Decode the signals you've been missing.
Long-form, research-backed guides on attraction, dating, texting and body language — drawing on attachment theory, the Gottman work, and the broader literature on what actually predicts how relationships go. 29 in-depth articles.
Find out which pattern you actually run
Sixteen statements, scored on the two dimensions the research uses — and honest about what the result cannot tell you. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere.
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MindsetWhy the Honeymoon Phase Ends: What Is Measured and What Is Folklore
Satisfaction does decline, slowly for most couples. The neurochemical story everyone repeats rests on two brain scans of 34 people and one blood test.
What people show when they don't say it.
SignsSigns She Likes You: What the Evidence Actually Supports
The behaviours are real. What no study has ever found is one that tells you which kind of liking you are looking at.
SignsSigns Someone Is Falling for You: What the Research on Early Love Actually Shows
In the studies that asked, men said “I love you” first more often than women. Most famous signs measure something smaller than love, and one is a warning.
SignsFlirting or Just Being Friendly? What the Research Can Actually Tell You
The behaviours are the same. What differs is who they are aimed at, why, and what the person reading them already wants to see.
SignsSigns A New Relationship Has Real Potential
Separating the predictors with longitudinal evidence behind them from the ones that are just folklore.
First dates, situationships, and the gray zone in between.
DatingDoes Distance Make You Like Someone More? What the Evidence Says
Absence does raise how much you like someone, by withholding what would revise the estimate. At least a third of long-distance couples split after reuniting.
DatingDo Dating Apps Actually Work? What the Data Says
Now the most common way couples meet. The matching they sell is unproven, and the odds are spread far less evenly than any average suggests.
DatingThe 72-Hour Rule in Dating: Is There Anything Behind It?
One experiment has now tested the wait. The next morning won, two days lost, and nobody has ever tested three.
DatingFirst Date Mistakes: What the Research Says Actually Costs You
The standard advice is to talk less. In the one experiment that assigned strangers how much of a conversation to fill, those who spoke more were liked more.
DatingSituationship Statistics: What Has Actually Been Measured
Three surveys have counted them. The one everybody cites is not among them.
DatingModern Dating Statistics: The Numbers That Hold Up, and the Ones Nobody Publishes
Which dating numbers have a real survey under them, what each one measured, and where every one of them stops.
DatingWhy You Keep Ending Up in the Friend Zone
The evidence does not point at your looks. It points at a frame nobody named out loud, and at how reliably decent people avoid saying no.
DatingThe 3-6-9 Rule in Dating: Where It Came From and What the Research Says
Three checkpoints, three months apart, and not one study behind them. What has actually been measured about the first year says something else.
DatingQuestions That Reveal Compatibility: What Can Be Predicted, and What Cannot
The famous 36 questions were built to manufacture closeness, not to measure it. In the same paper, matching people on their opinions changed nothing.
DatingSigns You're in a Situationship: What the Research Behind Each One Says
The signs have barely been studied. What they point at has: a commitment gap that showed up in about a third of 315 unmarried couples in a national sample.
DatingUsing Your Phone on a Date: What the Evidence Actually Shows
The phone on the table is folklore. What holds up is smaller, stranger, and mostly about what the other person concluded.
What your messages quietly broadcast.
TextingHow to Get Someone to Open Up: What the Research Actually Shows
There is no phrase. There is a two-person process, one measured thing that matters more than the rest, and a fear that turns out to be wrong.
TextingTexting Habits That Quietly Push People Away
Almost every rule in this genre has never been tested. The handful of things that have been measured point somewhere else entirely.
The signals that travel below words.
Body LanguageEye Contact: What It Predicts, What It Creates, and How Long Is Too Long
The average comfortable look lasts 3.3 seconds. The famous staring study is small, and the dim room it was run in moved its numbers as much as the gaze did.
Body LanguageWhat Body Language Actually Predicts, and What It Does Not
The largest synthesis found eleven behaviours that track liking and a list of famous ones that track nothing. Three of those used to be on this page.
How the people who love well actually think.
MindsetWhy the Honeymoon Phase Ends: What Is Measured and What Is Folklore
Satisfaction does decline, slowly for most couples. The neurochemical story everyone repeats rests on two brain scans of 34 people and one blood test.
MindsetCan Attachment Styles Change? How Much Moves, How Slowly, and What Moves It
Yes, and the real version is slower than the genre promises: rank-order stability over ten adult years sits near .50, and not all movement is progress.
MindsetWhat Builds Attraction Over Time: Why Who Seems Desirable Changes With Acquaintance
Agreement about who is desirable decays as people get to know each other. Almost everything worth saying about attraction over time follows from that.
MindsetThe Habits of Couples Who Stay Together: What the Longitudinal Research Measured
Personality barely predicts who lasts. What two people do on ordinary days predicts a great deal - though less precisely than the famous numbers suggest.
MindsetLove or Anxious Attachment? How to Tell the Difference
From the inside they feel the same. They come apart in your body, in how long reassurance lasts, and in whether the intensity needs uncertainty to survive.
MindsetEmotional Maturity in a Relationship: What the Evidence Supports
Most of what gets called maturity has never been measured, and the single most repeated finding did not replicate.
MindsetSigns You Have Actually Moved On (And Signs You Have Not)
Moving on is not the absence of feeling. The research points at something more specific than that.
MindsetThe Psychology of Jealousy: The Feeling, the Behavior, and the Line Between Them
The feeling is ordinary and almost everyone has it. What a minority do with it is a different subject, and the research is clear about where the line falls.
MindsetWhy Smart People Keep Dating the Wrong People: What Is Measured, and What Is Only Repeated
Having a type is real and has been measured properly once. Almost everything usually said about why has not been measured at all.
MindsetHow to Reconnect After a Fight: What the Repair Research Shows
Research says little about how to fight well and a great deal about the hours afterwards. Most advice for those hours is untested or points the wrong way.