Five Essays From 2025
A reader-driven snapshot of this newsletter.
Photo by Mathyas Kurmann
Hi friends,
Here are the five essays from 2025 that drew the most readers.
Looking back, a handful of pieces clearly traveled further than the rest. These aren’t the essays I think are “best” in any objective sense, but the ones that got the most sustained attention. If you’re a new subscriber, they’re a good place to start.
If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll probably recognize the through-lines here: the difference between repair and maintenance, how partners interpret each other’s behavior, and what helps move couples from escalation back into dialogue.
Together, these five pieces give a pretty accurate picture of what I’m trying to do here: take relationship science seriously, welcome cultural tension where it shows up, and translate both into something usable for real couples.
Happy New Year!
John
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Four Marriage Killers
The Four Horsemen (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling) are classic Gottman, and I’ve been working with them for years. What seemed to resonate with readers was the recognition that poor conflict skills can reliably turn ordinary disagreements into bigger, more escalated fights.
It also ended up being the biggest onboarding post of the year, which makes me think many readers are trying to understand how to keep the car on the road, not just how to pull it out of the ditch.
He’s Not Lazy. She’s Not Crazy.
Most of the couples I work with aren’t arguing about whether the workload of a shared life should be shared; they’re stuck on why things still feel unfair even when the math looks right. What resonated with readers was the idea that fairness isn’t just about dividing tasks, but about how effort and responsibility are experienced and recognized by each partner.
It was also interesting to watch this piece travel beyond couples therapy into wider conversations about masculinity, mental load, and invisible labor.
Your Mankeeping Scorecard
Mankeeping is a provocative term, and like most provocative terms, it captures something real while flattening the dynamics into something more rigid than they usually are. What seemed to resonate was the attempt to step out of the culture war and look at how these patterns actually play out in real relationships: when they build closeness, and when they breed resentment.
The scorecard idea came from wanting a practical way to evaluate a set of behaviors without presupposing one gender was always at fault.
Six Magic Hours
Conflict is often what’s most salient to a couple starting therapy, but most of what really matters lies elsewhere, in the small, repeatable moments that build warmth and goodwill over time. What seemed to resonate here was the idea that staying connected isn’t about grand gestures, but about tending to the relationship a little each day.
It’s a reminder that a lot of relationship work happens when nothing is “wrong.”
How to Solve Unsolvable Relationship Problems
This idea is core to couples work: when you pick a partner, you pick a set of problems. This post seemed to resonate with readers who were stuck in the same fights and starting to wonder whether something was fundamentally wrong. The idea that some differences aren’t meant to be solved, but understood and accepted, can be a huge relief.
It’s often the difference between a gridlocked fight that always escalates and a productive conversation about how to adapt.