Research, explained

Relationship science, translated. Every explainer starts from a named, published study, follows what it actually found, and ends with what it cannot prove.

Start here

Attachment

Your responses guide me: when replies ease attachment anxiety

A study of people building relationships online, message by message, found that a partner's replies did something quietly remarkable: over time, their attachment anxiety fell.

Read the explainer

All explainers

Dating and Online Dating

The map of internet romance that still describes your feed

Writing in 2006, when meeting a partner online was still treated as a curiosity, Whitty and Carr sketched the whole process, from profile to first meeting. Much of it still describes your feed.

Read the explainerSexuality and Intimacy

Why we want sex: motives, gender and context

Hatfield, Luckhurst and Rapson asked people why they have sex, and took the answers seriously. The reasons turn out to be layered, social, and more similar across genders than the stereotypes suggest.

Read the explainerAttachment

The study the citations keep returning to

Some papers are cited for a season. The Dutton et al. paper in this archive is cited year after year, because it connects two things that are usually studied apart: attachment, and what happens when intimate relationships turn harmful.

Read the explainerRomantic Relationships

What mixed race couples know that research is still catching up to

Mixed race couples negotiate identity, family and the public gaze as part of ordinary life. The archive's research on multiracial identity, and the scholars who keep citing it, show what that teaches everyone else.

Read the explainer