How to improve relationships, dating, and sexual self-awareness

Originally published on October 24, 2023

Healthy relationships depend on relational self-awareness, clear boundaries, and the ability to notice what your body is doing before a conversation, a date, or a sexual experience. In Episode 244 of the WHOOP Podcast, Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist at WHOOP Kristen Holmes talks with licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Alexandra Solomon, a faculty member at Northwestern University and clinician at The Family Institute at Northwestern University, about how people can build stronger relationships without waiting for a perfect partner or perfect timing.

This article breaks the conversation into five practical ideas: how to understand your patterns, where those patterns start, how to handle conflict, how to date with more clarity, and how to think about sex as self-knowledge.

To listen to episode 244 in full, head to the WHOOP Podcast on YouTube.

What is relational self-awareness, and why does it matter?

Relational self-awareness is the practice of studying your inner reactions at the same time you study the space between you and another person. Solomon’s point is direct: lasting relationship change starts when you keep yourself in the equation instead of focusing only on what the other person should do differently.

She describes relationships as a moving system, not a fixed verdict on one person’s character. Early history matters, current habits matter, and daily physiology matters. That is why Holmes keeps bringing the conversation back to the basics that also shape emotional health: sleep, nutrition, movement, and the recovery capacity you bring into an interaction. Solomon says it is hard to extend grace to a partner when you are running on empty or criticizing yourself all day.

Solomon also treats family history as part of this work. The lessons you absorbed in your first relationships, what she calls your original love classrooms, often set your expectations for intimacy, conflict, closeness, and repair. Relational self-awareness asks you to notice those lessons without turning them into blame.

Solomon reduces the whole framework to one line:

“The golden equation of love is my stuff plus your stuff equals our stuff.”

That framing makes the goal clear. You are not trying to win a case against your partner. You are trying to understand the pattern both people are creating together, and to change your part of it on purpose. The same kind of daily observation that helps people break and build habit loops also helps them notice when they are reactive, depleted, avoidant, or ready to connect.

What you should take away

• Relational self-awareness means paying attention to your own reactivity and the shared pattern between two people.
• Family history often shapes how you expect intimacy, conflict, and repair to work.
• Sleep, nutrition, movement, and self-talk affect how much grace you can extend in a relationship.
• Relationship change starts faster when you keep your own behavior in the frame.

If you want to hear Solomon unpack relational self-awareness in more detail, listen to the full episode on Youtube.

How do childhood roles shape the way you show up as a partner?

Once self-awareness is the frame, the next question is where the pattern started. Solomon says many adult relationship habits begin as childhood survival strategies, especially in families where stress was high and one child learned to keep the peace.

Her example is the service archetype, the person who overfunctions, caretakes, and treats everybody else’s needs as more urgent than their own. In therapy language, Solomon links this to the parentified child, someone who learned early that being helpful created stability, praise, or a sense of power. That same skill can later look impressive in work and caregiving roles while still carrying a cost inside intimate relationships.

The cost is often burnout, perfectionism, resentment, and a need to be needed. Solomon’s insight is that the same trait that makes someone dependable can also make it hard to pause, ask for help, or say no. That dynamic can become especially visible in long relationships, where one person’s over-accommodation keeps the other person from taking more responsibility.

She puts that tension in memorable terms:

“Our wounds and our gifts are next-door neighbors.”

That is why change can feel destabilizing in a marriage or long-term partnership. If one person starts speaking up after years of overfunctioning, the dance changes. Solomon encourages people to explain that shift directly: I am learning that constant accommodation has a cost, and I want to try a different way of being with you. That kind of honesty gives both people a chance to evolve, a theme that also shows up in WHOOP’s conversation on attachment theory and healthy relationship dynamics.

What you should take away

• Over-caretaking in adulthood can begin as a childhood strategy for keeping peace in a stressed family system.
• The service archetype often carries real strengths and real costs at the same time.
• Long-term relationships can absorb change when both people stay curious about a new pattern.
• Speaking up after years of accommodation can mark healthy growth within a long relationship.

If you want to hear Solomon go deeper on the service archetype and parentified childhood roles, listen to the full episode on Youtube.

Why do hard conversations go sideways, and when should you pause?

Those early roles usually become easiest to see when conflict arrives. Solomon says hard conversations derail when people shift from the energy of love into the energy of fear, and the body often signals that shift before the mind catches up.

In Solomon’s description, fear feels tight, urgent, and desperate. Love feels more open, voluntary, and grounded in choice. That becomes useful in real time because once urgency takes over, people start chasing resolution instead of staying curious. Holmes adds a performance-science lens here. By the end of a long day, sleep debt, accumulated strain, lower patience, and rising irritability can shrink the capacity for perspective. In the transcript, Holmes points to morning or late afternoon as better windows for difficult conversations than the exhausted hours before bed, and the same WHOOP patterns that shape Sleep and Recovery can add useful context to that decision.

Solomon says couples do better when they treat many disagreements as ongoing tensions rather than one-time problems. She cites John Gottman’s research on perpetual problems, which estimates that 69% of recurring couple conflict comes from differences that are ongoing rather than fully solvable. That shifts the goal from solving everything to handling recurring tension with more skill.

Her most practical recommendation is to focus on the start of the conversation. A soft startup, meaning a gentler opening that names what happened and how it felt, gives the other person a better chance to stay engaged. Context matters too. Solomon advises couples to think about time of day, setting, whether they are seated face to face or walking side by side, and whether either person is too depleted to hear hard feedback well.

Solomon describes the bodily signal of fear this way:

“When I’m choosing something from a place of fear, it feels tight. It feels urgent. It feels desperate.”

That sentence is useful because it gives people a real cue to track. If your chest tightens, your mind races, and the only acceptable outcome feels like immediate resolution, it is probably time to pause. Solomon’s version of repair is direct: say you care too much about the relationship to keep talking in this state, step away, regulate, and return. People trying to build that pause-and-return skill may also get value from WHOOP’s discussion on emotional health, which covers rumination, emotional recovery, and better self-awareness under stress.

What you should take away

• Hard conversations usually worsen when urgency replaces curiosity.
• Many recurring relationship conflicts reflect ongoing differences, and Gottman estimated that 69% fall into that category.
• A soft startup, better timing, and a pause during physiological escalation can protect a conversation.
• Sleep debt and end-of-day depletion can make even a valid concern harder to discuss well.

If you want to hear Solomon unpack the energy of love, the energy of fear, and better conflict timing, listen to the full episode on Youtube.

How can dating become a process of data collection instead of self-judgment?

The same self-awareness that helps with conflict also changes the way Solomon thinks about dating. She treats dating as a process of gathering information about fit, readiness, attraction, fear, and boundaries, especially after heartbreak or a relationship that ended badly.

That framing matters because it lowers the pressure to arrive fully polished. Solomon says people can begin dating while still learning from loss, regret, or grief. The work is to notice what happens inside you when you meet someone new. Do you feel curious, present, and grounded? Do you feel yourself performing, dissociating, scanning for danger, or reaching for your phone? Those reactions are data.

Holmes extends the idea with a performance lens. If you show up sleep deprived, scattered, underfed, or stuck in negative self-talk, the data from the date gets noisier. You may interpret your own flatness or anxiety as evidence that the other person is boring or wrong for you. Solomon agrees and says dating goes better when the one variable you can control, your own state, is as clean as possible before you start evaluating the connection.

She captures that reframe with a short line:

“A date is really a conversation.”

That mindset also changes how she views apps. Solomon treats dating apps as tools with clear limits. Their job is to create a chance for real-world contact, then get out of the way. She warns that modern apps are built to keep attention inside the platform through novelty, dissatisfaction, and endless return. Her advice is to use the app deliberately, move toward an in-person meeting or call as soon as it makes sense, and keep your sense of agency. That same challenge around technology and intentionality shows up in WHOOP’s later conversation on rethinking intimacy and sex in relationships, where presence and emotional regulation remain central.

What you should take away

• Dating can be used to learn about attraction, fear, curiosity, and boundaries in real time.
• Your physical and mental state affects how clearly you read the data from a date.
• Dating apps are tools, and they work best when they lead quickly to human interaction.
• Presence on a first date is a useful signal of fit and readiness.

If you want to hear Solomon go deeper on dating after loss and using apps intentionally, listen to the full episode on Youtube.

What makes sex, desire, and self-knowledge so important in dating and long-term relationships?

From dating, Solomon moves to a wider point about sexuality itself. Sex matters in relationships because it is both a behavior and a way of learning about identity, pleasure, vulnerability, permission, and communication.

She argues that sexual experiences are rarely just about technique or timing. They also bring up questions such as what do I mean to you, what do you mean to me, am I safe here, and can I say what I want. That is why Solomon rejects rigid cultural rules around when sex should happen in dating. Readiness is personal. The useful question is what cues in your own body tell you that erotic exploration would feel good, welcome, and aligned.

Self-knowledge is central here. Solomon says many people, especially women and vulva-body people, were never taught basic anatomy well enough to understand pleasure, and that lack of knowledge shows up later in partnered sex. Her point lines up with research published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, which found a large orgasm gap between men and women in heterosexual encounters. Better communication starts with knowing your own body, what feels good, and what kinds of touch or context increase comfort and desire.

She makes the stakes broader than performance:

“A sexual experience is so much more than just something that we do to get off or get our partner off.”

Solomon applies the same principle to men and penis-body people. She frames porn as a poor sex education tool because it narrows the imaginative and sensory range people bring to their own bodies. She wants people to know their full embodied experience, including touch, imagination, anticipation, and context. That approach fits closely with WHOOP’s earlier conversation on sex as a health-promoting behavior, which explored how stress, sleep, and physiology affect sexual wellbeing.

What you should take away

• Sex in relationships involves pleasure, identity, vulnerability, and communication at the same time.
• Readiness for sex is better guided by your own cues than by a fixed dating rule.
• Self-exploration and basic anatomy knowledge support clearer communication with a partner.
• Sexual satisfaction depends on presence, imagination, and a wider view of the body than performance alone.

If you want to hear Solomon unpack sex, self-knowledge, and sexual communication, listen to the full episode on Youtube.

The bottom line

• Relational self-awareness means tracking your own reactions alongside the shared pattern between two people.
• Childhood caretaking roles can grow into adult overfunctioning, perfectionism, and a need to be needed.
• Better relationship conversations often start with better physiology, including enough sleep, lower depletion, and more intentional timing.
• John Gottman’s research suggests that 69% of recurring couple conflict reflects ongoing differences rather than problems with a final solution.
• Dating gets clearer when attraction, fear, curiosity, and boundaries are treated as data points about fit and readiness.
• Dating apps work best when they move people toward real interaction quickly instead of keeping attention trapped in endless swiping.
• Sexual satisfaction depends on self-knowledge, communication, and the ability to understand what feels good in your own body.

Frequently asked questions about things discussed in this episode

How does WHOOP help you see whether low sleep may affect a hard conversation?

WHOOP shows Sleep and Recovery trends that can reveal when low sleep may reduce patience, perspective, and emotional regulation before an important conversation.

What does WHOOP track that supports relational self-awareness?

WHOOP tracks Sleep, Recovery, HRV, resting heart rate, and Strain, giving objective context for how restored or depleted you feel before a date, conflict, or repair attempt.

How can WHOOP help you choose better timing for conflict?

WHOOP can highlight higher-recovery days and lower sleep-debt periods, which fits Holmes’s point that difficult conversations often go better when people are less depleted.

What does WHOOP do for daily habits that support better relationships?

WHOOP makes daily habits more visible by showing how sleep, strain, and recovery trends move together, which can reinforce the basics Solomon linked to patience, grace, and presence.

How can WHOOP support a more intentional dating routine?

WHOOP can help you notice whether you are arriving at a date rested, stressed, or physiologically taxed, which gives cleaner context before you interpret chemistry or disengagement.

What does WHOOP do for the topics of stress and sexual wellbeing in this episode?

WHOOP adds context around sleep, recovery, and strain, which can help you see whether stress and depletion may be shaping desire, patience, and presence in intimate moments.

For relationships, dating, and sex, WHOOP adds useful context by showing whether the state you bring into the moment is grounded, depleted, or ready to connect.