Relationships
20 evidence-labeled concepts on Relationships, drawn from the Shrink Atlas. Each concept is a short lesson: what it is, why it matters, how to work with it. Explore the list, or start with the one that fits your question today.
Bids for Connection
A bid for connection is a small reach that asks to be met.
Boundaries
A boundary is a clear limit that protects your wellbeing in a relationship.
Co-Regulation
Co-regulation is borrowing another person's steadiness until your own returns.
Codependency
When being needed becomes the source of your sense of self.
Cognitive Empathy
Perspective improves understanding.
Compassion
Compassion is being moved by another's suffering toward wanting to help.
Emotional Attunement
Emotional attunement is reading another person's feeling and meeting it well.
Emotional Bank Account
Small positive moments build a reserve of trust that hard moments draw down.
Emotional Contagion
The people around you shape your emotional climate.
Equity Theory
Fairness in what each gives and gets drives relationship satisfaction.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Context matters more than we naturally assume.
Gaslighting
A pattern that erodes your trust in your own sense of reality.
Interdependence
Interdependence is mutual reliance that keeps both people whole.
Love Bombing
Flooding someone with affection fast, often to build control.
Love Languages
How you show care may not match how another person feels it.
Passionate and Companionate Love
Intense early passion tends to mellow into steady companionate love.
Relational Maintenance
Relationships survive on maintenance, the small repeated acts that keep them warm.
Social Exchange Theory
We weigh what we give and get, and compare it to our alternatives.
Social Reciprocity Norm
The reciprocity norm is the shared pull to pay back what we receive.
Vulnerability
Vulnerability is the risk of being seen that makes closeness possible.
How this library is organized
Every concept in Relationships lives in one of six realms of the Shrink Atlas and carries an honest evidence label. This page is a navigation aid; the concept pages are where the lessons are. Follow one, or come back tomorrow for the daily concept.
See the whole Atlas · See the frameworks that use these concepts · See guided pathways