Relationships | Conflict

You’re Not Broken — You’re Becoming: The Human Reality of Love, Conflict, and Repair

Exploring models of human behaviour to validate conflict and venture toward connection

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I’m not a couples therapist, and I never set out to be one.

But after years of sitting with hundreds of individuals — listening to stories of heartbreak, longing, and emotional disconnection (including my own) — I started to see something.

Many of the most painful relationship patterns — the ones that loop endlessly through conflict, shutdown, or mutual blame — aren’t just about “the other person.”

They’re about something deeper.

Something older and embedded in the nervous system and in the stories we carry about what love is supposed to feel like.

Some of the most helpful maps for this work don’t come from couples therapy alone. They emerge from frameworks that integrate developmental psychology, attachment theory, trauma healing, and what couples therapist and author Terry Real calls relational living — where love isn’t just a feeling, it’s a set of skills.

One of the clearest frameworks I’ve found comes from The Quest for the Mythical Mate…