💘 Love, Sex, & Relationships
What we learned from our Valentine’s Day author roundtable
Happy Valentine’s Day, friends. Whether this is a holiday you care about or not, it’s a great excuse to talk about love. Not the Hallmark version. Not the rom-com you’ve got stuck in your head. We’re here to talk about the real thing.
Love is a core part of the human experience, for better or worse, but, frankly, it’s a muddle. Love can be joyful, confusing, and genuinely painful. It’s also wildly multidimensional: biology, neuroscience, psychology, identity, sexuality, and communication all tangled together. So this week we arranged a Substack Live to bring together a group of authors with brand-new books to help us untangle the knot and walk away with something practical.
For invites to author roundtables, Q&A’s, and other exclusive events, join us at NextBigIdeaClub.com. Use the code LOVE26 to get 20% off.
Our roundtable participants:
Tom Bellamy — Smitten: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last
Paul Eastwick — Bonded By Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection
Colette Jane Fehr, LMFT, LMHC — The Cost of Quiet: How to Have the Hard Conversations That Create Secure, Lasting Love
Harry Reis and Sonja Lyubomirsky — How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most
Nicole McNichols — You Could Be Having Better Sex: The Definitive Guide to a Happier, Healthier, and Hotter Sex Life
Daniel Coyle — Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment
Below are a few of the most memorable ideas from the conversation.
The big ideas:
1) The “high” of early love has a name, and it is not universal (Tom Bellamy, Smitten)
Bellamy explained limerence as an altered mental state that many people experience early in romance. It can feel euphoric and intoxicating. It can also swing hard into anxiety or low mood, and if it persists too long, it can start to resemble addiction: intrusive thoughts, dependency, and difficulty focusing on other parts of life.
One of the most important takeaways: limerence is not a universal experience. Bellamy suggested it is closer to a 50–50 split, which can create mismatched expectations between partners about what “love is supposed to feel like.”
2) You cannot “make” someone love you. You can create the conditions where love shows up (Harry Reis, How to Feel Loved)
Reis shared a striking finding: in their research, over three quarters of people report they are not getting as much love as they would like.
One reason is that people often try to be lovable by curating an image, hiding weaknesses, or performing strengths. That can backfire, because even if admiration shows up, it does not feel like it is for the “real you.”
Instead, Reis emphasized two core behaviors:
Genuine curiosity in listening (not just “waiting to talk”).
Opening up about values, worldview, and the inner life that makes someone who they are.
Today’s Book of the Day is brought to you by The Soul Delusion, by David P. Barash. Evolutionary biologist David P. Barash takes a deep dive into the nature of the soul by reviewing the diverse and conflicting notions of what the soul is supposed to be and revealing practical problems deriving from such delusive beliefs. Get the book.
3) A lot of pop “evolutionary” relationship advice is built on shaky science (Paul Eastwick, Bonded by Evolution)
Eastwick made the case that many of the internet’s most confident relationship claims (hierarchies of desirability, “alphas and betas,” men and women wanting fundamentally different things) are often based on older frameworks that have not held up well in more recent evidence.
His message was notably optimistic: humans did not evolve primarily to “trade up.” We evolved to bond, and the science of close relationships shows how real people actually form and maintain connection over time.
4) Better sex is not about performance. It’s about attention, communication, and getting out of your own head (Nicole McNichols, You Could Be Having Better Sex)
McNichols pushed back on sexual scripts pulled from porn, TV, and cultural expectations, and reframed “better sex” as connected, authentic sex.
A key concept she highlighted is sexual mindfulness: shifting out of comparison mode and into awareness of what is actually happening in the body.
She also emphasized a growth mindset: sex is not set in stone, and “normal” does not equal “most pleasurable.”
5) The cost of quiet is not just silence. It is the slow buildup of avoidance, resentment, and disconnection (Colette Fehr, The Cost of Quiet)
Fehr talked about how even emotionally intelligent people can go quiet, avoid, or default to “bickering” instead of doing the deeper work of real conflict: sharing painful emotions, inner experience, and needs.
Her framework emphasizes “self-connected communication,” starting with regulation and clarity before approaching a partner, so conflict becomes an opportunity for intimacy instead of a threat.
6) A relationship cannot be run on logic alone. Sometimes the “right move” is the illogical one: turn toward (Daniel Coyle, Flourish)
Coyle described the “bonded world” of relationships as a place where normal rules shift, and where being logical, analytical, and efficient can backfire.
One practice he highlighted: when feeling isolated or down, resist rumination and instead ask, “Where can I add value for another person?”
Later, he argued for rituals over “habits,” because rituals animate a relationship instead of automating it: small, daily, useless-by-design moments that are purely about “us.”
We got into some other deep waters, too. On whether monogamy is the natural state of affairs for us humans. On how these authors’ own relationships changed as a result of their research. Watch the full video above to see more. And remember, for invites to future author chats, you can join us at NextBigIdeaClub.com, and use the code LOVE26 for 20% off.
With big love,
Michael Kovnat and the Next Big Idea Club team