Glossary terms beginning with D
The plain-language glossary behind The Architecture of Intimacy — a field guide to 369 green flags of healthy relationships.
Terms beginning with D
- daily diary study daily diary · daily diary method · daily experience study · daily-diary · daily-diary design · daily-diary study · daily-experience study · diary method · diary study · diary-based
- A study in which people record their experiences every day, often each evening for weeks, letting researchers track real life as it unfolds instead of relying on memory.
- de-escalating volume de-escalation
- Deliberately lowering your own voice and intensity as a partner's rises during a fight, refusing to match the heat so the argument has nothing to feed on.
- de-escalation
- Cooling a conflict down by helping partners recognize the negative cycle trapping them, so they stop experiencing each other as the enemy.
- deactivating and hyperactivating strategies deactivating strategies · hyperactivating strategies
- Two insecure ways of managing attachment feelings: deactivating turns them down (suppressing, withdrawing), while hyperactivating turns them up (worry, protest, pursuit) in hopes of reassurance.
- deactivating strategies deactivation
- An avoidant coping pattern of suppressing needs for closeness and playing down distress, so calm, low-maintenance quiet can actually mask emotional distance.
- deadnaming deadname
- Calling a person by a former name they no longer use, often a birth name they dropped when they changed how they are known.
- decisional forgiveness
- Choosing not to retaliate or seek payback for a hurt — a decision about how to act that can come before resentful feelings have actually softened.
- dedication personal dedication
- In commitment research, the desire to build a shared future with a partner — wanting the relationship itself to continue and grow, as distinct from staying because leaving feels costly or trapping.
- deep pressure deep pressure stimulation · deep pressure touch
- Steady, firm, all-over pressure on the body, delivered by a weighted blanket, lap pad, or snug clothing, and thought to have a calming, settling effect.
- defensive pessimism
- A coping style in which a person deliberately rehearses what could go wrong before a challenge — imagining the worst as a way of preparing, not a sign of a problem.
- defensiveness
- Self-protection against a perceived attack that works as covert blame — it tells a partner the problem is them, not you, so the conflict escalates instead of getting resolved.
- define the relationship (DTR) DTR · DTR (define-the-relationship talk) · define the relationship conversation · relationship talk
- A deliberate conversation in which partners say out loud what their relationship is and where it is going — exclusivity, commitment, a shared future — instead of leaving it undefined.
- delegated coping delegated dyadic coping
- Relieving a stressed partner by deliberately taking over some of their tasks or duties, so the load is shared without pretending the stressor itself is.
- demand-withdraw pattern demand-withdraw · demand-withdraw cycle · demand-withdrawal · demand/withdraw · demand/withdraw pattern · demand–withdraw pattern · pursuer-distancer pattern
- A conflict loop where one partner presses a complaint while the other pulls back, defends, or shuts down — a cycle linked to lower satisfaction for both people.
- demisexual
- Describing someone who feels sexual attraction only after forming a strong emotional bond, rather than from the outset with someone new.
- dependability
- In trust research, the belief that a partner has a reliable character you can count on when something is genuinely at stake, generalized from their past behavior.
- dependence windows
- Periods when one partner becomes temporarily reliant on the other — a job loss, new baby, illness, or return to school — when financial leverage turns lopsided.
- dependency paradox
- The counterintuitive finding that being allowed to fully depend on a partner when you need to is one of the things that builds your independence over time.
- dependency-oriented help dependency help · dependent help
- Help that hands over the whole finished solution and does the task for the person, treating them as unable to manage it themselves.
- derogation of alternatives derogation of attractive alternatives · derogation of tempting alternatives · devaluation of alternatives · devaluation of tempting alternatives
- The mind's automatic downgrading of how appealing tempting other people seem, so their pull weakens and a committed partner keeps being drawn to the one they already have.
- desire discrepancy desire mismatch · mismatch · mismatched desire · sexual desire discrepancy
- When two partners want sex at different levels or frequencies, or in different ways. The book treats this gap as a normal part of long relationships, not a sign something is broken.
- destiny belief destiny beliefs
- The belief that two partners are either compatible or they are not — a fixed verdict on whether a relationship was meant to be, rather than something built over time.
- detachment (grief model) detachment
- The older model of grieving that treated health as severing the emotional tie to the dead, withdrawing investment, and eventually letting go so you could reinvest elsewhere.
- detriangulation detriangulate
- Deliberately stepping out of a triangle by refusing to carry, referee, or relay a two-person conflict, sending the tension back to the pair it belongs to.
- diagnostic overshadowing
- When a person's psychiatric diagnosis overshadows everything else about them, so other information — a physical symptom or a fair point — gets misattributed to the mental-health condition.
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy DBT
- A structured therapy developed by Marsha Linehan that teaches emotional and coping skills and formalizes validation as ascending levels, paired always with working toward change.
- differentiation of self differentiated · differentiation
- The capacity to hold onto a clear sense of who you are and what you need while staying emotionally connected to another person, rather than dissolving into them or cutting off.
- Differentiation of Self Inventory DSI
- A self-report questionnaire that measures differentiation across dimensions such as emotional reactivity, holding your own view under pressure, emotional cutoff, and fusion with others.
- diffusion chain
- A research method in which information is passed person to person along a chain, letting researchers measure how much survives each retelling.
- digital detox
- An individual, temporary, all-or-nothing break from devices, giving up technology entirely for a while rather than clearing one shared space on an ongoing basis.
- discordance disagreement · discordant perception · discordant perceptions
- In couples research, a mismatch between two partners' perceptions of the same thing — each person reports a different picture of their shared situation.
- discretion confidentiality
- Reliably keeping what a partner shared in private actually private, rather than turning their disclosures into material for gossip, leverage, or social currency.
- disenfranchised grief disenfranchisement · enfranchising a loss
- Grief that society fails to recognize or treat as legitimate, such as mourning a chosen-family member, an ex-partner, a pet, or a culturally discounted loss.
- disparagement humor
- Humor that gets its laugh by putting a group down — jokes aimed at someone's race, accent, gender, sexuality, or another group identity rather than at the situation.
- display rules
- The unspoken cultural or family norms about which emotions may be shown openly and which should be kept private — such as whether crying in front of others is acceptable.
- disposition behavioral disposition · dispositional
- Belonging to a person's stable character or temperament rather than being just a passing mood or a one-off reaction to a single situation.
- dispositional gratitude
- Gratitude as a stable personal trait — a person's general tendency to notice and appreciate what they have — rather than a passing thankful mood.
- dissociation
- The mind protectively leaving the body during an experience — feeling absent or detached — often a learned nervous-system response, especially after trauma.
- distress-maintaining attribution conflict-promoting attribution · distress-maintaining attributions · distress-maintaining read
- Reading a partner's lapse as caused by their character, unchanging over time, and true of everything they do — for example, that they are a thoughtless person.
- distributed cognition
- Thinking work spread across people and shared tools — like a calendar both partners write to — rather than held entirely inside one person's head.
- distributive bargaining positional bargaining
- Treating a disagreement as a fixed amount of value to be split, where whatever one person gains the other loses, so the only question is where the line gets drawn.
- distributive fairness distributive justice
- Whether the actual outcome or split is even — here, whether each family and each partner ends up with roughly an equal share of scarce, valued time and effort.
- division of labor division of household labor
- How a couple splits household tasks and responsibilities — who cooks, cleans, and remembers appointments — the arrangement of work going into running a home.
- dominant response
- In social-facilitation theory, the response a person is most likely to give on a task, the well-practiced or automatic one that another's presence tends to strengthen.
- doormat effect
- The pattern in which forgiving protects a person's self-respect when the offender has made real amends, but quietly erodes self-respect and sense of self when nothing reparative follows.
- double empathy problem double empathy
- The idea that when two people experience the world very differently, misunderstanding runs both ways — so a non-autistic person can be just as bad at reading an autistic person as the reverse.
- Dreams Within Conflict
- A Gottman exercise for stuck conflicts: partners look beneath the surface argument for the hopes and values at stake, then find a part of each to honor.
- dual control model accelerator-and-brake model · sexual accelerator and brake
- A framework in which sexual arousal is the net result of two systems: an accelerator that responds to erotic cues and a brake that responds to stress, distraction, or threat.
- dual process model DPM · dual process model of coping with bereavement
- A model of healthy grieving as an oscillation between confronting the loss and turning toward restoring ordinary life, with the balance shifting gradually at no fixed pace.
- dual-earner couple dual-career couple
- A couple in which both partners work for pay or pursue careers, so a job move affects two working lives at once rather than only one.
- duty sex
- Sex agreed to out of obligation, guilt, or fear rather than genuine wish — outwardly similar to generous willingness, but driven by avoiding something bad instead of moving toward closeness.
- dyadic dyad · dyadic analysis · dyadic datasets · dyadic designs · dyadic intervention · dyadic study · dyadic support · dyadic system
- Involving or done by two people together, as a pair — used in relationship research to mean "at the level of the couple," not just each individual.
- dyadic adjustment
- A research measure of how well a couple is doing as a pair — overall satisfaction, closeness, affection, and day-to-day functioning in the relationship.
- dyadic coping common dyadic coping · dyadic · dyadic-coping · joint dyadic coping · positive dyadic coping · supportive dyadic coping
- How a couple handles outside stress together as a unit — splitting tasks and sharing honest disclosure — rather than each partner managing it alone.
- dyadic display dyadic displays
- A specific public act that shows a couple as a unit: a couple photo, an explicit relationship status, an anniversary post, or a warm comment on a partner's page.
- dyadic sexual communication
- The quality and openness of how a couple talks together about sex — not merely whether they talk, but how well, which shapes how large the desire gap feels.
- dyadic trust
- Trust considered at the level of the couple as a unit — the shared confidence between two partners, not just one person's private feeling.