Glossary terms beginning with B
The plain-language glossary behind The Architecture of Intimacy — a field guide to 369 green flags of healthy relationships.
Terms beginning with B
- baby blues
- Transient weepiness and low mood in the first couple of weeks after birth that is common and self-resolving, unlike a longer-lasting depression that persists or intensifies.
- bandwidth
- A person's available attention, patience, and emotional energy in the moment — treated as a limited resource that can be full or used up, not always there on demand.
- basic psychological needs basic needs
- In self-determination theory, the three needs people are said to require met to thrive: autonomy (volition), competence (feeling effective), and relatedness (feeling connected to others).
- Behavioral Couples Therapy BCT · behavioral couple therapy
- A couples treatment that works with the person who has a substance problem and their partner together, building relationship functioning and day-to-day support for staying sober at the same time.
- behavioral integrity
- The perceived pattern of match between a person's words and deeds — especially whether they keep their promises and whether the values they state match the ones they actually act on.
- behavioral jealousy jealous behaviors
- Jealousy acted out: detective-style behaviors such as questioning a partner, checking their phone or accounts, and monitoring where they go and who they talk to.
- benefactor
- The person who did the kind act and is being thanked — the giver whose thoughtfulness the gratitude is responding to.
- benevolence
- The positive side of forgiveness: renewed goodwill and returning warmth toward the partner who caused the hurt, beyond merely dropping the urge to retaliate.
- benevolent lie benevolent deception · white lie
- A lie told with kind intent — to spare a partner discomfort or protect their feelings — rather than to benefit the liar; also called a white lie.
- benign envy
- The friendlier form of envy that says "I want that too" — a pang that becomes inspiration and effort rather than bitterness toward the other person.
- betrayal metric
- A measure of how far one partner's gain comes at the other's expense in an interaction — how much the relationship is running as a zero-sum game.
- betrayal trauma betrayal trauma theory
- A wound inflicted when the people or institutions a person depends on for survival significantly violate that person's trust or well-being — harm coming from the very source relied on for safety.
- bid (bid for connection) bid for connection · bids · bids for attention · bids for connection · emotional bid · small bids
- A small attempt to connect — a comment, a glance, a question — that invites a partner's attention, humor, affection, or support.
- Big Five Big Five personality · Five-Factor Model
- A widely used model that sorts personality into five broad traits; conscientiousness, covering dependability and follow-through, is the one this chapter draws on.
- biosocial theory biosocial model
- Marsha Linehan's model that difficulty managing emotions can develop and worsen when a person's biology interacts with a persistently invalidating environment over time.
- blamer softening blamer-softening
- A key change moment in couples therapy when a habitually critical partner manages to voice the vulnerable need underneath the blame instead of attacking.
- bodily autonomy personal autonomy
- The principle that each person has authority over their own body, attention, and participation — including the standing right to end touch, a topic, or a plan.
- body appreciation
- Holding a positive, accepting view of your own body and what it can do, rather than focusing on its flaws or how it ranks against other people's bodies.
- body compassion
- Treating your own body with kindness and acceptance, especially about perceived flaws, instead of harsh self-criticism.
- body dissatisfaction
- A person's negative feelings about their own body — unhappiness with its weight, shape, or particular features they wish were different.
- body double body doubling
- Working on your own task in the presence of another person who is doing their own separate thing, so their company makes it easier to start and keep going.
- body image
- A person's own private relationship with how their body looks — how they see, feel about, and judge their own appearance, apart from what a partner signals.
- body positivity
- A broad cultural movement encouraging people to accept and feel good about all body types, whatever their size or appearance.
- body respect
- Treating a partner's body as something to enjoy and honor rather than monitor, rank, or improve — offering warmth while declining to critique, compare, or make affection conditional.
- body-image self-consciousness
- Feeling anxious or preoccupied about how one's own body looks during physical intimacy, which can make a person less comfortable being seen or undressed.
- body-policing
- Slipping a judgment about a partner's appearance or weight inside an otherwise ordinary invitation or comment, so an act of care doubles as correction.
- boomerang
- Describing adult children who move back into a parent's home after having left, sometimes returning more than once.
- boundaried generosity
- Staying warm and openhanded toward relatives while still holding a firm perimeter around the couple — generosity and a clear boundary kept at the same time.
- boundary ambiguity
- Uncertainty in a family about who counts as a parent and what role each person is allowed to hold — common when there is little shared cultural script to follow.
- boundary conditions
- The limits of a research finding — the people, settings, and situations where an effect holds, and where it stops holding.
- boundary turbulence
- The disorienting, sometimes relationship-damaging sense that a privacy line you assumed existed was not really there, usually after a confidant passed private information along.
- Bowen family systems theory family systems theory
- A framework that treats a family as a single emotional system, where anxiety flows between members and the smallest stable unit is a three-person triangle, not a pair.
- broaden-and-build cycle broaden and build
- The idea that feeling securely attached widens what a person does — more curiosity, exploration, and engagement with the world — rather than narrowing them into dependence.
- broaden-and-build theory broaden-and-build framework
- The idea that positive emotions briefly widen a person's range of thought and action and, over time, help build lasting resources like resilience and social bonds.
- brutal honesty radical transparency
- Bluntly disclosing every unflattering truth without filtering, often centered on the speaker's own comfort rather than the relationship's health; can shade into cruelty.
- buffer (buffering) buffer (buffering effect) · buffered · buffered stress · buffering · buffers stress
- Something that softens or absorbs the harmful effect of a strain without removing the strain itself — protection that weakens a negative link, not a fix.