By Erin Alexander Everyone loves talking about red flags in other people. We send screenshots to friends. We analyze texts. We diagnose strangers on dating apps with the confidence of a panel of therapists. What we rarely do is ask: What if I’m the red flag in someone else’s story? A sexologist I know once told me that most destructive dating behaviors stem from dysregulation, attachment panic, and unprocessed shame. It's fear dressed up as intensity. This makes them incredibly hard to spot...

By Erin Alexander When this couple first landed in my inbox , they weren’t coming to me for “regular couples therapy.” They already had that. They’d been in marriage counseling for a couple of months, using a structured method to work through infidelity. She was also in individual therapy because of a trauma history, and she had a medical team managing chronic pain. They came to me for something more specific: they wanted to explore a female-led relationship (FLR), and they wanted to do it...

By Erin Alexander . I met “Mara and Alex” on a rainy Tuesday. They arrived together, coats still damp, sitting not quite touching. When I asked what brought them in, Mara exhaled like she had been holding her breath for months.“He means well,” she said, “but he is in everything. My texts. My calendar. My head.”Alex stared at the rug. “If I do not ask, I feel shut out. If I ask, I feel needy.” Most couples do not come in because of grand betrayals. They come because of a thousand tiny...