# Notes

The notes are grouped by chapter. Note numbers restart in each chapter and match the superscript numbers in the text.

## Chapter 1: The Event Fallacy



1. The Event Fallacy is an authorial concept developed for *The Architecture of Love*. It organises observation and neighbouring research and is not a clinical or diagnostic term.

2. The observation about Ghanaian traditional marriage ceremonies is the author's, and practice varies widely between ethnic groups, regions, faiths and families.

3. Scott M. Stanley, Galena K. Rhoades and Howard J. Markman, "Sliding Versus Deciding. Inertia and the Premarital Cohabitation Effect", Family Relations 55, no. 4 (2006), pages 499 to 509. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2006.00418.x. The paper develops the distinction through cohabitation, constraint and inertia, then proposes that the same problem may arise at other transitions.

4. Caryl E. Rusbult, "Commitment and Satisfaction in Romantic Associations. A Test of the Investment Model", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 16, no. 2 (1980), pages 172 to 186. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(80)90007-4. The model explains commitment through satisfaction, the quality of alternatives and the size of investments. The sentence "accumulation is not architecture" is the author's gloss.

5. Brian G. Ogolsky and Laura Stafford, "A Systematic Review of Relationship Maintenance. Reflecting Back and Looking to the Future", Personal Relationships 30, no. 1 (2023), pages 19 to 43. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12429. The review is neighbouring evidence on maintenance, which it describes broadly as the activities and ways of thinking that partners use to sustain or enhance a relationship. The account of maintenance in the chapter, including what partners avoid and repair, is the author's own.

6. Destination architecture, journey architecture and the Destination and Journey Canvas are authorial frameworks developed for *The Architecture of Love*. They organise observation and neighbouring research into tools for readers and are not clinical or diagnostic instruments.

## Chapter 2: The Two Votes



1. Roy F. Baumeister, Sara R. Wotman and Arlene M. Stillwell, "Unrequited Love. On Heartbreak, Anger, Guilt, Scriptlessness, and Humiliation", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, no. 3 (1993), 377 to 394. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.3.377. The study describes distress on both sides of unrequited love, including the guilt and the lack of a script that rejecters report.

2. Mark Manson, "Compatibility and Chemistry in Relationships", a popular essay with a four-cell matrix. markmanson.net/compatibility-and-chemistry. It is acknowledged here as a popular antecedent of the four-room shape, and it is not offered as scientific evidence.

3. Robert J. Sternberg, "A Triangular Theory of Love", Psychological Review 93, no. 2 (1986), 119 to 135. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.93.2.119.

4. On the feeling and belief sides of attitudes, see Stephen L. Crites Jr., Leandre R. Fabrigar and Richard E. Petty, "Measuring the Affective and Cognitive Properties of Attitudes. Conceptual and Methodological Issues", Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20, no. 6 (1994), 619 to 634. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167294206001. On automatic and stated partner evaluations, see James K. McNulty, Michael A. Olson, Andrea L. Meltzer and Matthew J. Shaffer, "Though They May Be Unaware, Newlyweds Implicitly Know Whether Their Marriage Will Be Satisfying", Science 342, no. 6162 (2013), 1119 to 1120, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1243140, and Etienne P. LeBel and Lorne Campbell, "The Interactive Role of Implicit and Explicit Partner Evaluations on Ongoing Affective and Behavioral Romantic Realities", Social Psychological and Personality Science 4, no. 2 (2013), 167 to 174, https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550612448196. Both papers measure automatic and stated evaluations of a partner separately and report that they relate to relationship outcomes differently. The chapter's wording about a split between them is the author's summary of that separation.

5. Paul W. Eastwick, Eli J. Finkel and Samantha Joel, "Mate Evaluation Theory", Psychological Review 130, no. 1 (2023), 211 to 241, https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000360, argues that desirability lives partly in the person seen and partly in the perceiver. Giulia Zoppolat and colleagues, "It's Complicated. The Good and Bad of Ambivalence in Romantic Relationships", Emotion 24, no. 5 (2024), 1190 to 1205, https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001340, report that mixed feelings can make people think harder about a relationship, for better or worse. Samantha Joel and Geoff MacDonald, "We're Not That Choosy. Emerging Evidence of a Progression Bias in Romantic Relationships", Personality and Social Psychology Review 25, no. 4 (2021), 317 to 343, https://doi.org/10.1177/10888683211025860, review evidence that people are more inclined than they imagine to advance and keep relationships rather than end them. The chapter's sentence about the Head acting as counsel for a decision momentum has already made is the author's reading of this work and is not a finding of any of these papers.

## Chapter 3: Two People, Two Readings



1. Two Plots, One Table, the Context Check, the three families of pairs, crossed advocacy, the undefined wait and the principle that whoever can see the gap owes the other the sight of it are authorial frameworks developed for *The Architecture of Love*. They organise neighbouring research on dyadic perception and interdependence into reader-facing tools and are not clinical diagnostic instruments. The position that affection practised on purpose often brings feeling back is the author's observation and is not offered as a research finding.

2. The sixteen pairs, for reference on the page. Each pair is written with the first person's position first. The matched pairs are Alignment with Alignment, Gate with Gate, and Utility with Utility. The crossed pairs are Alignment with Gate and Gate with Alignment (ready and waiting), Gate with Utility and Utility with Gate (crossed advocacy), and Alignment with Utility and Utility with Alignment (unequal desire). The closed pairs are Deadlock with Alignment, Alignment with Deadlock, Deadlock with Gate, Gate with Deadlock, Deadlock with Utility, Utility with Deadlock, and Deadlock with Deadlock. Alignment is the spoken short form of Total Alignment, and Utility of the Utility State. In the book's shorthand the four positions are Q1 (the High-Friction Gate), Q2 (Total Alignment), Q3 (the Utility State) and Q4 (Deadlock).

3. Stalking and coercive control are defined differently in different legal systems, and those definitions change. This caution reflects the general position in 2026 and names no country, because any statement that a particular jurisdiction does or does not recognise a distinct offence needs a dated official source. Readers should take advice on the law where they live. Legal review is needed for each edition.

4. Kiersten Dobson, Sarah C. E. Stanton, Rhonda N. Balzarini and Lorne Campbell, "Are You Tired of 'Us?' Accuracy and Bias in Couples' Perceptions of Relational Boredom", *Journal of Social and Personal Relationships* 40, no. 10 (2023), pages 3091 to 3120. Across three dyadic studies, partners tracked changes in each other's relational boredom while tending to overestimate its overall level. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075231168141.

5. Hasagani Tissera, Mariko L. Visserman, Emily A. Impett, Amy Muise and John E. Lydon, "Understanding the Links Between Perceiving Gratitude and Romantic Relationship Satisfaction Using an Accuracy and Bias Framework", *Social Psychological and Personality Science* 14, no. 8 (2023), pages 900 to 910. Two dyadic studies distinguished tracking accuracy, directional bias and assumed similarity in perceptions of a partner's gratitude. Tracking accuracy here means that perceivers recognised a partner's relative level of gratitude, which is separate from the average level, and which they tended to underestimate. Perceivers also tended to assume that the partner felt much as they did themselves. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221137958.

6. Tatum A. Jolink, Yen-Ping Chang and Sara B. Algoe, "Perceived Partner Responsiveness Forecasts Behavioral Intimacy as Measured by Affectionate Touch", *Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin* 48, no. 2 (2022), pages 203 to 221. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167221993349. The title names the study's primary direction, from perceived partner responsiveness to affectionate touch. Study 3 also found the reciprocal next-day path used in the chapter, in which a person's affectionate touch predicted the partner's perception of the touch-giver's responsiveness the following day. Researchers who study couples often treat the two partners as a linked pair, because studying either one alone removes the interaction the relationship is made of. The standard reference is David A. Kenny, Deborah A. Kashy and William L. Cook, *Dyadic Data Analysis* (Guilford Press, 2006). The actor-partner interdependence tradition treats the two partners' observations as statistically and relationally linked. Researchers call a two-person unit a dyad, which is all the word *dyadic* means here. For a similar carry-over from one exchange to the next in couples who take turns to support each other, see Lisanne S. Pauw and colleagues, "Spillover Effects When Taking Turns in Dyadic Coping. How Lingering Negative Affect and Perceived Partner Responsiveness Shape Subsequent Support Provision", *Frontiers in Psychology* 12 (2021), article 637534. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.637534.

7. Robert Thomson and colleagues, "Relational Mobility Predicts Social Behaviors in 39 Countries and Is Tied to Historical Farming and Threat", *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences* 115, no. 29 (2018), pages 7521 to 7526. The study links higher relational mobility with more proactive relationship behaviour, including self-disclosure and social support. Its findings describe population patterns and do not describe individuals. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1713191115. On collectivism, see Kathrine Bejanyan, Tara C. Marshall and Nelli Ferenczi, "Associations of Collectivism with Relationship Commitment, Passion, and Mate Preferences. Opposing Roles of Parental Influence and Family Allocentrism", *PLOS ONE* 10, no. 2 (2015), e0117374. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0117374. It reports opposing roles for parental influence and family allocentrism, which is why the chapter keeps a parent's control over a choice of partner apart from affection and loyalty towards family.

8. Jeffry A. Simpson and W. Steven Rholes, "Adult Attachment, Stress, and Romantic Relationships", *Current Opinion in Psychology* 13 (2017), pages 19 to 24. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4845754/.

## Chapter 4: Can This Relationship Move?



1. Arthur Aron, Christina C. Norman, Elaine N. Aron, Colin McKenna and Richard E. Heyman, "Couples' Shared Participation in Novel and Arousing Activities and Experienced Relationship Quality", *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology* 78, no. 2 (2000), 273 to 284. A questionnaire, a community survey and three laboratory experiments linked shared novel and arousing activity with improved experienced relationship quality. The finding concerns established couples in the settings studied and does not show that experiences can manufacture attraction. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.273.

2. The Standoff, the Clarity Bid and its four responses, the Freedom Test and its three checks, the decision horizon, the four moves and the Movement Experiment Canvas are authorial frameworks developed for *The Architecture of Love*. They organise neighbouring evidence into tools a reader can use, and they are not clinical instruments.

3. Geraldine Downey, Antonio L. Freitas, Benjamin Michaelis and Hala Khouri, "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Close Relationships. Rejection Sensitivity and Rejection by Romantic Partners", *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology* 75, no. 2 (1998), 545 to 560. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9731324. The reported conflict pathway was found among women in the study and should not be treated as a universal description of every person who expects rejection.

4. Beyzanur Arican-Dinc and Shelly L. Gable, "Responsiveness in Romantic Partners' Interactions", *Current Opinion in Psychology* 53 (2023), article 101652. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101652.

5. Peter K. Jonason and Norman P. Li, "Playing Hard-to-Get. Manipulating One's Perceived Availability as a Mate", *European Journal of Personality* 27, no. 5 (2013), 458 to 469, https://doi.org/10.1002/per.1881. Gurit E. Birnbaum, Kobi Zholtack and Harry T. Reis, "No Pain, No Gain. Perceived Partner Mate Value Mediates the Desire-Inducing Effect of Being Hard to Get During Online and Face-to-Face Encounters", *Journal of Social and Personal Relationships* 37, nos. 8 and 9 (2020), 2510 to 2528, https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407520927469. These studies support the limited claim that apparent unavailability can raise short-term desire in some conditions. They do not show that it builds a relationship.

6. The sentence is the author's application of the principle. For the broader account of coercive control, see Evan Stark, *Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life* (Oxford University Press, 2007). On the mental-health findings, see Susanne Lohmann, Sean Cowlishaw, Luke Ney, Meaghan O'Donnell and Kim Felmingham, "The Trauma and Mental Health Impacts of Coercive Control. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis", *Trauma, Violence, and Abuse* 25, no. 1 (2024, first published online 2023), 630 to 647. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380231162972.

7. On influence that respects the other person's freedom, see Jennifer G. La Guardia and Heather Patrick, "Self-Determination Theory as a Fundamental Theory of Close Relationships", *Canadian Psychology* 49, no. 3 (2008), 201 to 209, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012760. See also Nickola C. Overall, Garth J. O. Fletcher, Jeffry A. Simpson and Chris G. Sibley, "Regulating Partners in Intimate Relationships. The Costs and Benefits of Different Communication Strategies", *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology* 96, no. 3 (2009), 620 to 639, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012961. And see Natalie M. Sisson and colleagues, "Thank You for Changing. Gratitude Promotes Autonomous Motivation and Successful Partner Regulation", *Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin* 51, no. 11 (2025, available online 2024), 2285 to 2306, https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672241246211.

8. For the full citation to Joel and MacDonald's review of progression bias, see Chapter 2, note 5. The authors review evidence that people often favour decisions that start, advance and maintain relationships over rejection or dissolution, while noting limits in the diversity of the samples.

## Chapter 5: When No Comes Back as Maybe



1. For the full citation to Baumeister, Wotman and Stillwell's study of unrequited love, see Chapter 2, note 1.

2. Access without advocacy, the Maybe Test and its common shapes of return, the responsible end to pursuit, counter-authorship and responsive selectivity are authorial frameworks developed for *The Architecture of Love*. They organise neighbouring evidence into tools a reader can use, and they are not clinical instruments.

3. Raúl Navarro, Elisa Larrañaga, Santiago Yubero and Beatriz Víllora, "Psychological Correlates of Ghosting and Breadcrumbing Experiences. A Preliminary Study among Adults", *International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health* 17, no. 3 (2020), article 1116. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17031116. The study is cross-sectional and cannot show that breadcrumbing causes the outcomes associated with it.

4. For the full citations to Stark and to Lohmann and colleagues on coercive control, see Chapter 4, note 6. Lohmann and colleagues describe isolation from family, friends and support services as one of the tactics of coercive control, and their findings concern coercive control and mental health.

5. Katherine Jacobs Bao and Sonja Lyubomirsky, "Making It Last. Combating Hedonic Adaptation in Romantic Relationships", *The Journal of Positive Psychology* 8, no. 3 (2013), 196 to 206, https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2013.777765. On the costs and benefits of sacrifice for the giver and the recipient, see Emily A. Impett and colleagues, "How Sacrifice Impacts the Giver and the Recipient. Insights from Approach-Avoidance Motivational Theory", *Journal of Personality* 82, no. 5 (2014), 390 to 401, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24007506. The economic framing of oversupply in the text is the author's observation and is not a finding of these studies.

## Chapter 6: Pedestals and Halos



1. Amy A. Z. Zhao, Morgan J. Sidari, Anthony J. Lee and Brendan P. Zietsch, "Speed-Dating and Simulation Data Explain the Discrepancy Between Stated and Revealed Mate Preferences", European Journal of Personality 39, no. 4, 2025 (published online 2024), pages 535 to 557, https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070241286254. Together with Paul W. Eastwick, Samantha Joel, Kathleen L. Carswell, Daniel C. Molden, Eli J. Finkel and Shelley A. Blozis, "Predicting Romantic Interest During Early Relationship Development: A Preregistered Investigation Using Machine Learning", European Journal of Personality 37, no. 3, 2023, pages 276 to 312, https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070221085877. The studies support caution when treating abstract ideals as straightforward predictions of attraction to a particular person.

2. Stephanie S. Spielmann, Geoff MacDonald, Jessica A. Maxwell, Samantha Joel, Diana Peragine, Amy Muise and Emily A. Impett, "Settling for Less Out of Fear of Being Single", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 105, no. 6, 2013, pages 1049 to 1073, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034628. Across seven studies, fear of being single predicted romantic interest in less responsive and less attractive dating targets, greater dependence in unsatisfying relationships and a lower likelihood of ending a less satisfying relationship. It was largely unrelated to self-reported standards for a mate. Fear of being single is a measured disposition and is not the same construct as acute loneliness.

3. Claudia C. Brumbaugh and R. Chris Fraley, "Too Fast, Too Soon? An Empirical Investigation into Rebound Relationships", Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 32, no. 1, 2015, pages 99 to 118, https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407514525086. In two exploratory studies of people after a breakup, those in new relationships reported more confidence in their desirability and more resolution about the former partner. Among people who had repartnered, a shorter interval was associated with greater wellbeing, self-esteem and confidence in their desirability. The studies do not establish that starting another relationship produced those outcomes. One sample was small and prospective, the other was larger and cross-sectional, most participants were young and most of those who had repartnered in the first study were women. The chapter uses the findings only against a fixed waiting period, not as a recommendation to repartner quickly.

4. Authorial framework. The definition of healing, the list of jobs assigned to a newcomer, the present-tense relationship question and its conduct tests are the author's judgement and organising devices. They are not validated measures. The cited studies inform the discussion of distorted selection and elapsed time; they do not define healing or determine whether an individual is ready.

5. Cleveland Clinic, "Save Yourself From the Savior Complex", 24 September 2024, with guidance from psychologist Ramone Ford. The article uses saviour complex or white knight syndrome for a non-diagnostic pattern in which a person feels compelled to fix other people's problems, overextends their own resources and may create dependency or one-sided relationships. The chapter uses the term descriptively. Its application to somebody pursuing a person after heartbreak is the author's own judgement.

6. *Pop the Balloon or Find Love* is the original YouTube dating series created by Bolia Matundu and Arlette Amuli and hosted by Arlette Amuli, in which participants pop balloons to rule out candidates. It is distinct from the later Netflix adaptation, *Pop the Balloon LIVE*, hosted by Yvonne Orji, which the chapter does not describe. The description of how contestants react to statements about children and marriage is the author's observation from watching episodes, offered as observation and not as a measured finding.


## Chapter 7: What a Gift Is Asking For



1. Emily A. Impett and colleagues, "How Sacrifice Impacts the Giver and the Recipient: Insights from Approach-Avoidance Motivational Theory", Journal of Personality 82, no. 5, 2014, pages 390 to 401. The chapter uses the finding that sacrifices made to gain closeness and those made to avoid conflict tend to have different effects on the people involved, and draws its advice on giving from the author's position, which the study supports only in part. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12070.

2. Samantha Joel and colleagues, "The Things You Do for Me: Perceptions of a Romantic Partner's Investments Promote Gratitude and Commitment", Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39, no. 10, 2013, pages 1333 to 1345. An experiment and two daily-experience studies connected perceived partner investment with gratitude and later commitment. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213497801.

3. The saying about crying in a luxury car circulates widely in many versions and languages, and no single source is claimed for it here.

4. For the full citation and limitations of Brumbaugh and Fraley's rebound-relationship studies, see Chapter 6, note 3. The research does not support treating rapid repartnering as inherently unhealthy.

## Chapter 8: A Biography Is Not a Verdict



1. Alice Melin and Paul M. Salkovskis, "Sensitivity to Betrayal and New Intimate Relationship Building in Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence", Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice 98, no. 4, 2025, pages 1050 to 1063, https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.70004. The study supports careful discussion of betrayal sensitivity without establishing a universal causal pathway. Its participants were survivors of partner violence, and the chapter applies the finding to financial betrayal only by analogy.

2. Todd M. Jensen, Melissa A. Lippold, W. Roger Mills-Koonce and Gregory M. Fosco, "Stepfamily Relationship Quality and Children's Internalizing and Externalizing Problems", Family Process 57, no. 2, 2018, pages 477 to 495, https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12284. I-Fen Lin and Judith A. Seltzer, "Stepfamily Variation in Parent-Child Relationship Quality in Later Life", Journal of Marriage and Family 86, no. 3, 2024, pages 718 to 737, https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12946. The second analysis examines boundary ambiguity, role expectations and variation in later-life ties.

3. MacKenzie T. Saxey, Ashley B. LeBaron-Black and Melissa A. Curran, "The Sooner, the Better? Couples' First Financial Discussion, Relationship Quality, and Financial Conflict in Emerging Adulthood", Journal of Financial Therapy 13, no. 1, 2022. The study concerns emerging adults, and the chapter uses it only to support the general value of early money conversations. https://doi.org/10.4148/1944-9771.1299.

4. United States Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD, "Avoidance", reviewed 2026. The guidance explains that avoiding trauma-related thoughts, feelings and reminders may bring short relief while making recovery more difficult. The chapter uses that limited principle without diagnosing a reader or prescribing one treatment. ptsd.va.gov/understand/what/avoidance.asp. National Institute of Mental Health, "Psychotherapies", reviewed 2026. The overview describes psychotherapy as a group of treatments intended to help people identify and change troubling emotions, thoughts and behaviours. It supports the availability of structured help without suggesting that therapy is compulsory or sufficient for every person. nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/psychotherapies.

5. Amie M. Gordon and colleagues, "I Love You but I Hate Your Politics: The Role of Political Dissimilarity in Romantic Relationships", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 129, no. 4, 2025, pages 692 to 713, https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000467. Across eleven datasets, political similarity showed small associations with relationship quality, while appreciation and perspective-taking softened some negative associations. The data come mainly from the United States, and the chapter applies them to Chile by analogy.

6. Shanti J. Kulkarni, Anne Marie Porter, Alexis Mennick and Virginia Gil-Rivas, "I Feel Like… Their Relationship Is Based on the Media: Relationship Between Media Representation and Adolescents' Relationship Knowledge and Expectations", Journal of Primary Prevention 40, no. 5, 2019, pages 545 to 560. This qualitative study of adolescents supports only the limited proposition that media portrayals can shape relationship expectations. It does not establish any adult, cross-national or racial pattern. The belief described in the chapter is reported as something the author has heard in conversation, and the argument about curated sampling is offered as reasoning and not as a measured finding.

## Chapter 9: Deciding to Build



1. Galena K. Rhoades, Scott M. Stanley and Howard J. Markman, "Should I Stay or Should I Go? Predicting Dating Relationship Stability From Four Aspects of Commitment", Journal of Family Psychology 24, no. 5, 2010, 543 to 550. DOI 10.1037/a0021008. The study followed 1,184 unmarried adults in the United States for eight months and examined dedication, material constraints, perceived constraints and felt constraint. The chapter adds desire as a third force, which is the author's framing and not the paper's.

2. OpenStax, Biology 2e, section 45.6, "Community Ecology", 2018. Source for the ecological definitions of commensalism, parasitism and mutualism, which the chapter uses as analogies and never as diagnoses of a person. OpenStax gives the pilot fish and shark as its example of commensalism and the tapeworm as an example of parasitism. openstax.org/books/biology-2e/pages/45-6-community-ecology.

3. Jesse Owen, Galena K. Rhoades and Scott M. Stanley, "Sliding Versus Deciding in Relationships: Associations with Relationship Quality, Commitment, and Infidelity", Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy 12, no. 2, 2013, 135 to 149. DOI 10.1080/15332691.2013.779097. The sample was 252 adults, and the findings were associations across dating, cohabiting and married participants. The chapter reports associations and does not claim that clearer decisions caused the outcomes.

4. Galena K. Rhoades, Scott M. Stanley and Howard J. Markman, "The Impact of the Transition to Cohabitation on Relationship Functioning: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Findings", Journal of Family Psychology 26, no. 3, 2012, 348 to 358. DOI 10.1037/a0028316. Study 1 used 1,294 unmarried adults, and Study 2 was longitudinal with six waves. The authors report that constraints rose, that most indices of relationship quality and interpersonal commitment fell on average, and that controlling for selection accounted for some of the differences, so the findings do not support a simple causal claim.

5. Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Wendy D. Manning, Peggy C. Giordano and Monica A. Longmore, "Relationship Churning in Emerging Adulthood: On/Off Relationships and Sex with an Ex", Journal of Adolescent Research 28, no. 2, 2013, 166 to 188, published online 2012. DOI 10.1177/0743558412464524. The sample was 792 emerging adults. The age range and sample limit generalisation.

6. Brian D. Doss, David C. Atkins and Andrew Christensen, "Who's Dragging Their Feet? Husbands and Wives Seeking Marital Therapy", Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 29, no. 2, 2003, 165 to 177. DOI 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2003.tb01198.x. The sample was 147 couples seeking therapy, and the steps studied were recognising the problem, considering treatment and deciding to seek therapy. The finding describes these couples on average and cannot predict any one marriage.

7. Kristoffer J. Whittaker, Sverre Urnes Johnson, Ole André Solbakken and Terje Tilden, "Treated Together, Changed Together: The Application of Dyadic Analyses to Understand the Reciprocal Nature of Alliances and Couple Satisfaction over Time", Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 48, no. 4, 2022, 1226 to 1241. DOI 10.1111/jmft.12595. The sample was 73 couples in a Norwegian residential programme lasting six to twelve weeks, so the finding is specific to that setting.

8. For the full citation to Bejanyan, Marshall and Ferenczi, see Chapter 3, note 7. The study distinguishes a valued family orientation from parental influence and does not treat collectivism as a single force.

## Chapter 10: When the Signal Changes



1. Benjamin R. Karney and Thomas N. Bradbury, "The Longitudinal Course of Marital Quality and Stability: A Review of Theory, Method, and Research," Psychological Bulletin 118, no. 1, 1995, pages 3 to 34, DOI 10.1037/0033-2909.118.1.3. Their vulnerability, stress and adaptation model links enduring vulnerabilities, stressful events and adaptive processes to marital outcomes. The chapter's three places to look (between the two of you, around the two of you and within each of you) are the author's adaptation of that broad frame and are not the model's own terms. See also Jaclyn M. Ross, Teresa P. Nguyen, Benjamin R. Karney and Thomas N. Bradbury, "Three Tests of the Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model: Independent Prediction, Mediation, and Generalizability," Frontiers in Psychology 13, 2022, article 921485, DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.921485, which tests the same model.

2. National Institute of Mental Health, "Perinatal Depression," web page. It lists among the symptoms trouble bonding with the baby and thoughts of death or of harming oneself or the baby, and it describes postpartum psychosis as a psychiatric emergency. The page does not use the term intrusive thoughts, does not distinguish unwanted thoughts from urges, voices or plans, and says nothing about supervision. The NHS England North West Coast "Perinatal Psychiatric Emergency Pathway for Universal Services" says not to leave a patient with suspected postpartum psychosis unaccompanied and to ensure the safety of the woman, baby and others. The distinction between unwanted thoughts and the emergency conditions is the author's cautious reading of perinatal guidance, and frightening unwanted thoughts are described as common in patient information such as Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, "Worrying intrusive thoughts," perinatal service pages. This is general educational guidance and not a clinical pathway, and a reader should use the emergency, maternity or child health service where they live. The Linnea and Oskar story is an illustration and not a case report.

3. National Institute of Mental Health, "Perinatal Depression," the page cited in Note 2, which describes postpartum psychosis as a psychiatric emergency requiring hospitalisation and advises calling emergency services or going to the nearest emergency room. The statement that postpartum psychosis is rarer than perinatal depression is general clinical background.

4. James F. Paulson and Sharnail D. Bazemore, "Prenatal and Postpartum Depression in Fathers and Its Association With Maternal Depression: A Meta-analysis," JAMA 303, no. 19, 2010, pages 1961 to 1969, DOI 10.1001/jama.2010.605. The chapter says only that fathers can become depressed after a birth and gives no rate.

5. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, "Alcohol Use Disorder: From Risk to Diagnosis to Recovery," Core Resource on Alcohol. The page describes alcohol use disorder as a medical condition and states that the majority of people with the disorder reduce or resolve their drinking problems over time. The account of the husband who drinks after losing his job is a constructed illustration, and the list of observable risks follows the book's safety floor as set out in the Safety Screen later in the book.

6. Rose Mary Amenga-Etego, "'We are Sending the Funeral Home': Migration and Funeral Rites in Ghana," Pharos Journal of Theology 106, no. 4, 2025, DOI 10.46222/pharosjot.106.4018. Drawing on interviews in 2024 with Akan, Ewe, Frafra and Ga participants, the article examines how migration affects funeral rites, especially post-burial rites. It does not establish every practice in the scene, and the description of a funeral as a weeks-long institution with its own committees and contributions draws on the author's own familiarity. The Ewuresi and Abeiku story is independently constructed and does not claim one uniform Ghanaian practice, since funerals in Ghana vary by faith, ethnic group, family and means.

7. Mariana K. Falconier and Rebekka Kuhn, "Dyadic Coping in Couples: A Conceptual Integration and a Review of the Empirical Literature," Frontiers in Psychology 10, 2019, article 571, DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00571, and Selina A. Landolt, Katharina Weitkamp, Michelle Roth, Natalie M. Sisson and Guy Bodenmann, "Dyadic Coping and Mental Health in Couples: A Systematic Review," Clinical Psychology Review 106, 2023, article 102344, DOI 10.1016/j.cpr.2023.102344. Both review research on how partners cope with stress together and are cited as background for treating a shared stress as shared work. Neither establishes the particular arrangements in the story.

8. Meropi Moutzouri, Antigoni Sarantaki, George Koulierakis and Kleanthi Gourounti, "Coping Strategies Associated with Emotional Adjustment during the Dyadic Experience of Infertility and Its Treatment: A Systematic Review," Journal of Mother and Child 28, no. 1, 2024, pages 61 to 69, DOI 10.34763/jmotherandchild.20242801.d-24-00013. The review concerns coping and emotional adjustment among couples facing infertility. The Carmela and Paolo story is an illustration.

9. The Menopause Society, "Sexual Health," patient education page. It describes falling estrogen leading to vaginal dryness and a thinning vaginal lining that can make penetrative sex painful, and it lists treatments including lubricants and moisturisers, low-dose vaginal estrogen, intravaginal DHEA, ospemifene and systemic estrogen. It names the genitourinary syndrome of menopause only in connection with ospemifene and gives no figure for how common the condition is, so the chapter does not state one. Pain with sex has other possible causes (infection, skin and vulvar conditions, pelvic-floor pain, medication effects and abnormal bleeding among them), which is general clinical background and not drawn from this page. The Rosa and Esteban story is an illustration.

10. The Signal Change Triage and the Pattern Timeline are authorial frameworks developed for *The Architecture of Love*. The Timeline reads four reference points (the Inherited, Relationship, Current and Goal Patterns), asked as before, between, now and next, against the standard a relationship claims to live by. Both organise established neighbouring evidence into reader-facing tools and are not clinical or diagnostic instruments. The threshold for using the Triage (a change that repeats over two or three weeks, or that touches safety, health, money, children or sex even once) and the direction rule at the review point are the author's working rules and are not drawn from a study.

## Chapter 11: Desire, Restraint and the Body



1. The position stated in "Where I Stand" and defended in "Why I Still Call It a Poor Way to Live" and "Two Adults and One Night" is the author's moral judgement. It is not offered as a finding of sexual-health research, and the chapter marks the difference between established findings, the author's reading of evidence and the author's judgement throughout.

2. The sexual form of the Paradise Effect and serial commitment in name are authorial concepts developed for *The Architecture of Love*. They organise neighbouring evidence into reader-facing tools and are not clinical or diagnostic categories.

3. Andrew Galperin and colleagues, "Sexual Regret: Evidence for Evolved Sex Differences", Archives of Sexual Behavior 42, no. 7, 2013, pages 1145 to 1161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-012-0019-3. The abstract reports three studies, with 200, 395 and 24,230 participants, and documents regret about sexual action and about missed sexual opportunity. Group averages do not determine what any individual will regret.

4. Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, Trond Viggo Grøntvedt and Mons Bendixen, "The Function of Casual Sex Action and Inaction Regret: A Longitudinal Investigation", Evolutionary Psychology 19, no. 1, 2021, article 1474704921998333. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704921998333. The abstract reports Norwegian university students, 399 at the first measurement and 222 about four months later, and finds no clear evidence that regret changed later behaviour. The sample is students and the follow-up is short. The findings caution against assuming that regret automatically corrects later behaviour and say little beyond that.

5. Mary A. Ott and colleagues, "Longitudinal Associations Among Relationship Factors, Partner Change, and Sexually Transmitted Infection Acquisition in Adolescent Women", Sexually Transmitted Diseases 38, no. 3, 2011, pages 153 to 157. https://doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0b013e3181f2e292. The researchers interviewed and tested 332 adolescent women every three months for up to just over six years, and partner change predicted later infection even within non-overlapping relationships.

6. Bethan Davies and colleagues, "Which Sexually Active Young Female Students Are Most at Risk of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease? A Prospective Study", Sexually Transmitted Infections 92, no. 1, 2016, pages 63 to 66. The abstract reports 2,529 female students recruited in London. After adjustment for chlamydia at baseline, two or more partners during follow-up were associated with a relative risk of about 4.0 (95 per cent confidence interval 1.8 to 8.5) and a new partner with about 2.8 (1.3 to 6.3). Pelvic inflammatory disease was uncommon, with 32 cases among about 2,000 women who answered the follow-up question on partners, and the authors did not adjust for further confounders because of the small number of cases. The chapter therefore describes the estimates as wide.

7. Sandhya Ramrakha and colleagues, "The Relationship Between Multiple Sex Partners and Anxiety, Depression, and Substance Dependence Disorders: A Cohort Study", Archives of Sexual Behavior 42, no. 5, 2013, pages 863 to 872, using the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study in New Zealand. The abstract reports that women with 2.5 or more partners a year, compared with none or one, had higher odds of substance dependence across three age periods (18 to 20, 21 to 25 and 26 to 32), and that the association remained after accounting for prior mental disorder. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-012-0053-1. The reported odds ratios for substance dependence among women were about 9.6, 7.3 and 17.5 across the three age periods, with wide confidence intervals (the last runs from about 3.5 to 88), the association was stronger among women than men, and no consistent association with anxiety or depression was found. The study is observational, and the association does not establish cause.

8. Jay D. Teachman, "Premarital Sex, Premarital Cohabitation, and the Risk of Subsequent Marital Dissolution Among Women", Journal of Marriage and Family 65, no. 2, 2003, pages 444 to 455. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00444.x. The abstract reports that, in the 1995 US National Survey of Family Growth, premarital sex or cohabitation limited to a woman's husband was not associated with an elevated risk of marital dissolution, and that women with more than one intimate premarital relationship had an increased risk. The study is observational, covers women only and counts intimate relationships of both kinds, so it cannot separate casual partners from serial committed ones. Divorce risk is not marital unhappiness, and the association does not establish cause.

9. Ashley Smith and Nicholas H. Wolfinger, "Re-Examining the Link Between Premarital Sex and Divorce", Journal of Family Issues 45, no. 3, 2024, pages 674 to 696. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513x231155673. The abstract reports event-history models using the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, with measures of early-life beliefs, values, religious background and personal characteristics. It finds the link between premarital sex and divorce significant and robust. Compared with people whose only premarital partners were their eventual spouses, those with nine or more partners had the highest divorce risk, followed by those with one to eight, with no evidence of gender differences. The number of partners is approximate, the study is observational, and it cannot show that partner number caused divorce. An earlier preprint of this paper reported different thresholds and is not cited.

10. Rose Wesche, Shannon E. Claxton and Emily A. Waterman, "Emotional Outcomes of Casual Sexual Relationships and Experiences: A Systematic Review", The Journal of Sex Research 58, no. 8, 2021, pages 1069 to 1084. The review reports both positive and negative emotional outcomes. Evaluations leaned more positive than negative overall, and outcomes were worse for women, for people with less accepting attitudes towards casual sex, after alcohol use, with low sexual satisfaction and with an unfamiliar partner.

11. Heather L. Fielder and Michael P. Carey, "Predictors and Consequences of Sexual 'Hookups' among College Students: A Short-term Prospective Study", Archives of Sexual Behavior 39, no. 5, 2010, pages 1105 to 1119. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-008-9448-4. The abstract reports 140 first-semester college students, 109 of them women, and finds that penetrative-sex hookups were followed by increased psychological distress for females but not for males. The sample is small and the follow-up lasted one semester.

12. Zhana Vrangalova, "Does Casual Sex Harm College Students' Well-Being? A Longitudinal Investigation of the Role of Motivation", Archives of Sexual Behavior 44, no. 4, 2015, pages 945 to 959. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-013-0255-1. The abstract reports 528 undergraduates surveyed at the start and end of one academic year. After controlling for demographics, personality traits, prior casual and romantic sex and starting well-being, genital hookups for non-autonomous reasons (self-imposed pressures, external contingencies and controls, or complete lack of intentionality) were linked to lower self-esteem, higher depression and anxiety, and more physical symptoms. Autonomous motivation was not linked to any outcome. The sample is students, the measures are self-reported, and the association does not establish cause.

13. Jesse Owen and Frank D. Fincham, "Young Adults' Emotional Reactions after Hooking Up Encounters", Archives of Sexual Behavior 40, no. 2, 2011, pages 321 to 330. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-010-9652-x. The abstract reports 500 college students. Men reported more positive and fewer negative reactions than women, and both reported the experience as largely more positive than negative. The sample is students and the data are self-reported.

14. Jennifer Sandberg-Thoma and Claire Kamp Dush, "Casual Sexual Relationships and Mental Health in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood", The Journal of Sex Research 51, no. 2, 2014, pages 121 to 130. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2013.821440. The abstract reports 12,401 people in the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and finds that suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms in adolescence were associated with entering casual sexual relationships in emerging adulthood, and that casual sexual relationships were associated with an increased likelihood of suicidal ideation in emerging adulthood. The association runs in both directions and does not establish cause.

15. United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Condom Use. An Overview". The guidance holds that correct and consistent condom use reduces the risk of many sexually transmitted infections without eliminating it, and that protection varies by infection.

16. Andrea Burri and Peter Hilpert, "Postcoital Symptoms in a Convenience Sample of Men and Women", The Journal of Sexual Medicine 17, no. 3, 2020, pages 556 to 559. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2019.12.009. The study documents varied after-sex symptoms in men and women, including after masturbation. It measured symptoms of the dysphoria kind and not post-sex clarity, and the authors propose retiring the label "postcoital dysphoria".

17. Joel Maczkowiack and Robert D. Schweitzer, "Postcoital Dysphoria: Prevalence and Correlates among Males", Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 45, no. 2, 2019, pages 128 to 140. https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2018.1488326. Post-coital dysphoria refers to sadness, anxiety, irritability or tearfulness after consensual sex. "Post-sex clarity" is the chapter's plain name for a perceived change in judgement after sex and is not a clinical term.

18. Dan Ariely and George Loewenstein, "The Heat of the Moment: The Effect of Sexual Arousal on Sexual Decision Making", Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 19, no. 2, 2006, pages 87 to 98. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.501. In a small study of male students, reported willingness to engage in risky or ethically questionable sexual behaviour was higher when aroused than when not. The small, all-male student sample limits how far the result generalises, and it does not establish how large the effect is in general. The note supports the measured finding only. The account of concerns becoming audible again after arousal subsides is the author's interpretation.

19. Dean M. Busby, Jason S. Carroll and Brian J. Willoughby, "Compatibility or Restraint? The Effects of Sexual Timing on Marriage Relationships", Journal of Family Psychology 24, no. 6, 2010, pages 766 to 774. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021690. The abstract reports a sample of 2,035 married individuals and finds that sexual restraint was associated with better sexual quality, communication, satisfaction and perceived stability, with education, number of sexual partners, religiosity and relationship length controlled. The sample is people who went on to marry, the study concerns sexual timing within the couple and not lifetime partner count, and an association does not establish cause.

20. The Daylight Test and the Pace Conversation are authorial tools developed for *The Architecture of Love*. They organise neighbouring evidence into reader-facing practices and are not clinical or diagnostic instruments. The Pace Conversation is not a substitute for medical care, for sexual-health advice or for help from a protective service.

21. The aftercare box follows current United States guidance on sexual assault care in adults: HIV post-exposure medicine should be started as soon as possible, and the guidance puts the window at 72 hours after exposure, and care may include infection testing or preventive treatment, hepatitis B vaccination, a pregnancy test and follow-up. See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Sexually Transmitted Infections Treatment Guidelines, "Sexual Assault and Abuse and STIs", a page last reviewed in July 2021. Emergency contraception windows depend on the method. The National Health Service in England gives up to five days for the copper intrauterine device and for ulipristal and up to three days for levonorgestrel (National Health Service, "Emergency contraception"). Services, time limits, forensic and reporting processes differ by country, and current local guidance should be checked.

## Chapter 12: Two Operating Styles and the Third Voice



1. The Rule of Entry is an authorial tool developed for *The Architecture of Love*. It organises neighbouring evidence about disclosure, counsel and privacy into five questions that a couple can ask, and it is not a clinical or diagnostic instrument. The protected interior is a descriptive term used in the same way.

2. Katherine Dindia and Mike Allen, "Sex Differences in Self-Disclosure: A Meta-Analysis", Psychological Bulletin 112, no. 1, 1992, pages 106 to 124. The meta-analysis pooled 205 studies and reported that women disclosed slightly more than men on average (d = .18), with the difference varying by listener. Women disclosed more to friends, parents and spouses, and in self-report studies men and women did not differ with strangers. Two further sources support the tendency. Tamres, Janicki and Helgeson, "Sex Differences in Coping Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review and an Examination of Relative Coping", Personality and Social Psychology Review 6, no. 1, 2002, pages 2 to 30, reported that women more often use most coping strategies, including seeking emotional support, with effects that are small to moderate and vary with the kind of stressor. Addis and Mahalik, "Men, Masculinity, and the Contexts of Help Seeking", American Psychologist 58, no. 1, 2003, pages 5 to 14, link men's reluctance to seek help to masculine norms. These are group averages from samples that differ in age, culture and method. They describe tendencies and do not predict any one person or marriage.

3. Andrew Christensen and Christopher L. Heavey, "Gender and Social Structure in the Demand/Withdraw Pattern of Marital Conflict", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59, no. 1, 1990, pages 73 to 81. The study is reported in the literature as finding that the pattern in which one partner presses for change and the other withdraws is shaped partly by who wants the change, and that it tends to reverse when the husband is the one seeking it.

4. The serial drama effect, past-casting and recognition hunger are authorial concepts developed for *The Architecture of Love*. They organise neighbouring evidence into reader-facing descriptions and are not clinical or diagnostic categories. No study named in this chapter tests them. Intermittent reinforcement and co-rumination are established concepts, used here as candidate mechanisms, and their application to these situations is the author's own proposal.

5. Amanda J. Rose, "Co-Rumination in the Friendships of Girls and Boys", Child Development 73, no. 6, 2002, pages 1830 to 1843. The study found that extended problem talk was associated with closer friendships and also with more anxiety and depressive symptoms, and that girls co-ruminated more than boys. The samples were children and adolescents, the design shows association and not cause, and the finding is adjacent evidence for adults and not a test of the serial drama effect.

6. Richard Driscoll, Keith E. Davis and Milton E. Lipetz, "Parental Interference and Romantic Love: The Romeo and Juliet Effect", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24, no. 1, 1972, pages 1 to 10, reported that parental interference was linked to increases in love. H. Colleen Sinclair, Kristina B. Hood and Brittany L. Wright, "Revisiting the Romeo and Juliet Effect: Reexamining the Links Between Social Network Opinions and Romantic Relationship Outcomes", Social Psychology 45, no. 3, 2014, pages 170 to 178, followed 396 participants through a two-wave online survey over three to four months. They found no evidence of the effect, found that greater interference and lower approval from family and friends were associated with poorer relationship quality, and reported a meta-analysis of 22 studies, including their own, that supported the association. The sample was mostly female, few couples had separated by the second wave, and the measures rest on perceived opinion, so the findings show association and not cause. Andréanne Plamondon and Mylène Lachance-Grzela, "What If They Are Right? Network Approval, Expectations, and Relationship Maintenance Behaviors", Personal Relationships 25, no. 2, 2018, pages 190 to 204, https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12236, links perceived network approval to maintenance behaviour.

7. Rose McDermott, James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else Is Doing It Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample", Social Forces 92, no. 2, 2013, pages 491 to 519, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sot096. Using Framingham Heart Study data, the authors report that divorce clusters along social ties. Selection into similar friendships, shared environments and direct influence cannot be fully separated in observational data. The finding is not a test of advisers' influence on a marriage.

8. The list of observable conduct is adapted from the literature on coercive control. See Evan Stark, *Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life* (Oxford University Press, 2007). In England and Wales, section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 creates the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour. As amended by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, it applies where the two people are personally connected, whether or not they live together, a change in force from 5 April 2023 (SI 2023/406). The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 also supplies a statutory definition of domestic abuse. The setting of Priya and Farah is left unspecified, and law and services differ by country. This note describes one jurisdiction and is not legal advice. Helplines are listed by country in the resources section at the back of the book, including the UK National Domestic Abuse Helpline (0808 2000 247), the US National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) and the Kenya national gender-based violence helpline (1195).

9. Susan M. Andersen and Serena Chen, "The Relational Self: An Interpersonal Social-Cognitive Theory", Psychological Review 109, no. 4, 2002, pages 619 to 645. The paper shows how representations of significant others can be activated when people meet someone new, shaping how that person is perceived. It is neighbouring evidence for past-casting, which is the author's own concept.

## Chapter 13: The Voices Nobody Chose



1. The experience is commonly called the frequency illusion, a term popularised by the linguist Arnold Zwicky around 2005 and often called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. It is used here as an ordinary illustration of selective attention and has not been measured as an effect of relationship pain.

2. The account of the men's WhatsApp group is the author's own lived observation.

3. Manoel Horta Ribeiro and colleagues, "The Evolution of the Manosphere Across the Web", Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 15(1), 2021, 196-207, maps communities and their movement across platforms; it does not establish what any single user believes. Kaitlyn Regehr, Caitlin Shaughnessy, Minzhu Zhao, Idil Cambazoglu, Alfie Turner and Nicola Shaughnessy, "Normalizing Toxicity: The Role of Recommender Algorithms for Young People's Mental Health and Social Wellbeing", Frontiers in Psychology 16, 2025, article 1523649 (DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1523649), combined interviews with young people, analysis of over 1,000 social media videos and roundtables with school leaders in England and Wales. Its population limits direct application to adult relationship feeds. A technical qualification applies to the pipeline as a whole. Large field experiments on Facebook and Instagram during the 2020 US election (Guess and colleagues, "How Do Social Media Feed Algorithms Affect Attitudes and Behavior in an Election Campaign?", Science 381, 2023, 398-404) found that changing the feed algorithm altered what people saw without shifting measured attitudes over the three months studied. The pipeline described in the text concerns exposure and attention, and how large its effects on conviction are remains contested.

4. Gabbay, Kelly, Reedy and Gastil, "Frame-Induced Group Polarization in Small Discussion Networks", Social Psychology Quarterly, 2018, finds that the rhetorical frame of a discussion affects polarisation in small networks. Strandberg, Himmelroos and Grönlund, "Do Discussions in Like-Minded Groups Necessarily Lead to More Extreme Opinions? Deliberative Democracy and Group Polarization", International Political Science Review 40(1), 2019, finds that facilitated deliberation can reduce the polarising effect of like-minded groups.

5. Herbert W. Marsh, "The Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect on Academic Self-Concept", Journal of Educational Psychology 79(3), 1987, 280-295, reported that students of equal ability hold lower academic self-concepts in more selective schools. It concerns education and school-age comparison groups, and its application to intimate partnership is the book's own proposal. Alvin W. Gouldner, "The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement", American Sociological Review 25(2), 1960, 161-178, is background for the discomfort of receiving without a means of returning. The remark about dating profiles is a lived observation and has not been tested, and no source cited here establishes that the pattern is more common among women.

6. Myra Cheng, Cinoo Lee, Pranav Khadpe, Sunny Yu, Dyllan Han and Dan Jurafsky, "Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence" (arXiv 2510.01395). Published as Science 391, no. 6792 (26 March 2026), eaec8352, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aec8352. The published abstract reports eleven systems that endorsed users' actions about 49 per cent more often than people did, and three preregistered experiments with 2,405 participants. An earlier preprint reported a smaller sample. The finding concerns the systems tested and does not describe every system.

7. Skyler Wang and Isabella Luppi, "'ChatGPT, Help Me Draft a Breakup Text': The Covert Triad and Articulation Labor in AI-Assisted Romantic Communication" (McGill University), an arXiv preprint, arXiv:2606.15460, not peer reviewed. The authors analyse a corpus of publicly available vernacular material from 2023 to 2026. The terms "covert triad" and "articulation labor" are theirs.

8. "'Chat, Should I Leave Him?' Risks, Rewards, and Roles for AI in Relationship Advice" (Emily Tseng, Calvin A. Liang and colleagues, Proceedings of CHI 2026, 1-19, DOI 10.1145/3772318.3790739). The study combined a questionnaire of 25 people who use AI for relationship advice, an analysis of 90 prompts and 17 interviews, so its sample is small and self-selected. The text reports only the benefits and risks the authors themselves state.

9. American Psychological Association, Health Advisory on the Use of Generative AI Chatbots and Wellness Applications for Mental Health, November 2025, which says that chatbots should not substitute for a qualified professional and cannot diagnose or treat psychological disorders; and Guidelines for Psychological Assessment and Evaluation, 2020, which describe assessment as drawing on more than one method and source of information, chosen for the question being assessed.

10. Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, "Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction", Psychiatry 19(3), 1956, 215-229.

11. James H. S. Bossard, "Residential Propinquity as a Factor in Marriage Selection", American Journal of Sociology 38(2), 1932; Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter and Kurt Back, Social Pressures in Informal Groups, 1950; Michael J. Rosenfeld and Reuben J. Thomas, "Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary", American Sociological Review 77(4), 2012; Rosenfeld, Thomas and Hausen, "Disintermediating Your Friends: How Online Dating in the United States Displaces Other Ways of Meeting", PNAS 116(36), 2019. The statement that platforms are a leading way couples meet rests on the US evidence only.

12. Susan L. Brown, I-Fen Lin and colleagues, "Repartnering Following Gray Divorce: The Roles of Resources and Constraints for Women and Men", Demography 56(2), 2019, 503-523, which found that about 22 per cent of women and 37 per cent of men repartnered within ten years of a gray divorce, defined as divorce at age 50 or older, in a 1998 to 2014 US sample; Kelly Raley and Megan Sweeney, "Divorce, Repartnering, and Stepfamilies: A Decade in Review", Journal of Marriage and Family 82(1), 2020, 81-99. These sources support a male advantage in repartnering at older ages in the United States. They do not by themselves show how the gap varies by race, by how the marriage ended or by whether cohabitation is counted. The text makes no claim about widowhood.

13. US Census Bureau, "White Women More Likely Than Black Women to Move Up Income Ladder Due to Differences in Partnering, Men's Incomes", 9 May 2023 (Binder, Walker, Eggleston and Murray-Close). It shows lower rates of partnering and lower partner income for Black women and leaves room for segregation and community inequality. It does not address sex ratios or educational patterns, and the text makes no claim about them.

14. For the full citation to Thomson and colleagues, see Chapter 3, note 7. The descriptions of the ruracio, the knocking ceremony and South Asian family introductions are general and vary within each society and across generations.

15. For the full citation to Bejanyan, Marshall and Ferenczi, see Chapter 3, note 7. The study separates closeness to family from parental influence on partner choice.

## Chapter 14: Why We Leave



1. The Safety Screen is the book's own conduct check. Its list draws on the definitions of intimate partner violence used by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (physical violence, sexual violence, stalking and psychological aggression), which were written for United States public-health use, and on specialist safety-planning and coercive-control guidance, which adds control of money, movement and contact. Sexual coercion is used as the first chapter defines it. Researchers, services and national law define these terms differently, and the Screen is a conduct standard, not a legal test. It is not a clinical or legal instrument and does not replace the validated risk assessments used by trained workers. It is a prompt to stop joint work and seek qualified help. Where criminal liability, protective orders or reporting duties arise, the law of the relevant country governs.

2. Mutualism, commensalism and parasitism are used as a restrained systems analogy for patterns of contribution and depletion. They are not a biological diagnosis of a person and should never be used to dehumanise a dependent, ill or temporarily underfunctioning partner.

3. The Safety Screen, Incident Review, Family Preservation Gate and Resolution Ladder are authorial tools developed for *The Architecture of Love*. They organise established neighbouring evidence into reader-facing steps and are not clinical, legal or diagnostic instruments. "Family preservation" is also the name of child-welfare services in several countries. The Family Preservation Gate has no legal or child-protection standing, and where a child's safety is in question the Safety Screen and the child-protection law of the place govern.

4. Binu Joseph, Varghese K. Joseph and Santhosh Kareepadath Rajan, "Effectiveness of Couple Interventions in Marital Distress: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis", Iranian Journal of Public Health 54(1), 2025 (DOI 10.18502/ijph.v54i1.17581). The review pooled 12 publications with 1,528 participants, most from Southwest Asia. It reported a large average benefit (Cohen's d of 0.85), substantial variation between studies and signs of publication bias. It cannot promise any particular couple a result, and its samples limit how far it speaks for other settings.

5. Case-building conflict, the evidence trap, the unlived-life fantasy and the secondary architecture are the author's descriptive terms. They are not validated models or clinical constructs, and the chapter cites no study for them.

6. Erica A. Mitchell, Kristina S. Brown, Jewel Spencer and Kayla Harris, "Staying Together After Infidelity: An Exploration of the Decision-Making Process of Recovery From the Perspective of the Injured Partner", Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 52(1), 2025, e70110 (DOI 10.1111/jmft.70110). The study interviewed eleven women who stayed with a partner after infidelity, eight of whom identified as mental health clinicians. Participants described boundaries, an apology that was matched by changed behaviour, social support, rebuilt trust and, for some, therapy, with mixed experiences of therapy. It is a small sample of people who stayed, and the chapter does not treat it as showing that staying is right for any particular couple. The list of what repair asks for in the text is the author's.

7. The moral judgement about freely chosen, indiscriminate sex is the author's position and is not offered as a finding of sexual-health research. The full argument is in the chapter on desire, restraint and the body.

8. Paul R. Amato, "Children of Divorce in the 1990s: An Update of the Amato and Keith (1991) Meta-Analysis", Journal of Family Psychology 15(3), 2001, 355-370, a meta-analysis of 67 studies that compared children of divorced and continuously married parents on achievement, conduct, psychological adjustment, self-concept and social relations. Tone Bjerkreim Johansen, Heid Nøkleby, Live Johnsen Langøien and Tilmann Christoph Borge, "Custody and living arrangements after parents separate: implications for children and adolescents: a systematic review", Norwegian Institute of Public Health, 2022, found the evidence insufficient to recommend one arrangement over another and pointed to family relationships, parental conflict and finances as important for how children fare. The statements that the conditions around the break matter, that most children are not condemned by divorce and that some benefit when separation removes them from dangerous or chronically hostile homes are the author's reading of the wider literature and are not findings of either source. The chapter does not recommend any custody arrangement, which has to be decided by safety, the child's needs and the law of the jurisdiction.

9. Addiction can affect judgement, honesty and household safety. The account of Ilse and Maarten is a constructed illustration and does not represent every addiction or every route to recovery. Clinical care, financial safeguards and legal advice should fit the person's actual condition and jurisdiction.

## Chapter 15: Infrastructure, Not Ornament



1. Brian G. Ogolsky, J. Kale Monk, TeKisha M. Rice, Jaclyn C. Theisen and Christopher R. Maniotes, "Relationship Maintenance: A Review of Research on Romantic Relationships", *Journal of Family Theory & Review* 9(3), 2017, 275-306 (DOI 10.1111/jftr.12205). The review draws on 1,149 articles and proposes a conceptual model of maintenance. The distinction between mitigating threats and enhancing the relationship follows the authors' own summary of that model, and the chapter relies on the review for that distinction alone.

2. Phillippa Lally, Cornelia H. M. van Jaarsveld, Henry W. W. Potts and Jane Wardle, "How Are Habits Formed: Modelling Habit Formation in the Real World", *European Journal of Social Psychology* 40, 2010, 998-1009 (DOI 10.1002/ejsp.674). Of 96 volunteers who took part, 82 could be analysed, and the authors' model fitted 62 of them, 39 of them well. The median time to reach the plateau of automaticity was 66 days, with a range from 18 to 254, and missing a single day did not materially affect the process. The behaviours were individual ones chosen by the volunteers. The chapter uses the finding by analogy and does not claim that affection becomes automatic in the same way.

3. Allison Daminger, "The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor", *American Sociological Review* 84(4), 2019, 609-633. The study draws on 70 interviews with 35 couples. Women did more of the anticipating and monitoring that surround household tasks, while the deciding was shared more evenly. The study describes the couples it interviewed and does not by itself show how common the pattern is.

4. Sara B. Algoe, Laura E. Kurtz and Nicole M. Hilaire, "Putting the 'You' in 'Thank You': Examining Other-Praising Behavior as the Active Relational Ingredient in Expressed Gratitude", *Social Psychological and Personality Science* 7(7), 2016, 658-666 (DOI 10.1177/1948550616651681). Two studies analysed 370 recorded conversations in which romantic partners expressed gratitude. Praise of the other person went with the recipient feeling that the partner had been more responsive, and talk about the benefit received did not predict those outcomes once the praise was accounted for. The design was correlational.

5. Sara B. Algoe and Ruixue Zhaoyang, "Positive Psychology in Context: Effects of Expressing Gratitude in Ongoing Relationships Depend on Perceptions of Enactor Responsiveness", *Journal of Positive Psychology* 11(4), 2016, 399-415. Couples took part in a randomised month-long gratitude condition, compared with a relationally active control. The overall effects were modest and depended on how responsive the partner seemed. The reading that a thank-you cannot repair labour that is still unfair is the author's and is not a finding of the study.

6. Kiersten Dobson and Brian G. Ogolsky, "The Role of Social Context in the Association Between Leisure Activities and Romantic Relationship Quality", *Journal of Social and Personal Relationships* 39(2), 2022, 221-244 (DOI 10.1177/02654075211036504). In a longitudinal study of 232 couples, with two ten-day diary periods, leisure with the partner alone was associated with better short-term relationship quality, and leisure with others and without the partner with worse. The findings are associations in one sample.

7. For the full citation and original five-study finding from Aron and colleagues, see Chapter 4, note 1. A later set of four studies of married couples and friends tried to separate novelty from physical arousal. Jennifer M. Tomlinson, Erin K. Hughes, Gary W. Lewandowski Jr., Arthur Aron and Rachel Geyer, "Do Shared Self-Expanding Activities Have to Be Physically Arousing?", *Journal of Social and Personal Relationships* 36, no. 9 (2019), 2781 to 2801, https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518801095. Perceived self-expansion predicted outcomes beyond arousal, and arousal had small and inconsistent effects. The authors caution that the experimental manipulations were not cleanly separated.

8. Amy Muise, Emily A. Impett and Serge Desmarais, "Getting It On Versus Getting It Over With: Sexual Motivation, Desire, and Satisfaction in Intimate Bonds", *Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin* 39(10), 2013, 1320-1332 (DOI 10.1177/0146167213490963). One study used hypothetical scenarios, and two were daily studies of dating and long-term couples. Sex pursued for approach goals such as enhancing intimacy was linked to higher satisfaction, and sex pursued to avoid letting a partner down to lower satisfaction, with sexual desire accounting for the link. The associations do not show that changing a motive would change satisfaction.

## Chapter 16: Compound Relational Capital



1. Arthur Aron and Elaine N. Aron, *Love and the Expansion of Self: Understanding Attraction and Satisfaction*, Hemisphere Publishing, 1986. The self-expansion model proposes that people in close relationships gain resources, perspectives and identities through the other. The chapter uses the model for the general claim that partners come to treat each other's resources and abilities as partly their own. The model does not measure or predict the capital described in the chapter, and the claim that such capital compounds is the author's own framing.

2. The stories in this chapter mention guarantees, business registration, wills, the inheritance position of stepchildren, residence sponsorship and medical certification as parts of the characters' situations. The chapter states no national rule about any of them, and the rules differ by country and change over time. Readers facing a comparable decision should take advice from a local lawyer, adviser or doctor.

3. Elaine Hatfield, Mary K. Utne and Jane Traupmann, "Equity Theory and Intimate Relationships", in Robert L. Burgess and Ted L. Huston (eds.), *Social Exchange in Developing Relationships*, Academic Press, 1979, 99-133. The chapter cites equity theory for one idea only, that fairness is judged by comparing inputs with outcomes and need not mean equal shares. The theory is influential and contested, and the design principles in the text, including the visibility of gains, burdens and decision rights, are the author's own.

4. The story describes a clinic's judgement that further fertility treatment was unlikely to help. It makes no claim about the success rates of in vitro fertilisation or about medical outcomes.

5. This paragraph is a statement of the author's religious conviction. It is offered as his own position and is not presented as a research finding.

6. Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, Regulation 1.2 and Standard A1.2. The Convention requires seafarers to hold a valid medical certificate attesting that they are medically fit for their duties. The usual maximum validity is two years, subject to shorter periods required for particular duties or under STCW. Official source: International Labour Organization, NORMLEX, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:91:0::::P91_SECTION:MLCA_AMEND_A1. The story uses the requirement only as the reason the household depends on Davor's health, and states no rule about renewal or grounds for refusal.

7. Government of the United Arab Emirates, "General provisions for the residence visa", https://u.ae/en/information-and-services/visa-and-emirates-id/Visa-information/general-provisions-for-the-residence-visa, and Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security (ICP), service page https://icp.gov.ae/en/services-details/?serviceid=64afe3c1035448005bd52e68. Ordinary employment residence can be employer-sponsored, cancellation involves the employer or sponsor, and a grace period follows cancellation or expiry whose length depends on the resident's category. The story states no grace period for Rajesh, and readers should confirm current rules with the authorities.

## Chapter 17: The Two-Person Dashboard



1. The aviation illustration draws on the Federal Aviation Administration's Pilot Safety Brochure, *Spatial Disorientation* (AFS-850 16-05), which describes how the inner ear can conflict with what a pilot sees when the horizon is not visible and advises pilots to trust their instruments over bodily sensation. The statement that crew communication teaching grew from NASA and industry work on the flight deck rests on the 1979 workshop whose proceedings NASA published as G. E. Cooper, M. D. White and J. K. Lauber, *Resource Management on the Flight Deck*, NASA Conference Publication 2120, 1980. The workshop reviewed methods of training and selecting flight crews and the psychological dynamics of the flight deck. The chapter draws no finding from it beyond that origin. The analogy to a marriage is the author's own.

2. The statement that the noticer in a household is more often the wife is the author's observation from couples he has known. It is offered as observation and not as a research finding.

3. The positions that a divorce is not in itself evidence of a failure to maintain love, that long-term continuity is a goal of the book's design, and that a good deal of lost love could have been kept by two people who looked honestly and early are the author's own judgements. They are not offered as findings of relationship research.

4. The Integrated Relationship Dashboard is an authorial instrument developed for *The Architecture of Love* and has not been empirically tested. The movement arrows, the three piles of evidence, the option to record "I do not know", the protected pleasure, the ten-year look at present patterns and the default of two reviews are the author's proposals. Neighbouring research bears on parts of the design and does not test the whole. David A. Kenny, Deborah A. Kashy and William L. Cook, *Dyadic Data Analysis*, Guilford Press, New York, 2006, presents methods for studying two partners as an interdependent pair and not as two separate individuals, which is the reasoning behind comparing two private readings. Benjamin R. Karney and Thomas N. Bradbury, "The Longitudinal Course of Marital Quality and Stability: A Review of Theory, Method, and Research", *Psychological Bulletin* 118(1), 1995, 3-34, reviews longitudinal studies of how marital quality changes over time, which is why the design asks about direction and not only position. Neither source tests the Dashboard.