Olivia Rodrigo decreased You look very sad for a girl in love, The title alone has done more than half the relationship podcasts on the internet.
A man has a fake job. Wishing he loved her less. The entire arc of a relationship from dizzy to devoured, compressed into twelve tracks and one devastating sentence.
The Internet actually does what the Internet does. Pick sides. Ex diagnosis. He called Olivia “overrated” or called him a narcissist.
I want to do something different. Because when I saw the album title, I thought: Well, of course it is. That sentence is the paradox of human love in eleven words. And the relational episode you write about? I watch couples dancing on the couch in my office every Tuesday.
The irony hidden in the album title
Why do we feel sad when we fall in love? Because we are human, we have an innate need to be emotionally connected.
If you love someone, if they are truly important to you, then at any moment they are not there for you in the way you long to be, you will hurt inside. Your limbic system repeatedly asks one question: Am I lovable? When the answer comes back blurry, your body goes into protest.
This is what the early songs on the album sound like to me. He objects. Access. Arrival feels like an attack from the outside, calling out false employment, unrequited love, and absence. Underneath, there’s a nervous system asking: Are you there for me, do I care?
And the man on the other side of those songs? Maybe it’s not as readable as evil Twitter wants it to be. When someone withdraws from a relationship, their body is usually saying: Please don’t see my flaws, please don’t expose my inadequacy, please don’t reject me. This lockdown response is not cool. It is the fear of shame masquerading as indifference.
I’ve never met an emotionally withdrawn person who wasn’t withdrawing because it hurts. It hurts to feel like you’re always disappointing someone you love.
Waltz Every couple in distress dances
In my work, I call this the “Waltz of Pain.” Every couple in distress dances exactly the same dances.
One partner is what I call a “relentless lover.” They feel disconnected and protest. They pray, demand, and write loud pop songs about wanting more. The other is “The Reluctant Lover.” They back down when things get tough. They protect through distance.
The relentless lover arrives. The reluctant lover backs down. The relentless lover reaches for the hardest. The reluctant lover collapses deeper into himself.
They both feel hurt. They both feel invisible. They both swear the other is the problem. No one is the problem. The system is.
Usually, it looks like an apartment building. One partner lives in the relationship’s penthouse apartment, does yoga, tells her friends, and reads the magazine that she’s a queen who deserves to have her needs met. The other is downstairs, picking up peanuts from the bar, where the boys go, “Yeah, we’re not good enough, are we?”
Everyone comes into my office first as a world-renowned expert on their partner’s problems. If you hold a conference next week about your partner’s problems, you will be the keynote speaker. You want to know your relationship style before you write your own You look very sad path? Start there.
Why is this more painful than the internet allows
This is the part no one wants to admit when we’re analyzing celebrity breakups: No one is the villain. Everyone makes sense.
When the culture tells Olivia she’s “too much” or “needy” to write songs about wanting more, I get angry. I won’t hear you call yourself codependent. I won’t hear you describe the part of you that fights for love as a bad part of you.
The part of you that needs love the most is not a weak part. Perhaps the best part of who we are as human beings is that we feel this pain when we are not connected to the people we love. You are not childish to be hurt in love.
And when the internet calls her a narcissist because she withdrew? What made him secure as a child simply cannot build intimacy as an adult. This is not a character flaw. This is a protector who does the job he was hired to do at the age of seven, and still shows up at thirty.
Modern dating makes all of this worse. People imprint affection that they cannot support with action. It offers people reassurance they don’t feel. People turn away the moment weaknesses appear. Women are raising the bar to protect themselves. Men withdraw or mock. Both sides think the worst about the other. Both sides feel lonely. The level A you read into this, if you want to understand the science behind red flags in a relationship, is that most red flags are protectors meeting protectors.
What would I actually do if they were on my couch
If Olivia and her ex were sitting in front of me right now, I wouldn’t let them litigate over song lyrics.
I won’t try to figure out who hurt who first, or whose job was bogus, or who loved who less. I refuse to choose sides. Not that the damage doesn’t matter. Because choosing sides keeps people trapped in a loop.
Instead, we’ll collapse the entire timeline and look at the system. Of course I arrived. And of course they withdrew. Of course it was painful. Of course you are protected. Everything makes sense.
I would look at them and say: You’re both hurting. You both act out in a way, not because you’re bad, but just because it hurts so much, you do things that will definitely hurt your partner more. No wonder you stumble upon each other. You poor little devils. How terrible for you both to love each other so much and get stuck like this. Oh.
The first step is not communication skills. It’s not a weekly date night. It is the shift from “I-consciousness” to “we-consciousness.” From two people suffering separately to two people suffering together, on the same side of the problem.
The line that deserves a screenshot
The reason the album title has stuck with the culture is because it tells a truth that most love songs wouldn’t.
You can be deeply in love and deeply sad at the same time. This is not a sign of broken love. It’s a sign that love is real, and that the system you’re stuck in is older than either of you. Sadness is not evidence that you made a wrong choice. It is proof that you have chosen someone important.
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Figs O’Sullivan and his wife, Till, are San Francisco-based couples therapists, relationship experts at Stars and Silicon Valley, and founders of Empathi, and built Figlet, our AI relationship coach, an AI relationship coach trained in their clinical work.
