Before you scroll, please read this
If someone you care about sent you this page, it probably wasn’t easy for them. Maybe you’re feeling skeptical. Maybe you’re expecting defensiveness, blame, or another attempt to sway your perspective.
But that’s not what this is.
This isn’t about taking sides. It’s not here to invalidate your growth, question your experiences, or tell you how to feel. It’s about something deeper—context.
It’s about asking whether the frameworks we’ve absorbed, especially in the age of viral self-help, are serving us the way we think they do.
Because lately, something’s been happening:
People are seeking clarity but getting certainty.
They’re looking for healing and finding diagnosis.
They’re told that feeling hurt must mean they were abused. That discomfort is danger. That if someone disagrees, it’s manipulation.
But relationships—real ones—are more complex than that. They’re messy, evolving, and deeply human. And sometimes, the loudest voices in the self-help world flatten that reality into a single narrative of villain and victim.
That’s why this page exists.
It’s why a panel of clinicians, researchers, and couples therapists from the Gottman Institute, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, felt the need to step forward. To put their hat in the ring, so to speak—not to silence anyone, but to balance the conversation.
To speak up when popular content—however well-intentioned—starts doing real harm.
To offer an evidence-based, compassionate voice for those quietly wondering if there’s more to the story.
So before you dismiss what’s here, just take a breath. Set aside judgment—not just of this page, but of the person who shared it with you.
Then read. All the way through.
Because you deserve truth, not just validation. And your relationship might deserve a second look—one that’s not filtered through someone else’s checklist.