I became obsessed with passionate love the moment I fell into it.

I was a graduate student at the time, spending my days reading about the mind, studying behavior, and learning the science of why people do what they do. Then I fell in love with my husband, and I was fairly certain I had lost my mind.

I couldn’t focus. I thought about him constantly. Everything felt more vivid and more precarious than before. By any clinical measure, I was not operating normally.

So I did what any self-respecting psychology student does when something bewildering happens: I wrote my dissertation about it.

That question — why does falling in love make you crazy? — opened into bigger ones. What are we really seeking in love? What happens to intensity over time, and why? How do safety, desire, conflict, and repair shape the life of a relationship?

Those questions became the foundation of my work as a couples therapist, my training in Emotionally Focused Therapy, and eventually my book, What You Wish For, which argues that secure emotional connection doesn’t kill passion. It makes ongoing passion possible.

The Emotional Logic is where I think out loud about all of it.

Written for anyone who has ever been in love and found it more confusing, more painful, or more alive than they expected.

Which is to say: written for most of us.

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