Disconnection is such a common thread in the work I do with couples. People longing to feel closer. More seen. More alive together.
And the more I sit with these conversations, the more I find myself reflecting not only on disconnection in relationships, but in the culture itself.
So many people are exhausted, lonely, performative, anxious, disembodied.
We live in a world obsessed with image, optimisation, achievement, status, and self-improvement — yet many people feel profoundly disconnected from themselves, each other, and life itself.
And I don’t think this is accidental. I think we’ve inherited a way of living that pulls us away from our relational nature.
Because despite the stories modern culture tells us, humans are not isolated beings.
We are relational beings.
Our nervous systems co-regulate. Our emotions are contagious. Our sense of self emerges through connection. We thrive through cooperation, touch, belonging, mutual care, and shared meaning.
In fact, one of the reasons humans became so successful as a species was not because we were the strongest or fastest, but because we were extraordinarily relational. We formed bonds, communities, systems of care and cooperation.
Yet modern life increasingly pulls us away from the relational conditions humans actually need to thrive.
We are taught to become individuals before we are taught how to become relational. In fact, most people are never taught how to be relational at all.
We are educated in achievement, productivity, self-improvement, and identity formation — but rarely in emotional attunement, co-regulation, repair, embodiment, intimacy, or the skills required to sustain healthy interdependent relationships.
Yet relationships shape the quality of our lives more profoundly than almost anything else.
So many people are trying to create connection without ever having been shown what relational living actually looks like.
Instead, we are subtly trained:
- to perform rather than to feel,
- to curate rather than to connect,
- to build identities rather than cultivate intimacy,
- to look at ourselves from the outside rather than inhabit ourselves from within.
The Externalising Gaze
And I think this externalising tendency sits underneath much of our modern distress.
We are constantly encouraged to evaluate ourselves through “the gaze” — to look at ourselves as though from the outside, through the imagined eyes of others and the values of the culture around us.
How do I look?
How am I performing?
Am I successful enough? Attractive enough? Desirable enough? Productive enough?
Even sexuality has become colonised by this mentality.
Instead of asking:
Do I feel connected?
Do I feel alive?
Do I feel open, safe, present, turned on by life itself?
We ask:
Am I good at sex?
Am I desirable?
How often are we doing it?
How do we compare?
Sex becomes something we perform rather than inhabit.
And when sexuality becomes performative, erotic aliveness diminishes.
Rather than deepening our sense of connection, embodiment, and intimacy, sex can begin to increase feelings of inadequacy, self-consciousness, disconnection, and alienation.
We stop experiencing each other from within the relationship and start evaluating ourselves from outside it.
Independence, Codependence, and Interdependence
This is one of the reasons I often speak about the difference between independence, codependence, and interdependence in relationships.
Healthy relationality is not codependence. It is not enmeshment. It is not losing yourself inside another person.
But nor is it radical independence. Because when two people become too separate, there is no real relationship either.
The healthiest relationships are interdependent. Two autonomous individuals who know each other and attend to each other.
You. Me. And us.
Modern culture tends to glorify the autonomous self — the self-contained individual who needs nothing, depends on no one, and remains untouched by the needs and influence of others.
But humans do not become fully ourselves in isolation. We become ourselves through relationship. Not only romantic relationships, but friendships, family, community, touch, conversation, shared experience, mutual care. Which is why hyper-individualism often leaves people simultaneously “free” and profoundly alone.
Healthy interdependent relationships can create a deeper kind of freedom.
Not the freedom of disconnection, where nobody needs anything from us and we remain untouched by intimacy — but the freedom that emerges from feeling securely known, supported, and emotionally at home with another person.
When we feel safe in connection, we become more able to explore, create, grow, and fully inhabit our lives.
Real freedom is not the absence of relationship, but the presence of relationships strong enough to support our becoming.
A Culture at a Crossroads
And I think this is part of a much larger cultural pattern.
Historically, patriarchal systems have organised human life around hierarchy, domination, performance, external value, and separation rather than mutuality and relational care.
And while these systems have shaped much of recorded human history, they are relatively recent in the broader story of humanity.
This is not fundamentally about “men oppressing women.” It is a broader consciousness structure organised around hierarchy and disconnection — where power becomes concentrated, human value becomes externalised, and people are taught to seek worth through status, wealth, image, productivity, and control.
Over time, this way of organising human life has profound relational consequences.
It disconnects us from our bodies.
From each other.
From community.
From nature.
From the slow, relational rhythms that actually nourish human beings.
And this is one of the reasons our culture feels increasingly polarised.
On one hand, there is a growing hunger for embodiment, nervous-system awareness, emotional intelligence, community, and more holistic ways of living.
On the other, the externalising gaze is intensifying.
We see it in the relentless pressure to optimise ourselves. In the rise of cosmetic procedures. In performative social media culture. In widening inequality. In leadership styles built around dominance, image, and power. In the epidemic of loneliness unfolding alongside unprecedented digital connection.
It can feel as though we are standing between two paradigms.
One organised around separation, performance, and external value.
The other around connection, embodiment, relationality, and care.
Becoming Relational Again
And while the paradigm of separation often appears dominant — amplified through politics, media, wealth, status, conflict, and performance — I think that is partly because these dynamics are so attention-grabbing.
They create drama, spectacle, and outrage.
But underneath that noise, I believe many people are recognising the limitations of hyper-individualism, performative living, and the relentless externalising gaze.
People are hungry for something deeper. Not just more stimulation, not more performance, not better branding of the self, but genuine connection.
Presence. Embodiment. Community. Interdependence. Relational living.
The future of intimacy is not becoming better performers of life. It’s remembering how to become relational again.
Because erotic aliveness does not emerge through optimisation.
It emerges through connection.
Through safety.
Presence.
Play.
Attention.
Mutuality.
Care.
Through the living space between us.
You. Me. And us.
The Salon
In this week’s Salon, I reflect more personally on the ideas behind this essay — relational living, the externalising gaze, modern disconnection, and why I believe so many people are longing for a more embodied, connected, and interdependent way of being.
Please join me in the video below.
You sound fun and open-minded but I'm pretty much a one-trick pony so...We have a chronic systemic problem with our University system. They have to teach the dogma of the day because they are political. Whatever the physics community says are the important issues is what they will teach. Try reading my article where I'm trying to get an email out to Barbara Corcoran.