Glossary terms beginning with E
The plain-language glossary behind The Architecture of Intimacy — a field guide to 369 green flags of healthy relationships.
Terms beginning with E
- earned security earned secure · earned secure attachment · earned secures · earned-secure · earned-secure attachment
- Reaching a secure, trusting way of relating despite a painful past, shown by narrating hard experiences reflectively and coherently rather than by having had an easy history.
- ecological momentary assessment EMA
- A research method that repeatedly captures people's feelings, behavior, or biology in real time during everyday life, using phone prompts or samples, rather than one lab visit.
- economic abuse economic control · economic leverage · financial abuse · financial control · money control
- Controlling a partner through money — sabotaging their earning, policing their spending, or running up debt in their name — recognized as a form of intimate partner violence.
- economic dependence
- Relying on a partner for money and resources to the point that leaving the relationship becomes materially difficult — a state economic abuse deliberately creates.
- economic pressure
- The felt sense of not being able to make ends meet — the subjective strain of economic hardship, distinct from the raw shortage of money itself.
- Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale EPDS
- A short, free, widely used questionnaire that screens for possible depression after childbirth by asking about recent mood and feelings — a screening aid, not a diagnosis.
- effect size Hedges' g · effect sizes
- A number describing how large or meaningful a finding is, not just whether it's statistically real — lets readers judge if an effect is small, modest, or substantial.
- effective dependency
- Sue Johnson's term for how safely turning to and trusting a partner tends to make a person stronger and more autonomous, not weaker or more clingy.
- ego depletion depletion · self-control depletion
- The idea that self-control draws on a limited pool that can be used up, so restraint spent in one moment leaves less available for the next.
- egocentrism
- The tendency to stay anchored in your own point of view — here, hearing your intended tone in your head as you type and assuming the reader hears it too.
- emotion regulation
- The process of shaping how intense an emotion feels and how long it lasts; here, being validated helps a hard feeling settle instead of spiraling.
- emotion-focused coping emotion-focused strategies
- Handling a stressor by tending to the feelings it stirs — processing emotion, reframing the situation, or seeking comfort — rather than acting on the problem itself.
- emotional appeasement
- Using affection or endearments after a conflict to smooth over tension without ever addressing what actually caused it — buying peace instead of resolving the issue.
- emotional availability steady emotional availability
- The capacity to be open, attuned, and responsive to another person's inner life - and to let yourself be reached by them in return.
- emotional awareness
- Noticing that something is going on inside you at all — registering that a feeling is present — instead of acting it out unawares or going numb to it.
- emotional backup backup plan
- Keeping a former partner available as a fallback source of romantic or emotional connection, held in reserve in case the current relationship falters.
- Emotional Bank Account emotional-bank-account model
- The idea that every small act of turning toward a partner is a deposit, and the slow accumulation of deposits lets a relationship withstand the withdrawals of conflict and bad days.
- emotional contagion affect contagion · contagion
- The mostly automatic, often unconscious tendency to mimic and synchronize with another person's expressions, posture, and tone, and so to catch and converge on their emotions.
- emotional cutoff cutoff
- Handling family tension by severing contact entirely — treating every relative as an adversary and every gathering as an imposition, instead of staying connected on your own terms.
- emotional dysregulation dysregulation · emotion dysregulation
- Difficulty keeping emotions steady and within a manageable range, so feelings spike or overwhelm a person more easily than they would for someone regulated.
- emotional equilibrium emotional homeostasis · homeostatic
- A return to a person's steady emotional baseline — settling back toward calm balance rather than being lifted into an unusually good or high mood.
- emotional forgiveness
- Genuinely replacing resentment toward someone who hurt you with warmth — the felt, internal side of forgiving, distinct from simply deciding not to retaliate.
- emotional granularity emotion differentiation
- The ability to identify and name specific emotions precisely (e.g., "disappointed" vs. just "bad") rather than only in broad, vague terms.
- emotional jealousy the pang
- The felt pang of upset or distress that fires when a possible rival or threat to the relationship appears — the raw feeling itself, before any suspicious thinking or checking behavior.
- emotional labor emotion work · emotional labour · mental load
- The invisible, often unevenly shared work of managing feelings and anticipating needs in a household or relationship — the mental effort of keeping everyone's emotional world running.
- emotional reactivity
- How intense, fast, and long-lasting a person's emotional response to a trigger is — the size of the spike and how long it takes to settle.
- emotional security theory emotional security
- The idea that children watch their parents' relationship as a gauge of whether the family is safe, and feel threatened when they see harsh, unresolved conflict.
- emotional support
- Help aimed at the person rather than the problem — conveying warmth, validating feelings, and communicating that a partner is cared for and understood.
- Emotionally Focused Therapy EFCT · EFT · Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy · Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
- A structured, attachment-based form of couple therapy that helps partners notice and change the emotional cycles behind their conflict, aiming to rebuild a secure bond.
- empathic accuracy everyday mind reading
- Correctly inferring the specific content of what another person actually thinks or feels — a cognitive achievement of reading inner states, distinct from being warmed by what you read.
- empathic concern compassionate concern
- Being warmly moved by another person's distress and caring about their welfare for its own sake — an other-oriented emotional response, not just an accurate read of their state.
- empathic conjecture
- Tentatively guessing aloud at an emotion a partner may be feeling but hasn't named, offered for them to confirm or correct.
- empathic distress
- Catching another person's pain so fully that you become overwhelmed and turn inward to manage your own discomfort, instead of staying steady enough to help them.
- empty nest empty-nest status
- The life stage after a couple's last child moves out, when the household is no longer organized around the daily work of raising children.
- empty nest syndrome
- The popular belief that parents, especially mothers, fall into depression once their children leave home — a framing this field has largely reconsidered.
- enabling
- Shielding someone from the natural costs of their substance use — covering debts, excuses, or fallout — so that using never quite carries a consequence, however loving the motive.
- endorphin endogenous opioid
- A natural chemical the body releases that dulls pain and is linked to pleasure and social bonding.
- engulfment
- The fear of being absorbed by a relationship — of losing your separate self, having no edges left, your individuality dissolving into the couple.
- enmeshment enmeshed
- A blurring of two people into one unit, sharing every opinion and dissolving into each other, so each has outsourced part of their selfhood and feels fragile under stress.
- epistemic trust
- The willingness to treat what another person tells you as authentic and personally relevant — letting a trusted person's word land as true.
- epistemic vigilance
- The natural, self-protective scrutiny people apply to information from others — the guard that relaxes only when a source is deeply trusted.
- equality equal
- Splitting a shared load into identical parts — each partner doing the same amount — regardless of whether that even split actually feels fair to both of them.
- equity equitable · fair-feeling division · fairness perception · felt fairness · felt unfairness · felt-fair · perceived fairness
- In relationships, the sense that each partner's contributions and rewards feel proportional and fair — not that both do identical amounts, but that neither feels chronically shortchanged or over-benefited.
- equity theory equity
- The idea that people feel most satisfied in relationships that feel balanced — where what each partner gives and gets is roughly even — and act to restore fairness when it isn't.
- erotic bid sexual bid
- A subtle, usually wordless overture of physical desire — a touch, glance, tone, or offered closeness — that invites intimacy without the exposure of a direct ask.
- eroticism the erotic
- The specifically sexual, desiring dimension of a relationship, treated here as separate from emotional intimacy and as having its own needs, appetite, and logic.
- eudaimonic eudaimonic theory
- Concerned with human flourishing — living well by pursuing worthwhile ends and growth over time, not merely feeling good or being satisfied in the moment.
- eudaimonic well-being
- A sense of well-being rooted in meaning, growth, and living well over time, rather than in momentary pleasure or day-to-day happiness.
- evaluative stress
- Pressure that involves being judged, tested, or measured — an exam, audit, or review — where competence itself feels on the line.
- evaluative threat
- A situation where a person expects to be judged or measured — like an exam or big presentation — which makes feeling competent especially fragile.
- exchange relationship exchange mode · exchange orientation · exchange relationships
- A relationship, as with a coworker or landlord, where benefits are given expecting comparable benefits back, and people keep track of who gave what to stay even.
- executive function EF · executive functioning · executive functions · executive-function · executive-function difference · executive-function differences · executive-function friction · executive-function support · executive-functioning
- The set of mental skills for starting, organizing, and staying with tasks; difficulty here can make beginning a task hard even when the task itself is simple.
- exit–voice–loyalty–neglect typology EVLN typology
- A four-way map of how people react when a relationship hits trouble: leaving or lashing out, speaking up to work on it, waiting loyally, or quietly pulling away.
- exoticizing exoticization · fetishization
- Being drawn to a partner's culture as an idea, aesthetic, or type of desirability — wanting a category rather than the specific person, reducing them to imagined traits.
- experience sampling experience-sampling
- A research method that gathers people's brief reports repeatedly in daily life, often over days, capturing real moments as they happen rather than one lab snapshot.
- experiential advantage experiential purchases · experiential spending
- The tendency, on average, for spending on doing things to bring more lasting happiness than spending on owning objects — real but modest and conditional.
- expert companionship
- A relationship offering steady, nonjudgmental presence while a person rebuilds their story and beliefs after a hard event — named in growth research as a key social ingredient.
- expressed emotion EE
- A measure of how much criticism, hostility, and emotional over-involvement family members direct at a relative who has a psychiatric condition.
- expressed gratitude
- The habit of noticing what a partner does, especially small routine efforts, and telling them out loud that you noticed and that it mattered to you.
- expressive pathway
- The emotional route from talking to better sex: disclosing something intimate increases closeness, and that closeness in turn raises satisfaction.
- expressive suppression emotional suppression · suppression
- Clamping down on the outward show of an emotion — keeping face and manner neutral — rather than letting the feeling be seen, which research links to worse outcomes.
- external consent external consent communication · external signals
- The outward cues — words, gestures, or body language — a person gives a partner to signal willingness, as distinct from the inner felt sense of wanting.
- externalized bond externalized bonds
- A tie to the deceased that leans on their still being physically present, often alongside a loss that feels unprocessed or unaccepted.
- externalizing problems externalizing · externalizing behavior · externalizing symptoms
- Child difficulties expressed outward — acting out, aggression, defiance, rule-breaking — the visible behavior problems that parents and teachers can observe directly.
- extracted transparency extracted disclosure
- Openness that surfaces only under pressure, pried out by questioning, surveillance, or suspicion rather than offered freely, so it reads as compliance instead of a gift.
- eye avoidance eye avoidance hypothesis
- The idea that some autistic people look away from eyes to lower an intense, threat-like arousal that direct eye contact would otherwise trigger in the brain.