Glossary terms beginning with C
The plain-language glossary behind The Architecture of Intimacy — a field guide to 369 green flags of healthy relationships.
Terms beginning with C
- calibration tuned care · tuning
- Shaping a gift or gesture to fit the specific partner's real tastes rather than the giver's own preferences — the aim of the care, not its size or cost.
- capacity
- A person's available energy and resources for meeting everything treatment demands; recovery drains it, since pain, fatigue, medication, and stress all sap the focus a regimen requires.
- capitalization capitalization attempt · capitalization response · capitalize · capitalizing · capitalizing on positive events · interpersonal capitalization
- In relationship research, the act of sharing good news with a partner and having them respond with genuine enthusiasm — not the financial term; much of the benefit comes from the response.
- capitulation capitulate · caving
- Giving in or caving to end a conflict without any real change of mind — surrendering your voice rather than being genuinely persuaded.
- cardiovascular reactivity stress reactivity
- How much the heart rate and blood pressure spike in response to stress; a smaller spike signals the body is weathering the stressor more calmly.
- career adaptability
- The resourcefulness a person draws on to navigate transitions, problems, and decisions in their working life — adjusting to change rather than being thrown by it.
- caregiver burden burden · caregiving burden · subjective burden
- The overall physical, emotional, financial, and social strain that piles up on someone from the ongoing work of caring for a person who is ill, injured, or dependent.
- caregiver strain
- The worn-down, stretched-thin distress of caregiving itself — the felt cost of the role, treated as separate from simply being in the caregiver position.
- caregiving system
- The built-in motivation to respond to a loved one's distress with comfort and protection — the giving-side counterpart of the attachment system's comfort-seeking side.
- categorization social categorization
- The mind's automatic sorting of a person into a group — by gender, role, or diagnosis — and treating them as having that group's typical traits.
- celebrated otherness
- Relationship experiences that honor and emphasize each partner's autonomy and separateness — treating a partner's distinctness as something to appreciate rather than erase.
- challenge and threat challenge state · threat state
- Two ways of sizing up a demand: a challenge state when your resources feel equal to it, a threat state when the demand seems to outrun them.
- challenge appraisal challenge state
- Reading a stressor as demanding but potentially navigable — even a chance to grow — rather than as a catastrophe likely to overwhelm you.
- chaos (narrative code) chaos
- In couples' storytelling research, narrating hard events as proof that life is uncontrollable and simply happens to you — the opposite of telling them as mastered together.
- cheap talk
- Words or promises that cost nothing to say, so they carry little proof of real commitment because anyone can offer them, sincere or not.
- checking understanding
- Pausing to paraphrase what you believe your partner meant and inviting them to correct it, before reacting to what you only think they said.
- cherishing
- Actively prizing and dwelling on a partner's good qualities, savoring and naming them, rather than the opposite habit of magnifying their faults.
- childfree childfree by choice
- Adults who have decided they do not want children — a chosen, settled identity, distinct from being involuntarily childless or simply not yet having had children.
- chosen family chosen kin · chosen-family
- A network of people someone treats as real family — built through care, commitment, and shared history rather than blood or law — and relied on like kin.
- chronic relitigation relitigation
- Reopening a genuinely settled matter again and again, driven not by changed circumstances but by the same unreconciled wish hoping for a different answer this time.
- chronotype eveningness · morningness · morningness-eveningness
- A person's natural tendency toward being a morning person or a night person — the biological timing of when they feel alert and when they get sleepy.
- circular model circular model of sexual response
- A model of sexual response drawn as a loop rather than a straight line, in which arousal can come first and desire follows from it.
- circular model of desire Basson's circular model
- Basson's account of sexual response in which desire often follows arousal and emotional closeness rather than coming first, especially in long-term relationships.
- clean accountability
- Taking responsibility for your part in a problem without diluting it — no 'but,' no blame redirected at your partner, and no vague or oversized non-apology.
- co-dysregulation
- A pattern where two partners' emotions feed and amplify each other away from calm, instead of settling back toward a steady baseline together.
- co-ownership co-owner
- When you tell someone something private, they become a co-owner of it, so both of you now share responsibility for who else, if anyone, learns it.
- co-parenting coparental · coparenting
- The way two adults coordinate as parents — how they support or undermine each other in the parenting role — treated as separate from their romance and their individual parenting skill.
- co-regulation coregulation · emotional coregulation
- One partner's calm, steady presence helping to settle the other's nervous system during distress — regulating emotion together rather than each person self-soothing alone.
- co-rumination co-ruminating · dwelling-together
- Repetitive, shared dwelling on problems and negative feelings — going over the bad again and again together rather than letting the feeling simply exist and pass.
- code-switching
- Shifting your language, accent, humor, or manner between settings — such as a heritage culture at home and a dominant culture in public.
- codependence codependency
- An unhealthy form of dependence where your sense of worth, stability, or identity runs through your partner, so losing them can feel like losing yourself.
- codependent over-functioning codependency
- Making a partner's sobriety your whole identity and project — monitoring, surveilling, and tying your own worth to their abstinence — until support curdles into control.
- coercion
- Using pressure — financial, emotional, social, or reputational — to make the cost of saying no so high that a partner's choice stops being truly free.
- coercive control controlling behavior · technology-facilitated coercive control
- A sustained pattern of domination in a relationship — isolating, degrading, and controlling a partner through everyday pressure and restriction — rather than isolated acts of physical violence.
- cognitive interdependence merged self-concept
- The mental habit of representing yourself and your relationship as a unit — thinking in terms of "we" rather than "I" — which research links to stronger commitment.
- cognitive jealousy jealous rumination
- The thinking side of jealousy: suspicious thoughts, replayed worries, and dwelling on whether a partner is interested in someone else — distinct from the feeling itself or any checking behavior.
- cognitive load cognitive load hypothesis
- The amount of mental effort a task takes up at once; when it runs high, people may look away to free up resources for thinking.
- cognitive reappraisal conflict reappraisal · reappraisal
- Reframing how you interpret a situation so its emotional charge shifts — changing what an event means to you in order to change how it makes you feel.
- cohort
- A group of people who share a common trait or time period, such as being born in the same generation, studied together in research.
- collaborative coping
- Handling outside stress as a team by both splitting the actual tasks and openly sharing your distress, rather than one partner quietly absorbing it alone.
- collective effervescence
- Durkheim's term for the charged sense of unity that arises when people share an intense emotional experience in synchrony, as in crowds, ceremonies, or concerts.
- collectivist
- Describing cultures and languages that emphasize group belonging and shared identity over individual independence and personal self-expression.
- colorblind color-blindness · colorblind ideology · colorblindness
- As a diversity ideology, the belief that partners should look past or downplay cultural difference rather than notice and engage with it.
- commitment (investment-model sense) commitment
- In this research tradition, the measurable intent to stay and keep investing in a relationship — built from satisfaction, few appealing alternatives, and accumulated investment — not merely a spoken promise.
- commitment calibration commitment calibration hypothesis
- The idea that people discount tempting alternatives in proportion to the threat, so the most committed downgrade a highly attractive, available alternative the most sharply.
- commitment device
- A choice made in advance by your calm self to bind what your future, stressed self can do — deciding now in order to limit yourself later.
- common dyadic coping collaborative common coping · common coping · dyadic coping
- A form of dyadic coping where both partners actively work on the same problem together, sharing the effort roughly symmetrically rather than one person simply helping the other.
- common goal common goals · joint goals · shared goals
- A future both partners recognize as theirs together, actively want to reach together, and coordinate their behavior toward — not merely shared values or preferences that happen to overlap.
- communal coping we-framing · we-perspective · we-stress
- Appraising a health problem as shared and collaborating to manage it — treating the illness as 'ours' and then teaming up on the actual work of handling it.
- communal orientation communal · communal bond · communal motivation · communal norm · communal norm adherence · communal norms · communal relationship · communal relationships · communal responsiveness · communally
- Giving by the rule of need: caring about a partner's welfare for its own sake rather than repaying favors or expecting anything back.
- communal strength Communal Strength scale
- How much responsibility a person feels for a specific partner's welfare, and how far they will go in time, money, and effort to meet that partner's needs.
- Communication Privacy Management theory CPM theory · Communication Privacy Management
- A framework describing how people manage private information: telling someone makes them a co-owner, and both must follow shared rules about who else may learn it.
- companion medical visit companion
- In this research, the person who comes to a medical visit with the patient — often a partner or family member — and takes an active part in the encounter.
- companionate love companionate
- A warmer, calmer form of love built on affection and closeness that most enduring relationships run on, contrasted with the intense, high-arousal state of early romance.
- compassion
- Warmth, concern, and a motivation to help someone in distress while staying grounded — feeling for another person rather than being swept into feeling with them.
- compersion sympathetic joy
- Taking active joy in a partner's happiness, even happiness that does not include you — a term borrowed from non-monogamous communities.
- competence
- The feeling of being capable and effective at a behavior or task — one of the three basic psychological needs that help make change durable.
- competitive co-parenting competitive coparenting
- One parent undermining the other in the presence of the child, or jockeying for control of the child — the in-front-of-the-kid form of undermining.
- complaint (Gottman sense) behavior-focused complaint
- In the Gottman framework, a grievance aimed at a specific behavior or situation ("you were on your phone all evening") rather than an attack on the person's whole character.
- compromise bagel two circles
- An exercise where each partner marks an inner circle of needs they cannot give up and an outer circle of negotiable specifics — timing, method, or details — they can flex on.
- concealment concealment motivation · sexual orientation concealment
- Keeping a stigmatized identity or relationship hidden — an ongoing effort that research treats as a stressor in its own right, pressing on both the person and the couple.
- Conception, Planning, and Execution (Fair Play) CPE · Fair Play framework
- In Eve Rodsky's Fair Play framework, the three parts of any task: thinking of it, working out the details, and doing it. A task is fully owned only when one person holds all three.
- concordance concordant · concordant perception
- Two partners who separately witness another person's behavior arriving at the same read of what happened and what it meant, instead of each holding a private version.
- conditional regard conditional positive regard
- Giving a partner love and warmth only when they comply, and withdrawing that warmth as punishment when they don't — making affection a reward for going along.
- confederate
- In a study, a person secretly working for the researchers who plays a scripted role — such as a supposed partner — so reactions can be tested.
- connection before correction
- The idea that a stepparent should build a warm, trusting bond with a child first, and only take on a rule-enforcing role once that bond can carry it.
- conscientiousness
- A personality trait describing how organized, responsible, and dependable someone is — the disposition to follow through on what they take on rather than let it slide.
- consensually non-monogamous consensual non-monogamy · non-monogamy
- Describing a relationship in which all partners have openly agreed that romantic or sexual connection outside the pair is allowed, within boundaries they set together honestly.
- consent
- Freely given agreement to what is happening. In this chapter's usage, reflex reactions like laughter, freezing, or a vague "I guess" do not count as consent.
- conspicuous consumption status spending
- Buying things mainly to display wealth or status to other people — spending whose main job is to be seen, not to serve the buyer's real needs.
- constitutive goal constitutive · constitutive goals
- A goal where the doing is itself the point rather than a means to a separate end, so pursuing it together is already the reward.
- constraint constraint commitment
- In commitment research, the outside costs and pressures that make leaving a relationship hard — the "have to" of staying, as opposed to genuinely wanting to.
- constructive replication
- Re-testing a finding while deliberately changing parts of the study — a different kind of sample or setting — so a repeat success shows the effect is not tied to one study's exact conditions.
- contact comfort
- The idea from attachment research that physical closeness itself calms fear and signals safety, soothing a distressed body rather than persuading with words.
- contamination sequence contamination (in life narrative)
- The opposite story pattern to redemption: good things are reliably narrated as turning bad, so every chapter ends in grievance or loss.
- contempt
- Treating a partner with disdain or mockery, as if they are beneath you — a hostile pattern distinct from ordinary anger, often disguised as humor at the partner's expense.
- content/relationship axiom content and relationship aspect
- The idea that every message carries two layers at once: its literal content, and a relationship layer that signals how the content is meant to be taken.
- context collapse
- When online platforms flatten many separate audiences — family, coworkers, exes, strangers — into one feed, so a message you meant for a few reaches everyone at once.
- continuing bonds continuing bond · continuing-bonds framework
- An ongoing relationship with someone who has died — remembering, consulting, and keeping them present in daily life — maintained instead of severing the tie in order to "move on."
- Continuing Bonds Scale CBS
- A research questionnaire that measures how strongly a bereaved person still maintains an active connection to the person who died.
- contraindicated
- Not advisable — a situation where a normally helpful step, here joint couples counseling, is unsafe or likely to make things worse and should be avoided.
- controlled motivation controlled forms of motivation
- Doing something out of pressure, obligation, or guilt rather than genuine willingness — acting because you feel you have to, not because you want to.
- convenience sample self-selected sample
- A group studied mainly because its members were easy to reach rather than randomly chosen, so its results may not represent people in general.
- conversation analysis conversation-analytic
- A research method that closely studies real recorded talk, turn by turn, to see how people accomplish things through conversation — such as speaking up for someone.
- core needs flexible areas
- In a couple's compromise, the inner set of things a person truly cannot do without on an issue, as opposed to the flexible specifics they can negotiate.
- coresidence
- Living in the same household — here, an adult child living with their parents rather than having moved out on their own.
- correlational association · associations · associative · correlation · correlational and diary-based · correlational findings · correlational study · correlations · cross-sectional · observational · observational and correlational
- Describing a link between two things without proving one causes the other — the pattern could run either direction, or both could share a third cause.
- cortisol cortisol response
- A hormone the body releases when under stress; researchers measure its level in saliva to gauge how active a person's stress system is across a day.
- cost-highlighting
- Framing a thank-you around how costly or effortful a partner's action was for them, rather than around whether it met your needs.
- costly apology costly apology-making
- An apology that requires the person to give up something real, such as cancelling plans or accepting a personal cost, so the sacrifice itself signals sincerity.
- costly signaling costly signal · costly signaling theory · signaling · signaling theory
- The idea that a message is more believable when sending it costs the sender something in time, effort, or comfort, because a liar would be unlikely to pay that cost.
- counterfeit
- In this book, a behavior that looks like a green flag but lacks its real substance — here, care that seems generous yet mainly serves the giver.
- couple bubble the bubble
- A mutually agreed protective zone a couple builds around their relationship, so both partners treat each other as the primary base and turn toward each other when outside pressure arrives.
- couple contracting
- A couple's explicit, periodically revisited conversation about their values, boundaries, and fears — including whose career leads and why — instead of letting big decisions drift by default.
- couple therapy couples counseling · couples therapy
- Professional counseling where both partners meet together with a trained therapist to work on their relationship, rather than one person going to therapy alone.
- CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training) Community Reinforcement and Family Training
- A skills program for the partner or family of someone not yet willing to seek help: warm communication, rewarding sober behavior, letting natural consequences land, and self-care — without confrontation.
- critical positivity ratio
- A retracted proposal that an exact tipping-point ratio of positive to negative emotion separates people who flourish from those who don't — its borrowed math did not survive scrutiny.
- criticism (Gottman sense) character attack · criticism · criticism (vs. complaint)
- A grievance inflated into a global verdict on a partner's character — 'you're lazy,' 'you never help' — rather than a comment on a specific behavior.
- cross-lagged cross-lagged paths
- A study analysis checking whether each of two things predicts later change in the other, used to test which direction of influence runs between them over time.
- cross-lagged model cross-lagged models
- A statistical design using repeated measurements of two things over time to test which one tends to come first and predict later change in the other.
- cross-sectional cross-sectional designs · single-session
- Measuring people at a single point in time rather than following them over time, so it can show a link exists but not which thing came first or caused the other.
- cross-validation crossvalidation
- Testing a prediction formula on a fresh, independent sample rather than the same data used to build it — a check that guards against results that look better than they replicate.
- crossover stress crossover
- When one partner's stress or strain transmits to the other — through emotional contagion and worn-down patience — turning one person's hard day into the couple's hard evening.
- cues-filtered-out cues filtered out
- A family of older theories arguing that because text removes voice, face, and body, it carries less of the social and emotional information that makes messages feel warm.
- cultural appreciation appreciation
- A sincere effort to understand, honor, and learn a culture's practices — ideally by taking part when invited and crediting where they come from.
- cultural appropriation appropriation
- Taking on parts of a culture you don't belong to without credit, understanding, or care for their meaning — treating a living tradition as raw material.
- cultural competence competence
- The idea that a person can accumulate enough knowledge about other groups to become finished experts on them — the framing cultural humility was created to correct.
- cultural humility
- Treating your own cultural perspective as one lens among many and staying open to correction — an ongoing stance rather than a competence you finish learning about someone.
- cultural sharing
- Actively expressing your own culture while accepting and engaging a partner's, rather than letting one background quietly become the default the other is expected to adopt.