There is a moment in every relationship when intimacy feels like a threat, not a gift. When that moment arrives, we sense ourselves losing grip on what was, until then, a solid sense of identity. It is the moment when most people give up, and it is becoming more common than it used to be, given the overwhelming amount of information and options available in modern life.
That is why we are not giving relationships a real chance anymore. Because they require hard work, compared to the idle pleasures available to us.
We want the polished version of ourselves meeting the perfectly fitting piece of another puzzle. But deep down we crave connection, companionship, and complicity, without doing the self-work those things require to be sustained.
Over the last few months I have read so many essays on what is wrong with men and women in relationships that I honestly think there are some real, specific problems for each gender, but they only apply to the extremes. This is a consequence of an algorithmic culture that involuntarily pushes us into black-and-white thinking on every subject. Because most of us do not belong to those extremes. Reality does not give us the same dopamine our phones do. Reality is simpler and boring than what we are being told. Men and women share the exact same cravings and insecurities.
Yet the real problem is not having cravings and insecurities, because they are beautifully human, even more so in an overly performative world. The real problem is our expectations about what relationships should look like and what they actually require. Being deeply seen and understood by another person is rare, frightening, and threatening, and most of us are not prepared for the level of self-commitment, mental strength, and sacrifice a nurturing relationship demands.
A romantic partner does not create our wounds… they reveal them. The first friction we feel in intimacy is not incompatibility, as we are conditioned to believe. It is the exposure of our own shadow, projected onto the other person. Carl Jung called this ‘projection’: we cast onto our partners the traits we consciously loathe, fear, or secretly wish to express. Our strongest early reactions reveal what we have not yet faced within, and that feels threatening to the ego. As Jung put it:
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
And this algorithmic culture makes all of this worse. Modern life has made self-knowledge optional and connections disposable. We are hyper-connected and chronically distracted, which means most people have never spent sustained time with their own interior. The inner work relationships require then competes with the intoxicating idea that somewhere out there is a perfect person who will meet all our needs and desires. Relationships become, then, the most forced confrontation with an inner life we have never voluntarily visited.
It is much easier to stay alone, either at peace or simply hoping the next person will be the right one. Alone, we see only our unbothered reflection in the mirror, with no friction and no threat to our identity. But that frictionless illusion is exactly what makes us sabotage relationships. We mistake the shadow surfacing in love for the relationship failing, when in reality it is the opposite. What determines whether a relationship lasts is not the absence of shadows, but whether both people are willing to see them, understand them, and work through them together.
