those feelings. We can learn to embrace these emotions, and utilize them to grow, learn, and transform, rather than hide away and judge ourselves. In Buddhism, there is the idea that life unavoidably brings pain, in the form of loss, disappointment, or other challenging experiences: That’s the first arrow. But when we judge and condemn ourselves for feeling these emotions, that is the second arrow—the suffering we inflict upon ourselves. The first arrow is inevitable; but the second is optional.

In dating, we cannot avoid challenging emotions altogether—but we can be kind and compassionate to ourselves, and learn to become better friends with ourselves while doing it.

I always invite my clients and workshop attendees to practice positive defiance. That means choosing to keep an open heart and to practice love, kindness, and self-compassion in the face of emotional challenges and negative self-talk. It’s choosing to approach life from a lens of acceptance, growth, and liberation—rather than constantly evaluating whether we got the short or long end of the stick.

What truly supports folks in that realm is to create a love-filled life with abundant friendships, community, activities, mutual care, and passions. When one is engaged with love, generosity, and kindness on a daily basis, romantic disappointments still hurt—but they take a much softer landing, and do not feel like existential loss.

In sum, dating doesn’t have to feel like a means to an end: It can literally become an art form when you leave the old beliefs and patterns behind, and learn to act from a deeper source of self-expression, authenticity, and self-love.

Despite seeing how delightful and even life-changing talking to strangers can be, it isn’t something I readily do myself. Sure, I’ll smile and say hello or thank someone who helps me. And I’ll offer assistance to strangers needing help, like giving directions or picking up a spilled grocery bag. But am I eager to just converse regularly with strangers? Not really.

According to researcher Gillian Sandstrom, my hesitancy means I’m missing out on something important. In her new book, Once Upon a Stranger, she explains why talking to strangers is both good for our own well-being and helpful for society at large. The book offers ample stories of how talking to strangers can provide surprising gifts—even for introverts—with the science to back up those claims.

I spoke to her about her book and why she is such an advocate of stranger-to-stranger interactions. Here is an edited version of our conversation.

Jill Suttie: Why should we try to talk to strangers—let’s say, in comparison to other, closer people in our lives? What are the benefits of doing that?

Gillian Sandstrom: The first benefit that we’ve found consistently is just that it puts you in a good mood. When you talk to a stranger, you usually walk away feeling a bit happier and more connected, which we know is so important for humans.

Another thing from the research is that we tend to learn more than we expect to when we talk to strangers. It brings novelty into our life, makes our life richer. There’s research about how well-being can arise from not only happiness, purpose, and meaning, but this third source: psychological richness. I think talking to strangers gives you richness, because it brings novelty and learning and those kinds of things into your life.

Obviously, interactions with close others are special and important and give us all sorts of things that maybe we can’t get from some of these more minimal social interactions. But having a diverse array of conversation partners is important for well-being, as well. There’s research showing that interacting with a diversity of social partners is a good thing and associated with greater life satisfaction; it’s not just about how many social interactions we have.

We also know that weak ties—for example, acquaintances—give us access to a wider range of information. Strangers can do that, too, because weak ties and strangers are not as similar to us; they know things that the people we’re close to don’t know.

JS: Does talking to strangers have any social benefits, beyond the personal?

GS: I’ve been working recently with Taylor West and Barbara Fredrickson, and we’ve been looking at the societal benefits of talking to strangers—like how they widen your perspective. We’re starting to find that spending time and having deeper conversations with close others doesn’t make any changes in this respect. But talking to strangers regularly for three weeks changes people’s sense of intellectual humility and makes them more open to hearing alternative perspectives.

I did some work during COVID and found that, after people had just a single conversation online with a stranger, they reported feeling a greater sense of trust in other people.

In my personal experience, these tiny interactions are often nothing special, although some of them are really great. But they add up, they accumulate, and I can walk through the world and see it differently. I feel safer, more trusting, like the world is a better place.

JS: What are some of the misconceptions about connecting with strangers that keep people from doing it more?

GS: I think our biggest worry is that people don’t want to talk to us, that we could be rejected. We’ll reach out, we’ll say something, and people will just ignore us or shut us down. But, according to the research, that just doesn’t happen very often. And, even when it does happen, it probably doesn’t feel as bad as we think it will.

We also worry that we don’t know what we’re doing. Many of us walk around with a voice in our head saying, You’re no good at this. People don’t like you. We worry about talking to strangers because we feel like we don’t know what to say. Maybe we’ll have awkward silences and it’s going to go horribly wrong. But the research finds that, actually, these things we worry about don’t tend to happen. We enjoy it more than we think, and people like us more than we think.

JS: These days, many interactions with other people are happening online—especially with the younger generations. I wonder if that prevents us from feeling comfortable reaching out to strangers in person and how that affects us.

GS: I think we have fewer opportunities to talk to strangers, because we’re working at home and we can buy everything online. We’ve designed out a lot of those interactions that normally would’ve just happened, that we couldn’t really avoid. But with technology, we can choose to avoid lots of interactions, right? That means we have a lot less practice connecting with strangers.

I’m an introvert. I have not been doing this my whole life. I saw my dad doing it, and I thought he had special skills that I didn’t have and would never have. Then, in a roundabout way over many years, I’ve become a bit like my dad. That makes me think it’s not necessarily something we’re born with. It’s a skill that we can develop.

I’ve seen this in my research, too. In a study that I ran with Erica Boothby and Gus Cooney, we got people to talk to strangers every day for a week. We saw that, gradually, day by day, people were becoming less worried about rejection and feeling a bit more confident about their skills. So, it does seem like practice makes progress.

But if we’re not getting any practice, that’s a big problem. And how that plays out long-term is scary to me. How do you go on a date if you don’t know how to talk to a stranger? How much more intimidating will it be to attend a job interview? There are so many things that are going to be harder if people are uncomfortable talking to each other.

JS: Aren’t there situations where you should be cautious about reaching out to strangers or where you might feel like you shouldn’t push it because they’re closing down?

GS: Everybody’s heard the term “stranger danger,” so I don’t recommend doing it in situations where you don’t feel safe. The kind of thing that I’m talking about is done in a public place when there’s other people around.

But sometimes the conversations that have turned out the best for me have been with people who don’t look receptive. One of my favorites stories was from when I was on the tube in London, kind of buzzing, because it had been an exciting morning for me. So, I said something to the woman sitting next to me, “How’s your morning going?” And she was polite and said, “Fine, thank you.” And I thought, That’s it. She doesn’t want to talk.

But then, after a pause, she turned to me and asked, “How’s your morning going?” And I said, “Well, actually, this exciting thing has happened. I was on the radio.” And, because I opened up to her, she opened up to me and told me that she had just found out that she was pregnant and was heading back to work.

I imagined she was going to the office and not planning to tell anyone, because you usually wait to make sure everything’s OK with a pregnancy first. But she could tell me because I don’t know her, and she’s never going to see me again. It was a really moving thing to be able to share that moment with her and, hopefully, help her celebrate it.

JS: You’ve found that it’s helpful for people to just start talking to strangers repeatedly to realize how good it can feel. But, for those who are hesitant to jump in, your book has a section with tips on how to get started. Can you share some of your tips?

GS: This came from combing through a list of hundreds of conversations that I’ve had with strangers that I started collecting and putting out on social media, just to show people how easy it is and how many opportunities there are. I came up with three themes for starting a conversation, which add up to an acronym, QUICK.

The QU stands for “QUestions.” The single most common question I’ve used is, “Whatcha doing?” For example, I saw a man who looked like he was taking a picture of a fence, and I asked, “Whatcha doing?” I saw a group of people in a park huddled over a piece of equipment they were fiddling with and asked, “Whatcha doing?” Coming from a place of curiosity, right?

But you could see someone with binoculars and ask, “What are you hoping to see today?” Or ask someone if there’s a story behind their tattoo. There are all sorts of different questions you can ask.

The IC stands for “In Common.” It’s why we talk about the weather so much, because that’s something we have in common. Other than that, I might talk to people if I’m at the theater, asking why they chose to come to this show and what other things they’ve seen. You can bring people’s attention to your shared environment. I love dogs; so, I’ll say to a stranger, “Did you see those dogs? They’re having such a good time.”

K stands for “Kindness.” That could be giving someone a compliment, but it could also be offering someone directions or offering someone a seat or your company.

There are lots of different ways to do this and probably more opportunities than people realize. We’re just not noticing them as much as we could. One of the first studies I did was at a coffee shop. When you go in and you buy your coffee, there’s a certain amount of time that it’s going to take to prepare your order. And, during that little window, you can either just be on your phone, not paying attention, or you can have a little chat with the cashier or the barista. It makes a difference to have that little chat, and it doesn’t take any more time. You’re still waiting for that coffee one way or the other.

JS: Why do you think conversing with strangers is so important?

GS: I like to think that when you have a conversation with a stranger, you’re spreading kindness. You have the benefits to yourself, but the person you’re talking to enjoys all those same benefits. When you have a conversation, it puts you both in a better mood; it helps you both feel more connected; it helps you both feel seen. It helps us feel like we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.

I was part of a big public science project at the University of Sussex called “The Kindness Test.” Sixty thousand people filled in our survey about the most recent time someone was kind to them, and about 10% said that their most recent act of kindness had come from a stranger. When we asked people what someone did for them, it included things like, “They stopped and had a chat,” or “They said hello,” or “They gave me a compliment,” or “They asked how I was doing.” Those little things are seen as acts of kindness. They can build this sense of trust in other people, this sense that other people are OK.

In a world that feels increasingly isolating, talking to strangers is a small thing that any of us can do to feel more connected and to put something positive out there.

In that book, Steele introduced the concept of stereotype threat—the idea that people can underperform when they fear confirming a negative stereotype about their group. The research helped explain disparities in academic testing, workplace performance, and many other settings.

Steele is a social psychologist and professor emeritus at Stanford University (and a former executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Berkeley). Over the past three decades, his work has influenced fields ranging from education to organizational leadership.

His new book, Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How to Overcome It, serves as a kind of sequel to Whistling Vivaldi. While stereotype threat focuses on how stereotypes affect individual performance, Churn explores the broader tension that can arise when people from different backgrounds interact in situations that matter.

When the Commonwealth Club World Affairs, in San Francisco, invited me to interview Steele about the book, I jumped at the opportunity. Our conversation explored how identity, anxiety, and trust shape interactions in classrooms, workplaces, and everyday life. What follows is an edited version of that on-stage discussion.

Jeremy Adam Smith: Before we talk about your new book, I want to start with Whistling Vivaldi, which came out back in 2010.

Claude Steele: That book described the research journey that led me and my colleagues—Steve Spencer, Josh Aronson, and others—to the concept of stereotype threat.

That’s when someone faces a negative stereotype about one of their identities—such as race, age, or religion—in a situation that matters to them, like a job interview or a test. In those moments, the possibility of being judged through the lens of that stereotype can be distracting and upsetting. It interferes with your ability to perform in the moment. And if you expect to encounter that pressure repeatedly in a particular environment—say, a profession or a field of study—you might decide not to participate at all.

The research became widely known because it showed that stereotype threat could affect something as important as standardized test performance. For example, a highly motivated African American student taking a difficult exam might experience normal frustration and start wondering, Am I confirming that stereotype about my group? Will others see my performance that way? That extra pressure can undermine performance.

Over the years, researchers have seen this dynamic in many contexts—athletic performance, negotiations, academic settings, and more.

Eventually, I began to think people were missing the broader significance of the idea. The same kind of tension often appears in interactions between people of different identities. In diverse settings, people may worry about being seen through negative stereotypes. That concern can make them hyper-aware of how they’re behaving, what they’re saying, and how they’re being interpreted.

JAS: You’ve compared that experience to multitasking. A person under stereotype threat is juggling extra mental tasks while everyone else can focus on the main activity.

CS: Exactly. If I’m in a group composed entirely of people like me—say, a group of older men—I don’t feel much anxiety about ageist stereotypes. But if younger people join the group, I might start wondering: Do they think I have outdated ideas? Do they assume I’m not technologically savvy? I know what the stereotypes of older men are…and that I could be judged in terms of them.

Diversity brings us together with people of different identities. When that happens, we lose the security that we won’t be judged by outgroup stereotypes. That worry is experienced as tension. 

JAS: Your new book introduces the concept of “churn.” What does that mean?

CS: “Churn” is my term for exactly the tension I just described. To illustrate, let’s begin by imagining a seventh-grade parent-teacher conference. The parents and student are African American; the teacher is white.

The parents know the stereotypes about African Americans, about their intellectual abilities, about their aggressiveness, etc. So on the way to the meeting, they may worry: Will the teacher see our child’s real potential? Will ordinary mistakes be interpreted as signs of aggression or lack of ability?

As they walk into the meeting then, they’re in a state of churn—a kind of vigilant anxiety about how their and their son’s identity will shape their experience in the meeting and their son’s experience in the school.

Meanwhile, the teacher has her own form of stereotype threat. She knows the stereotypes about her racial identity. She may be deeply committed to fairness but nonetheless worried that anything she says—even constructive criticism—could be interpreted as racism.

Both parties enter this conversation in that state of tension I am calling churn—an agitated concern about how their identities will affect how they are judged and treated (and for the African American parents, how their son’s identity will affect his experience in the school). Both parties wonder: Will I be judged and treated fairly in this meeting? Is there some way I should behave, or not behave, to ensure this? Will I be given the benefit of the doubt? Etc.

Most approaches to diversity stress the need to reduce intergroup prejudices—something I heartedly endorse. But churn is different. It affects the prejudiced and non-prejudiced alike—arising as it does not from prejudice per se, but from the identity threat that all parties in a diverse setting can feel.

Churn is a form of social anxiety tied to identity.

JAS: And you argue that churn shows up especially in important situations.

CS: Yes. In low-stakes settings—riding the subway, sitting in a crowd—it usually isn’t a factor.

But when the stakes are high, the threat of being negatively stereotyped increases. That’s when churn becomes more powerful.

Churn isn’t inherently bad. It is simply the effort to cope with identity threat in a situation. It reflects the existence of that threat—and that the person can’t yet trust the situation enough to feel safe from it.

JAS: Another way of putting it might be that churn prevents people from entering a state of flow, where they’re fully immersed in the task.

CS: Exactly. Let me describe an experiment that illustrates this.

My colleagues and I asked white and Black Stanford students to write an essay about their favorite teacher. We told them that strong essays might be published in a campus magazine. Two days later, they returned to receive feedback from a white evaluator.

When feedback was delivered in a straightforward way—or preceded by generic praise—white students trusted it. But Black students trusted it much less.

Why? Because they couldn’t be sure whether the criticism reflected the essay itself or stereotypes about their group’s abilities.

But when the evaluator said, “I’m applying high standards to these essays, and I believe you can meet those standards,” Black students’ trust changed dramatically. They trusted that feedback more than anyone else and were far more likely to revise their essays using it.

Why did that work? Because it signaled clearly: I’m not judging you through those stereotypes of your group. I believe in your ability.

That kind of communication builds trust—and trust is the antidote to churn.

JAS: So how do individuals build that trust?

CS: At the individual level, it often comes down to conveying that you see someone’s full humanity.

There’s a term in the research literature—“wise.” It originally came from an ethnography of gay communities in the 1950s. A “wise” person was someone outside the group who understood their humanity and didn’t reduce them to stereotypes.

When people feel that recognition, they begin to trust you. Often the simplest way to show that is through genuine curiosity—listening, asking questions, taking an interest in someone’s experience.

JAS: So curiosity helps create trust.

CS: Yes. When you feel churn, it can be a signal to adopt a learning mindset. Instead of defending oneself, or retreating, ask questions. Be polite. But be curious. People can sense genuine interest, and that can transform the interaction.

JAS: Some people might say that sounds like a lot of work.

CS: Remember, I’m talking about important settings in our lives—classrooms, workplaces, boardrooms, athletic teams, and so on. In those places, showing respect and interest in others can be far less work than dealing with the consequences of not doing these things.

Moreover, in these settings, I think many people really want to have ways of reducing churn and feeling more comfortable with and connected to others across identity divides. The chief mission of this book is to give people concrete ways of doing that, of feeling more comfortable in diverse settings, and better able to enjoy their great benefits.

JAS: Let’s talk about how power differences might affect churn and trust.

CS: Sure. I think it’s a lot to expect the groups that have historically been the most disempowered to be the first to trust. That’s a big ask.

And in the current divisive era—when we have leaders who don’t even bother with dog whistles in preference for openly racist messaging—it becomes even harder. For African Americans, for example, but for other groups, too, this kind of behavior and rhetoric makes it difficult to trust that their full humanity is appreciated or even recognized.

I don’t want to diminish that troubling reality in any way. But I don’t want to lose hope either. I still have to get up every day and go to work, and so does everyone else. So the question becomes: What do we do in our everyday lives?

That’s really what this book is about. It’s not about somehow directly fixing the political climate, for example. It’s about what we can do within the diverse settings and relationships in which we actually live our lives, to feel more comfortable and able to engage the riches that our differences can offer us. That’s what motivated me to write the book.

JAS: Do you experience churn? When?

CS: Of course. I’m older, and I work in a world full of young people. Sometimes the question is, “Does he even know how to use a computer?” There are moments like that.

JAS: One of the things I appreciated about the book is that it really made me reflect on my own experiences with churn. As I read it, I found myself developing a sort of taxonomy of churn in my own life. Some of it was trivial, some of it more significant—but I realized I hadn’t thought about it very consciously before. It feels like you’ve put your finger on something we all live with.

CS: I’m glad to hear that. In many ways, this is the American experiment. We’re trying to build a democracy that integrates people from many different backgrounds. That’s inherently challenging.

JAS: There’s something a little neurotic about it. From the outside, people sometimes look at the United States and think, “You people are obsessed with diversity”—and they have a point. Many Americans want a very diverse society, but at the same time we’re afraid of what that diversity means, and we must fight against feeling threatened by people who are different from us. Those two impulses are constantly in tension within the American mind. And the truth is, as a people, we seem to want two contradictory things at once. We want the comfort of sameness and we want the vitality offered by living with many different kinds of people. I think that’s part of what’s going on right now in the United States.

CS: Exactly. And that’s why I keep emphasizing the importance of focusing on the worlds we actually inhabit—the classrooms we teach in, the workplaces we’re part of, the systems of hiring and promotion we help shape.

When you talk only about the larger society, the conversation can start to feel abstract or utopian. But when you focus on concrete settings, that’s where real progress can happen. That’s where the strategies I talk about—practical forms of wisdom about trust—can actually make a difference.

The United States made a legal commitment to a multiracial, multiethnic democracy in the 1960s when we dismantled the laws that upheld segregation. When I was a child, the system was so rigid it could fairly be called apartheid. Legally, we changed that—one of our society’s greatest achievements. Now the challenge is making equality of opportunity real in everyday life.

And that happens in relationships—through the small things people do that make it easier to trust each other and work together. Some of the examples I describe in the book involve university programs that created conditions where students could genuinely trust their institutions. In those environments, diversity became a treasured feature of their experience, not a problem.

One reason I’m hopeful is that building trust may actually be more manageable than trying to directly eliminate prejudice. Changing someone’s beliefs is incredibly hard. As a social psychologist, I know how difficult that is.

But trust is different. Many of us have done that in our lives. We have fairly good intuitions about how to do it and what’s required. And then, as the trust between us builds, our attitudes and beliefs begin to change naturally. Prejudices start to loosen their grip when there’s a genuine human connection.

JAS: It also seems like there’s an ask here—especially for white people—to try to be trustworthy.

CS: Right. And to understand that the issue isn’t all personal—it’s largely historical. The question is: Can I trust you? Do I carry the memory of the past into this interaction, or can I begin to set it aside with you?

When trust starts to form, the door opens to a very different kind of relationship.

JAS: Whistling Vivaldi spurred years of research about stereotype threat. What would you like to see researchers study about churn?

CS: I’d love to see research testing whether a focus on building trust is an effective way of reducing prejudice. I’ve suspected this for a long time now. It could be the focus of a whole research program.

My intuition is that trust-building has been an under-appreciated factor in bridging identity differences. I heard colleagues say, “I explained everything clearly to my students—why don’t they listen?” But if the students are wary about trusting you, information alone won’t help. If we really talk to them and listen, we may see, as in the experiment I mentioned above, that they are in a situation that makes trust difficult. Before they can fully absorb the information we’re trying to pass on, they need some evidence or signal that their full humanity is appreciated—that they’re not being reduced to those stereotypes that they know exist, and that they know you know.

Once a foundation of trust is there, the road to learning becomes easier. My hope is that this book encourages researchers, and the rest of us as well, to explore that road more seriously in the settings where we live our lives.

While popular culture may lead you to believe that love and sex addictions are not only accepted conditions but also quite prevalent—think Frank in season 3 of White Lotus; Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest memoir All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation; and pretty much any cultural analysis of the actions of Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw around Mr. Big—the scientific understanding of problematic behaviors related to love and sex is far more nuanced.

Researchers and clinicians hesitate to characterize obsessive love or serial, overly consuming relationships as love addiction, for fear of feeding misinformation or encouraging people to adopt untested treatment regimes. And consider the many varying characteristics. Think about the intensity of your first crush or your devastation after ending it with your three-month situationship. Sure, you might have demonstrated some very concerning behaviors, but would it be fair to call it an addiction? A 2025 systematic review of research noted the growing interest in understanding love addiction and found a significant relationship between love addiction and attachment styles, concluding that a broader lens than addiction is needed to understand and treat harmful relationship behaviors.

Sex addiction, on the other hand, has gained more traction in the scientific community, particularly in the last decade, although clinicians still urge caution as the field comes to consensus. The term itself, along with hypersexual disorder, was denied inclusion in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), when the American Psychiatric Association published an update in 2013. But in 2019, a closely related diagnosis—Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD)—was formally recognized in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), which the World Health Organization publishes.

Compulsive sexual behaviors can cause very real distress, change brain pathways, and disrupt people’s entire lives, just as with behavioral disorders such as gambling and harmful Internet use. While many addictive behaviors can be addressed through abstinence, sex and love are important parts of many people’s healthy and fulfilling experiences of life, making recovery more complex than simply achieving sobriety. Individuals struggling to manage unhealthy behaviors must find a way to reintegrate love, intimacy, and sex into their lives without triggering the addiction cycle.

So as researchers work to gain clarity on how sex addiction fits into existing addiction frameworks, clinicians continue to work with clients to build their self-regulation skills, reduce harm, and support healthy intimacy. Seeking to understand harmful sexual behaviors encompasses addiction medicine, behavioral disorders, and a range of treatment options, including psychological, biological, and social. Ultimately, both diagnosis and treatment of sex addiction are complicated because of the unique role that sex and sexuality play in our lives, our deep need for connection to others, and our evolving understanding of sexuality. Whereas in a prior generation, you’d be pathologized simply for having multiple sexual partners, in modern times we understand polyamory, for example, as one expression of the vast range of normal sexual behavior and relationships.

“In reality, people vary widely in desire and behavior,” explains Kerry McCarthy, a Denver, Colorado-based licensed mental health counselor, who warns against labeling “frequent masturbation, pornography use, or diverse sexual interests as unhealthy. . . . Those differences aren’t inherently problematic.”

What is addiction?

Addiction is understood as a “treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences,” according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. In addiction, normal drives and desires become harmful, changing a person’s brain so they lose control of their behaviors, explains Margaret Jarvis, psychiatrist and chief of addiction services at Geisinger Addiction Medicine in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.

“They are pushed . . . by the disease to do things that really are contrary to their own values, contrary to their own interests,” Jarvis says. “It becomes very, very hard for that person to use their brains to do other things, to plan other activities, to engage in other work.”

Researchers first described addiction in the context of substance use, with early 20th century medical and psychological research focusing on behaviors of compulsion and loss of control in relation to alcohol and drugs. In 1960, physiologist and addiction researcher E. M. Jellinek framed alcoholism as a disease with identifiable stages—pre-alcoholic, early, middle, and chronic—marking a shift to viewing chronic substance abuse as a medical condition rather than a moral failure.

In subsequent decades, psychologists including William R. Miller and Mark Griffiths expanded the understanding of addiction to include behaviors such as gambling, overeating, and sexual acts. Griffiths characterized addiction with shared components of salience, tolerance, withdrawal, mood modification, conflict, and relapse. That means the substance or behavior becomes increasingly important, requires escalating intensity to achieve similar effects, causes distress when stopped, alters emotional states, causes interpersonal or functional conflict, and persists despite attempts to abstain, respectively.

Today, the DSM-5 identifies substance use disorder through patterns of impaired control, physical dependence, social problems, and risky use. People diagnosed with the disorder often struggle to cut back or stop using the substance, require ever-higher doses, and continue using it despite negative repercussions in their life or to their health. This diagnosis is made via an 11-question yes-or-no checklist that assesses the prevalence of these symptoms in a patient for the past 12 months. Two or more “yes” answers point to a possible substance use disorder. It’s then up to the clinician to assess the severity. About 48.5 million Americans received a diagnosis of substance use disorder in 2023, according to the United States National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

The one behavioral disorder that is included in the DSM-5—gambling disorder—follows the framework of substance use disorder. However, tolerance and withdrawal are not included. This is because you don’t develop a tolerance to gambling, just as you don’t necessarily display withdrawal symptoms when you stop. Bottom line: Addictive behaviors are not going to impact your brain in the way alcohol or drugs do.

In the 1980s, psychologist Patrick Carnes was among the first to conceive of sex addiction as a behavioral disorder, describing it as a pathological relationship to sex. He defined sex addiction as a person persistently failing to control a specific sexual behavior, continuing that behavior in spite of its harmful consequences, giving up other activities, and distress if unable to engage in sex. He described this specifically in relation to marriages, and the harmful effects of sex addiction on spouses and family.  Carnes and his colleagues urged caution in diagnosing sexual addiction based on frequency of sex, promiscuity, or novel expressions of sexuality, because of the range of normal human behavior.

Only in the most recent 15 or 20 years have researchers begun to understand behavioral addictions, Jarvis says. “The evidence base for substance addictions is really still pretty poor compared to cardiology, cancer treatment, etc. We just don’t have the volume and the depth of research that helps guide clinical decision making,” she says.

How love and sex addiction fit in

The claim of love addiction crops up in pop culture more than in research. Gilbert’s memoir follows her relationship with Rayya Elias, a woman who suffered from drug and alcohol addiction. After Elias develops pancreatic cancer, Gilbert uproots her entire life to take care of her, resulting in compulsive behaviors, codependence, and grief—symptoms she compares to Elias’s substance use addiction.

Science and research have yet to define the contours of love addiction, although the 2025 systematic review noted growing interest in the most recent six years. The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 15 studies with 3,628 participants and found a positive correlation between love addiction and anxious attachment, as well as a negative correlation between love addiction and avoidant attachment. They concluded that it would be too narrow to view problematic behavior around love solely through the addiction lens. By including frameworks and therapies from the attachment literature, clinicians might more effectively diagnose and treat addictive behaviors around love, they suggest.

People with personality disorders might appear to be addicted to love because they passionately fall into new relationships, only to disrupt them or end them abruptly, says Michigan-based therapist Taryn Sinclaire. But actually, that’s part of the unhealthy attachment pattern characteristic of a number of personality disorders, which Sinclaire treats. “I frequently see clients who are swept away at the beginning of a relationship only to end up chasing this initial high for the rest of the relationship, or rapidly devaluing the partner and moving on to someone new in order to feel this yet again,” she says.

University of Nevada associate professor and clinical psychologist Shane Kraus published research that informed the diagnostic criteria for CSBD. His work found that compulsive sexual behavior mirrors addiction in key ways: impaired control, continued engagement in spite of negative consequences, and the development of hard-to-break patterns.

“If you do a behavior over and over and over, your brain will form patterns and habits, and some of those can become compulsive or problematic, and that’s what happens with gambling,” he says. “Same thing for sex. Originally, it’s fun, you’re enjoying it, but now you’re having sex when you don’t want to. You’re having sex when you’re stressed.”

To be sure, high levels of sexual activity alone don’t qualify as problematic. A 2018 paper Kraus coauthored for World Psychiatry states: “Individuals with high levels of sexual interest and behaviour (e.g., due to a high sex drive) who do not exhibit impaired control over their sexual behaviour and significant distress or impairment in functioning should not be diagnosed with compulsive sexual behaviour disorder. The diagnosis should also not be assigned to describe high levels of sexual interest and behaviour (e.g., masturbation) that are common among adolescents, even when this is associated with distress.”

Kraus helped create the 19-item CSBD scale that clinicians now use to diagnose the disorder. Rather than answer yes-or-no questions, patients assess statements based on how much they agree with them (totally disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, totally agree). Scoring 50 or more points indicates a high risk of CSBD. Like substance abuse disorder, it’s up to the clinician to diagnose.

“In real clinical work, people rarely present exactly as diagnostic manuals describe, and diagnoses always need to be understood in context,” says Martha Koo, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer at Your Behavioral Health, a clinic in Torrance, California. “Loss of control, failure to change on one’s own, and functional impairment are important to arrive at a diagnosis and determine the need for treatment.”

A scientific review committee convened by the International Society for Sexual Medicine in 2024 concluded that clinical expertise is crucial to differentiate “out-of-control sexual behaviors,” understand their impact on mental and sexual well-being, and refine best practices in care and treatment. “Treatment centers have profited from it being labeled an ‘addiction,’ and current social media, periodicals, and online self-help forums have provided a venue for an enormous spread of misinformation,” the committee wrote. “Evidence-based, sexual medicine–informed therapies should be offered to achieve a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences.”

Treatment

Treatment for compulsive sexual behavior focuses on working with patients to reduce distress, create coping mechanisms around problematic sexual urges, and find a way back to healthy intimacy that aligns with a patient’s own values.

Clinicians support patients in learning to regulate their problematic sexual behaviors. For some, this means a temporary break from certain sexual behaviors to help clients interrupt compulsive patterns. Melissa Febos, in her memoir The Dry Season, writes about voluntarily abstaining from sex and romantic attachment after a breakup because she believed it would be a way to reconnect with her own desires and intimacy. Similarly, Jessica Steinman, a Los Angeles–based certified sex addiction therapist, recommends short-term abstinence from behaviors such as dating apps, masturbation, hookups, or sex altogether, paired with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

“Abstaining from sexual acting-out behaviors can help reset those pathways and allow the brain to rewire, which takes time,” Steinman explains. This approach draws from research that shows that compulsive sexual behaviors are reinforced through repeated exposure and habit formation. Some clinicians, like Steinman, use abstinence as a way to reduce reinforcement—though studies measuring the effectiveness of this method are still sparse.

Other clinicians focus more on helping clients regulate behavior while still engaging in sexual expression. “The goal is not abstinence but helping clients manage urges, reduce problematic patterns, and engage in healthy sexual and relational experiences,” says Denver counselor McCarthy.

Michigan therapist Sinclaire finds that clients using regulation strategies may fare better than those pursuing strict abstinence, especially when their sexual behaviors are otherwise healthy and consensual. This may involve identifying triggers, planning for relapse, and setting personal boundaries. The main goal is to reduce harm related to these sexual behaviors.

Koo emphasizes that compulsive sexual behavior resembles other addictions in the way repetitive behaviors can dominate a person’s life. “All addictions, whether involving substances or behaviors, are most effectively treated when treatment includes psychological, social, and biological interventions,” Koo says.

Psychological interventions include CBT, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and narrative therapy, while social interventions include 12-step programs and academic or occupational support to help patients advance their careers, which may have been disrupted by a pattern of sexual acting out. Biological interventions vary depending on the severity of the behaviors and whatever mental health comorbidities exist. Some patients grappling with CSBD may consider medications for depression, anxiety, or insomnia.

“There is not one cookie-cutter combination of bio-psycho-social interventions I would recommend. Rather, it is important to understand that an eclectic, comprehensive treatment approach that addresses the individual’s needs in all three of these areas leads to best outcomes,” she said.

Research suggests that treatment for compulsive sexual behaviors can be effective. A systematic review of 24 studies found moderate to large reductions in symptom severity—particularly with CBT, though much of this work focuses on problematic pornography use. In a randomized controlled trial of group CBT for men with hypersexual disorder, researchers observed significant drops in compulsive behavior and psychiatric distress that persisted over time. In hypersexual disorder, an individual loses control over sexual behaviors, leading to distress and negative impacts on key life areas.

If you’re concerned about your own or a loved one’s sexual behavior, it’s worth taking a step back. Are you worried because the behavior challenges social norms—or because it has truly become disruptive, consuming, or uncontrollable? Care should focus on helping you regain control, not labels.

“What you do, what kind of sex you have, and how you sexually express yourself, is important,” Kraus says. “For engaging in something that doesn’t make you feel good about yourself, how do we shift you to do something that makes you align with your values?”

The Purpose Award: The Alabama Solution

This heart-rending documentary (directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman) brings us deep into Alabama’s prison system, primarily as seen through the eyes of inmates. Their contraband phone footage documents horrendous conditions and violent abuse by prison guards. As prisoners and family members struggle to make the state accountable for violations and create a more just situation, they run headlong into discriminatory biases.

Early in his novel, Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens writes that “[l]ike a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside.” It’s impossible to not agonize in such imposed darkness. But as we see in The Alabama Solution, the men find their own light, in solidarity, knowledge, and purpose in fighting for civil and human rights. It’s humbling to see these men, suffering and even in solitary confinement, keep kindling hope and inspiration for one another.

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl argued that our primary drive is in finding purpose, even in the most extreme circumstances—and subsequent research has found that purpose is crucial to survival.

Sometimes, that purpose can be self-improvement and education. As it turns out, the most successful rehabilitation program is earning a college degree while incarcerated. But inmates also find purpose in trying to transform the prison system. We have alternatives to the ways we currently see and treat people accused of breaking the law—and choosing those alternatives would require us to include their well-being as part of our societal purpose. — Ravi Chandra

The-Art-of-Surrender Award: Come See Me in the Good Light

Once upon a time, two poets fell for each other on a dance floor in Oakland, CA.

Andrea Gibson was the James Dean of spoken-word poetry, and Megan Falley was the scene’s red-lipped, intellectual pinup. Andrea eventually asked Meg to come live with her in Colorado. As relationships often do, theirs got rocky–and then, when they were on the verge of a breakup, Andrea was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Come See Me in the Good Light documents the joys and struggles of life with Andrea’s cancer. These days, big studios and streamers are not forking over millions to make documentaries about queer poets navigating cancer treatment. Come See Me in the Good Light got made because a bunch of Andrea and Meg’s friends signed on as Executive Producers, assembling the considerable requisite finances and relationships.

Together they made a subtly instructive guide to the art of surrender. Throughout the film, Andrea and Meg show us how honing a creative practice trains us to accept life on life’s terms. To feel it all. To let other people be part of it. Andrea and Meg share how they used poetry to survive suicidality and the torment of anti-fatness. We watch them use their creative skills to stay present and feeling in the face of bad news, dance parties, and a comically dysfunctional mailbox.

This sacred collaboration between Andrea, Meg, and their friends proves that all art-making can equip us to surrender to mortality and stay alive, all the way to the end. — Kelly Rafferty

The Extraordinary Courage Award: Homebound

Homebound is the story of two childhood friends who face the harsh realities of life in a small village in North India with remarkable courage and unwavering friendship. Shoaib, a Muslim, and Chandan, a Dalit (among the most oppressed castes, once considered “untouchable” by society) are both exhausted by their daily encounters with caste and religious discrimination. They try to join the police force because it appears to be their only path to the dignity they have never known.

But life has other plans, as a broken examination system and the sudden COVID-19 lockdown bring their dreams to a halt.

Inspired by a 2020 New York Times article by Basharat Peer, the film reflects the struggles of millions of migrant workers in India who were devastated by the nationwide lockdown. Work had disappeared overnight. Many had no means of remaining in the cities, and transportation home was nonexistent. With no options left, many began walking back to their distant villages, braving the blazing summer heat on foot, much like Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa). As the story unfolds, we witness up close the painful uncertainty of finding one’s way back home amid a global pandemic.

What makes Homebound so powerful is the many forms of courage it reveals: the courage to dream big despite overwhelming obstacles; loyalty to one another across social divides; the willingness to leave the familiarity of the village to build a life in an unfamiliar city; the bravery to risk everything to return home with only the slimmest hope of safety; the strength to endure a journey few of us can imagine; and the resolve to embrace one’s social identity and shed guilt and shame that were never theirs to carry. Even as the journey takes an unimaginable toll, they continue on their path, one step at a time. — Aakash A. Chowkase

The Embrace-Your-Demons Award: KPop Demon Hunters

Superstar singing group by day, demon hunters by night—this is the double life of the KPop trio HUNTR/X. Generations of women have occupied these roles, using their singing voices to fight demons who prey on human souls. Now, it’s Rumi, Mira, and Zoey’s turn to carry this legacy.

When a new boy band, the Saja Boys, hits the scene, HUNTR/X realizes they are more than just cute competition…they’re actually demons, and stealing the souls of the HUNTR/X fans!

Thus begins a battle between good and evil, both on-stage and off. But another battle is coming to a head. You see, Rumi has a secret… one that could change everything. Keeping this secret strains her relationships with her friends, her fans, and (most of all) herself.

As the members of HUNTR/X continue their quest to take down the Saja Boys, Rumi’s internal conflict also comes to a head. Anxiety and shame cause her to lose her voice. She self-isolates from her friends, who become increasingly worried.

We see that hiding the messy parts of yourself works…until it doesn’t. Eventually, you break. And, like Rumi, you have to decide if you will embrace all of those broken parts or let them stay a mess. The ultimate message? Accepting yourself, demons and all, is how we thrive. – Mariah J. Flynn

The Ordinary Courage Award: The Librarians

“I never imagined what’s happening right now could ever happen,” says an anonymous librarian at the start of The Librarians, directed by Kim A. Snyder. “We just never imagined we would be at the forefront. We’re not necessarily supposed to be seen and felt. We’re stewards of the space, stewards of the resources.”

This documentary follows public and school librarians in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and other states as they battle in a quietly principled way against MAGA-fueled book bans and other forms of censorship. The books targeted include histories of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and desegregation, as well as any book about gender and sexuality.

I watched The Librarians with my partner Michelle, who is a public librarian. To her, book bans are just one front of the assault on libraries, which are facing profound budget cuts at just the moment when they’re besieged by every social problem facing American society. Every day, librarians encounter patrons with serious mental illness, children and the elderly needing social services, immigrants trying to navigate an overly complex system, unemployed people seeking jobs who have no computers at home, and much more.

“Going into this field is like getting into any relationship: you never know how fierce you’re going to have to be,” she told me afterward. “I have a ton of respect for the commitment of so many of my colleagues. And just as much respect for the ones who have had to walk away from the abuse to retain their health and their sanity.” I have a feeling many teachers, doctors, nurses, and journalists would say the same thing.

The Librarians ultimately becomes a chilling portrait of the rise of fascism in America—but the most important thing about this documentary is that it shows how many ordinary women (and some men) are being drawn into a struggle they never expected and would never have chosen. Their ordinary courage is an example that many of us may need to follow in the coming years. — Jeremy Adam Smith

The Connectedness Award: Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

Have you ever felt that you were the center of the world? Little Amélie or the Character of Rain explores that feeling through the life of Amélie, following her from infancy through childhood, and tracing the inner life of a child who experiences the world with overwhelming intensity.

Directed by Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han and based on a novel by Amélie Nothomb, it’s a portrait of what it feels like to be a child–not the sentimentalized version, but the real thing, in which one is the absolute center of the universe and hasn’t yet learned otherwise.

I watched this movie with my kids and I felt kind of like a kid watching it, growing at an accelerated pace through the phases of childhood.

Amélie says, “When you are three, you see everything, and understand nothing.” It’s a lot to carry alone. And when her first taste of white chocolate welcomes the divinity of momentary self-annihilation, it’s powerful. And so are the first experiences of life: one’s first time being seen, the visceral, vibrant colors of spring; the wonder of animals, books, a spinning top, deciphering your name and what you might become.

For much of the film, Amélie experiences herself as godlike and refers to herself as God. And aren’t we all God at some point in our childhood–full of power, possibility, the absolute center of everything else? It’s a terrific, terrible feeling–and it’s linked to loneliness, anxiety, and depression. As Amélie weathers beauty, grief, love, and loss, she learns that she is not the center of the world–and that our connection with others is what gives life meaning. — Lauren Lee

The Prosocial Deception Award: Rental Family

Rental Family is about a small company in Japan that creates artificial family situations in service of various emotional or practical agendas. If that sounds weird to you, then you stand to learn a lot from this story.

“We sell emotion,” explains the boss, Shinji Tada (Takehiro Hira). “We play roles in clients’ lives. Parents, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends. And help them connect to what’s missing.” He adds: “Mental health issues are stigmatized in the country. So people have to turn to other things, like us.”

Shinji is trying to recruit struggling actor Phillip Vandarpleog (Brendan Fraser) to be the “token white guy” on the team. After Phillip accepts the job, one woman hires him to serve as an affluent white dad so that her biracial, “illegitimate” daughter can get into a good school. As Phillip and the child develop a connection, the storyline goes to a heartbreaking place—and raises questions about the morality of what they’re doing.

Indeed, as the story progresses, the characters make mistakes as well as some pretty unethical decisions. But what’s most interesting is how Rental Family leads us to accept that it’s sometimes necessary to lie to ourselves or others in order to achieve happiness. And at the same time, the movie shows that lies can have serious consequences. Rental Family doesn’t try to resolve that contradiction; it just allows us to see that it exists.

The question at the heart of the story is: How do we tell the difference between lies that are selfish and antisocial—and deception that is prosocial and kind? As the characters struggle for answers, Rental Family asks the audience to find their own. — Jeremy Adam Smith

The Melancholy Love Award: The Secret Agent

Kleber Mendonça Filho is Brazil’s leading filmmaker, and his latest work, The Secret Agent, is a nominee for this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture.

The film is primarily set in 1977 Brazil, a time of “great mischief,” as the film tells us, defined by corruption, state-sponsored violence, and dictatorship. Armando, brilliantly portrayed by Best Actor nominee Wagner Moura, is a research scientist with a big soul and warm heart.

At the beginning of the film, he’s also on the run from assassins, for reasons we only later learn. Marcelo’s son is tellingly obsessed with the poster for 1977’s hit film Jaws, in which a giant shark courses upward from the depths toward an unsuspecting swimmer. The poster represents the reality and the fear of violence that surrounds this family.

One of my favorite scenes comes early in the film, where he meets the residents of a house run by Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), a wise, generous 77-year old who has seen it all. As she takes him under her wing, Armando adopts the name Marcelo to live under a false identity.

Even in the stress of the situation, Marcelo still greets every individual as precious, emphasizing the loving, almost doting quality of Brazilian culture, one mixed with saudade, the Portuguese word for tragic melancholy, longing, and also acceptance.

Through many twists and turns, The Secret Agent reveals the real secret agent that anchors all our lives: love, which can bring ripening, rest, safety, and healing. This film will leave you determined to love every person through difficult times. — Ravi Chandra

The Greater Goodness Award: Superman

Over the past quarter century, it’s been something of a trend to turn Superman into yet another violent, grim, dark superhero. When Superman battles General Zod over Metropolis in the 2013 movie Man of Steel, thousands are killed—and Superman ultimately murders his enemy.

To me, that’s not what superheroes are supposed to be about. These are fantasies about people with power being good; these stories are ideals of how people with power in real life are supposed to behave. If you turn Superman into Donald Trump (as they did with Homelander in the Prime TV series The Boys) then you’re reflecting the real world, and you should be entering the savage land of satire.

There’s nothing satirical about the 2025 Superman movie, written and directed by James Gunn. It’s just sincere, good-hearted, silly fun.

Exhibit A: In the movie, Superman (David Corenswet) saves a squirrel from sure destruction. I’ve read that Gunn got pushback on that scene from test audiences and he kept it anyway—and he was right to do so, because it really draws a line of demarcation between his Superman and recent iterations of the character. Yeah, it’s ludicrous, but more than that, it’s good. To this Superman, all life is precious.

Exhibit B: Krypto the Superdog. Every single scene with this dog who has the powers of Superman is delightful. Krypto is a GOOD DOG, and is anything better than a good dog? Reader: No, there is not.

Please don’t approach this version of the Superman myth expecting an intellectually stimulating evening. What you’ll get instead is a viscerally relatable vision of goodness that just might make you feel a little bit better about the world.

As Superman says at the film’s conclusion: “I’m as human as anyone. I love. I get scared. I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other and I try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human. And that’s my greatest strength.” — Jeremy Adam Smith

The Braver Love Award: Together

With marriage rates declining among Gen Z and millennials, you could say we’re suffering from a generational failure to commit. That’s the theme of Together, a body-horror film from Australian director Michael Shanks.

This flick stars Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie), a long-time couple who are failing to tie the knot. But when they move out to a rural community to start a new life, they happen upon a supernatural force that seems intent on bringing them together in a way that is frighteningly literal.

Together is on its surface a sometimes-grisly thriller that aims to shock its audience with imagery of two humans slowly being physically fused together. But beneath the macabre elements hides a smart and compassionate look at couples who are afraid to truly open up to each other and take the next step in their lives. 

There is perhaps no theme that animates more fictional stories than that of love. The quest to understand why and how we’re drawn to each other is eternal. From the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to the endless romantic comedies we find on streaming services, there are a million different stories to be told about why people fall in love with each other.

Together offers an unconventional look at what is perhaps the most powerful force in the world and challenges its audience to rescue themselves from aimless relationships. Taking the leap of faith into committing to a life with someone else can be scary, suggests this movie, but being too cowardly to do so can create a much more horrifying outcome. — Zaid Jilani