Zoe Kravitz He was photographed in New York on Sunday, holding a fresh bouquet of flowers from… Harry StylesBrilliant sparkle, soft smile. I fainted online. Wedding plans are reportedly already leaking. Places. Guest lists. The whole fairytale machine is spinning.
Nice, isn’t it?
Here’s what no one tells them. Engagement is not the finish line of love. It’s the beginning of the most neurotically intense chapter the couple will ever go through. The flowers in her hand are gorgeous. The next six months are a stress test that even great couples fail.
And I say this as someone whose Tuesday afternoons are usually filled with couples six months after their wedding, sitting on my couch, miserable.
A fairytale trap no one warns you about
People assume that sharing means you’ve arrived. The bond is guaranteed. You should feel safe, stable and easy.
This assumption is the problem.
When you achieve your accomplishments and plan a beautiful wedding, there is an unconscious expectation that life should now feel like you have achieved it. Anytime there’s a greater expectation that things will go well, and that you’ll feel connected, that actually comes with a greater sense of pain when things go wrong. Your sensitivity to feeling hurt increases, not decreases.
Now picture that of two people in a celebrity goldfish bowl, with photographers tracking the delivery of the bouquet, and an algorithm monitoring their every micro expression.
Every wedding planning decision becomes a minefield. You think you’re choosing napkin colors and arguing about the guest list. You are not. You are constantly experiencing the two questions that every human nervous system occupies in the background. Are you there for me? Am I enough for you?
When the stakes get this high, couples panic. Terrified spouses deploy survival strategies they learned as children. One partner protests, pushes, demands more, and fears being abandoned or unimportant. Others retreat, become numb, solve problems at a distance, and are afraid of being seen as disappointing.
They end up dancing the same exhausting dance. They think they’re fighting over the caterer. They are actually two nervous systems that fail to normalize each other.
Why does the package become the battlefield?
This is what I see almost every week. A couple comes, six months later. On paper, they have it all. In the room, they could barely look at each other.
One of the partners shares a security vulnerability. I feel disconnected. I feel exhausted by all of this. The high-achieving partner immediately jumps into repair mode. Okay, let’s look at the schedule, I’ll take over, problem solved. The weak partner does not feel the solution. They feel rejected. They feel like a task on your to-do list.
The protesting partner often feels like the good partner. The person who is trying. Their yoga friends agree with them. Magazines agree with them. They are a queen, they deserve to have their needs met, and those needs must be met.
Meanwhile, the other partner is stuck in the basement in his head, Don’t you see I’m really trying? I’ve had a B effort all week and it’s still not enough. Therefore, one feels that he is not a priority. The other feels inadequate.
Then they come and fight over one rose versus twelve roses.
I would like anyone reading this who is getting to know themselves to get a free assessment of your relationship before they walk down the aisle. Because the ring I describe is the most ordinary thing in the world, and the most invisible to the people inside it.
This is the line I tell these couples. You think you’re fighting over coffee, or the car, or wedding invitations. But in that conversation, one of you felt abandoned and the other felt rejected. It’s just a battlefield. The content is a distraction from the biological panic of feeling unloved.
The plot twist will be missed by most fans
If Zoe and Harry were now fighting behind closed doors, the culture would call this a red flag. Very fast. Too early. Doomed to fail. The Internet will diagnose them by Tuesday.
I think the opposite. If they are fighting, it is evidence that the bond is real.
Disconnecting is a feature, not a bug. The only reason why the moment of separation is so difficult is because the love is immense. We are wired in this way, and we are born needing a primary person to be emotionally attached to, from cradle to grave. When it seems that this person is not there for you, the limbic system turns on. It doesn’t matter if you’re famous, in love, or wearing a Cartier ring.
This is also where I would point out something that is important for any couple in the public eye. The rush toward early engagement has a chemistry that can turn into something akin to obsession. It’s worth understanding the science behind luxury before you make the mistake of confusing elevation with foundation. It’s worth knowing the science behind micro-cheating, too, because small, undisclosed betrayals usually erode bonds long before big ones.
When a stressed-out couple comes into my office, I sometimes tell them they should celebrate their fight. Go to 7-Eleven, buy their most expensive bottle of champagne, and toast. Look at this battle we just got into because we mean so much to each other.
No amount of money or fame protects you from this. When you’re an international pop star or an Oscar-winning actress, the pressure to perform is overwhelming. But beneath the competence, you still have the heart of a young child with the same vulnerable questions. Am I alone? Am I good enough? Are you there?
What I would actually say to them on the couch
If Zoe and Harry sat down with me, the first thing I would do is stop them from solving anything.
The speed of combat is the problem. Battle content is hardly the same.
I will tell them to abandon logic. Drop logistics. Overthrowing right and wrong. Stop running the two competing narratives. You are so difficult. and, You are never happy. Both are true. Both are useless.
Then I will help them see the system they are building together. Both partners are hurting. Both partners are logical. Whoever feels lonely is logical. A person who is disappointed is logical.
This is the conversation where you are actually planning to get married. The flowers are beautiful. The bond underneath them is the real thing.
The line I want them to remember
You can’t reach a secure marriage by avoiding difficult moments. You can get there by recognizing who they really are. Two frightened nervous systems reach out to each other in the dark, sometimes clumsy, sometimes wrong, and often misunderstood as failures in love when they are the evidence of it.
The bouquet is a beautiful picture. The battle that is taking place between you and the bunch is marriage.
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Empathi Founder Figs O’Sullivan, LMFT and his wife Teale are couples therapists and relationship experts at the Stars and Silicon Valley Founder of Empathi, they built Figlet, our AI relationship coach, an AI relationship coach trained in their clinical work.
