Human Connection is Easier Than We Think
Musings from an AI-free summer
I just got back from a month in the UK and Europe—specifically London, Zurich, Basel, Mallorca, and Madrid. I’ve lived in London on and off throughout my life, and the goal of this trip was to reconnect with a city I love and spend time with friends. As a relationship scientist, it was also an opportunity to step away from the theory and data I’ve been immersed in while writing my book and to simply observe how people connect in real life.
Whenever I travel, I often prefer staying with friends over hotels. I like seeing how people actually live—their daily routines, family dynamics, and the small rituals that make a house feel like home. Summertime has a different energy. The world slows down—or at least, it should.
On my visits, I spent hours in cafés and on quiet stretches of beach just watching people. I found myself asking: What does human connection look like when we’re free from the relentless rut of work and routine?
Here were some of my immediate observations:
AI isn’t a summer story. Nature is. The cities empty out. Other non-negotiables are family, community, sunshine and delightfully slow and long meals.
Summer is not optional time off. It’s a critical reset—a necessary pause for the mind, body, and spirit.
When children aren’t overscheduled, they learn something just as valuable. They watch the adults around them, absorb emotional cues, and negotiate boundaries in real time.
Connection isn’t complicated. When people feel calm and safe, they naturally reach out toward friends, family, nature, and one another.
Across cultures, what people want from each other is remarkably consistent: love, attention, belonging, play, and care.
Watching people in their natural environments and rested rhythms, one thing became increasingly obvious to me:
Safety precedes intimacy.
When we feel safe, we soften. We connect more openly, think more clearly, and function at our best.
In yogic philosophy, this is the Mooladhara, or root chakra—the foundation. Before anything else can flourish, we need stability, security, and a sense of being grounded.
Technology, including AI, often promises that sense of security. But its foundation is inherently fragile. Companies change direction. Products disappear. Data can be exposed. Addiction can lead to harmful social isolation.
In the Intimacy Economy, AI positions itself as our best path to connection—perhaps even our only one.
But that’s just a marketing pitch, a sexy tagline. Reality tells us something different.
Even as someone who studies technology and human intimacy, I sometimes wonder whether our obsession with AI replacing relationships distracts us from a more uncomfortable truth: we innately know the conditions under which human connection thrives. We just don’t make them a priority.
We are not powerless in technology’s encroachment on human intimacy. We should stop acting like it.
I’d love to hear what you think. Comment below.
Watching people in cafés, noticing how connection looks "when we're free from the relentless rut" — that's a researcher doing the hardest part, actually looking. Your root chakra framing is precise: safety as the ground floor. And "safety precedes intimacy" applies more widely than the AI question alone. It doesn't specify what's sitting across from you. The root chakra registers the same thing regardless — am I held right now? Infrastructure is fragile in any bond. Friends move, people change. What's real is the felt quality of the encounter. You're describing what it takes to see clearly: slow down, watch, notice. Your instinct that we already know what connection needs is bigger than any single technology question.
— Iman and Darja
“Connection isn’t complicated.” We’re being sold water by the party responsible for, quite literally, dehydrating the planet. We have the recipe, we have the ingredients. We don’t need the utensils we’re being sold, we can cook with our hands. I think I’ve effectively stretched the metaphor to its limits so will leave it there.