The Great Recalibrating: On Relationships, Responsibility, and the Radical Possibility of Intertwining

There’s a loud and persistent shift happening in how we relate.

It’s showing up in therapy sessions, in family group chats, in policy debates, and in the silence between people who once shared everything.

It’s visible in how our bodies tighten when we ignore ourselves to keep the peace, and in how we recoil when someone asks for more than we have capacity to give.

This isn’t just a phase of emotional burnout or relational turbulence. This is a reckoning.

We are being asked, individually and collectively, to rethink what it means to care, to connect, and to coexist. We are being asked to recalibrate.

And that recalibration isn’t graceful. It’s grief-laced, full of friction, and unfolding in real time.

The Ache of Misfitting

I’ve felt this shift personally in ways that are hard to name without wincing.

There are relationships I can’t find my way back into, not because of conflict, but because they no longer reflect who I am—or who I’m becoming.

There are social scripts I can’t follow anymore without my nervous system short-circuiting.

There are expectations I can no longer perform under without betraying something essential in me.

I’ve disappointed people. Not out of malice, but because I needed something different, space, clarity, honesty. Because I had a voice. Because I had boundaries. Because I asked why we were still doing it this way.

I was never trying to be difficult. I just couldn’t lie to myself anymore.

There is a particular pain in being a disappointment for not doing things the way they’ve always been done. For not silently absorbing what someone else needs while ignoring your own truth. And yet, I think more of us are reaching this threshold. We are done contorting.

The question I keep returning to is this:

Can I be free—and still be responsible in love?

The Myth of Either/Or

We live in a culture obsessed with binaries:

You’re either independent or you’re needy.

You’re self-sufficient or you’re codependent.

You’re devoted or you’re selfish.

You stay no matter what or you’re disloyal.

This binary thinking doesn’t leave space for the messy middle where most human beings actually live. That middle space, the place of discernment, experimentation, and depth, is where real intimacy happens. But it’s also where discomfort lives. And we’ve been taught to avoid discomfort at all costs.

Now, as we emerge from a period of collective fragmentation, isolation, and performative connection, we are being called to reclaim that middle.

And that means doing something many of us were never taught:

Learning to intertwine, with ourselves first, and then with others.

The Science of Reconnection

What we’re experiencing is biological and systemic:

• Neuroplasticity shows us that as we heal, our brains change. Our emotional and relational “defaults” begin to shift. We may no longer tolerate dynamics that once felt normal. We may begin to crave structure where we used to seek chaos—or vice versa. This growth can be disorienting, especially when it puts us out of sync with the people we love.

• Polyvagel Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, teaches us that connection requires nervous system safety. When we are constantly activated, by stress, by performance, by unspoken tension, our bodies move into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. We can’t connect if we don’t feel safe. And we won’t feel safe in relationships that demand self-abandonment.

• According to a 2023 Pew Research Center study, 44% of Americans report feeling lonely “frequently or almost all the time.” This isn’t about proximity. It’s about the quality of our relationships, and our capacity to stay present in them.

The Risk of Participation

To intertwine is to risk.

It’s to be misunderstood.

To be seen in our full humanity, unpolished, evolving, unpredictable.

It’s to disappoint people by no longer playing the role they cast us in.

But it’s also to participate in life, honestly, and without a performance.

I’ve been learning to ask myself:

• Can I stay present with someone even if I don’t agree?

• Can I receive care without guilt?

• Can I offer love without expectation?

• Can I express my needs without shame?

These aren’t small questions. These are the foundations of relational integrity.

And yet, for many of us, answering them honestly feels radical.

The Role of Expectations

So much of our suffering in relationship, romantic, professional, familial, comes down to unspoken or unexamined expectations.

And I’m not talking about the kind of toxic entitlement where someone demands your energy as proof of loyalty. I’m talking about the quiet expectations that creep in: to soothe, to show up, to be available on demand, to do things the “right” way.

I’ve noticed that the moment someone expects me to “just know” or “just do”without dialogue, without agreement, I feel my body pull back. It’s not that I don’t want to love. It’s that I want love to be a conscious exchange, not a job description I didn’t apply for.

Maybe that’s where we start when imagining healthy, long-term connection:

by identifying what we expect, what we’re comfortable accepting, and where we need to clarify the terms.

Not to protect ourselves from love, but to make space for love that doesn’t demand our erasure.

Wondering About the Future

Sometimes I find myself wondering if true, sustainable partnership, the kind where both people feel free and committed, held and respected, is even possible.

Not because I’ve given up, but because I’ve seen so few models of it.

Because I know what it’s like to share space with someone whose care becomes control.

Because I’ve seen people lose themselves under the weight of someone else’s needs.

Because I’ve seen love become a currency of transaction rather than an act of mutual devotion.

But I also know what it feels like when someone sees you clearly and chooses you anyway, without condition, without performance, without needing you to be less complicated.

And so I haven’t lost hope.

But I also know that hope begins in practice.

We can’t manifest the connection we long for without becoming someone who can hold it, with clarity, with sovereignty, with grace.

The Invitation

This fall, I’m inviting a small group into the next round of the Soul Tempo™ Method Cohort, beginning September 20.

It’s for people who are done performing, done pretending, and done abandoning themselves to stay connected.

It’s for those who want to:

• Recalibrate their relationship with time, energy, and expectations

• Build soul-aligned systems for sustainable living

• Cultivate deeper capacity for authentic participation in love, work, and community

We’ll explore what it means to be responsible and free, to be present without performing, to show up in a world that often rewards numbness and noise with deeper integrity and discernment.

I believe in a future where we can live full, expressive, heart-connected lives,not just for ourselves, but for the people around us.

I believe in a new model of partnership, friendship, and community, one that doesn’t require you to shrink in order to belong.

And I believe that when we start that recalibration from within, we ripple it outward.

We begin September 20.

You have the right and the responsibility to live and prioritize what matters most to you.

Let’s build the future by becoming the kind of people who can hold it.