Tom Holland just said the silent part out loud. He is married to Zendaya. He called her his person. He said he was the happiest he had ever been.
And the internet melted, as it should. These two have been the most quietly devoted couple in the Marvel circuit for years. No messy runner drama, no cryptic Instagram unfollows, just two people who seem to be stable around each other.
So why, when I read his quote, did I feel a little therapist-slick of protection for them?
Because “I found my person, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been” is one of the most beautiful and precarious sentences a human being can say out loud. I hear it all the time in my office. Usually about a year before the first real match.
The biology behind “my person”
Here’s what actually happens when Tom says that about Zendaya. He is not poetic. He describes a biological event.
Attachment theory is the best theory we have about what love is. And in short, love is the need to be emotionally attached to another person. According to that theory, everyone needs this. From cradle to grave, it’s not optional, no matter how good your Netflix subscription is.
When you were born, you didn’t just need food and shelter. You needed a good enough other on the other side of your birth, someone who would be there for you and show you that you were enough. Without it you would be dead. That cord doesn’t go away when you grow up. It just transfers.
For Tom, Zendaya is now that person. His entire organism is constantly scanning her and asking two questions. Are you there for me? And am I enough for you?
This is what “I found my person” actually means. He has installed her as his primary attachment figure. Which is nice. And that is also why the effort just quietly paid off for both of them.
During the honeymoon period, everything your partner says and does feels like further proof of “I’m loved, I’ll be loved forever, I knew this day would come.” You both live in an elevated state, sure you will feel that way forever.
And then something inevitably changes.
The buffalo took no notice
In my office, I see this transition happening over the most mundane imaginable.
You ride along in the car. You say to your spouse, “Hey, look at that buffalo over there.” And they don’t respond. Or they pull the rug towards themselves a little too quickly and you think, what did you do?
That’s it. This is the moment. The first small tear in the honeymoon fabric. Your nervous system clocks it before your brain does and suddenly your partner asks where did you go, are you mad at me? Your partner asks the same questions about you.
Couples are constantly in these cycles with each other. Most of the time, people only notice when it escalates into something resembling a fight. But it has happened all the time, in the same way that young children check in with a parent across a playground. Mom, are you there? where are you now
The more one of you feels abandoned, the more you reject the other person. The more rejected they feel, the harder it is for them to show up and love you. So you feel more abandoned, so you reject some more. This is where most couples get stuck, and it has nothing to do with whether they are each other’s person. They are. That’s exactly why it hurts.
If you want find out your relationship pattern before the first big break finds you, I’d rather you do it now than at 2am after the fight you didn’t see coming.
Interruption is a feature, not a bug
Here’s the thing I wish someone had told Tom and Zendaya at the wedding, and that I tell every couple sitting on my couch in the light of their love.
Disconnection between two people who love each other is a feature, not a bug. Everyone walks around acting like the interruption is something gone wrong, a mistake to squash. It isn’t. Disconnection is proof that you actually love each other and that you scare each other because you mean so much.
Your worst fights with your partner only happen because you love them so much and they love you back. The fight is a wild miscommunication of that love. The only reason people do the painful dance is because they both hurt inside, both feel unloved at the moment.
And here’s something milder I want Tom to hear. If you truly believe the goal is for you to become your fully authentic self in every corner of your life and never scare your partner, you’re going to struggle. You’re guaranteed to scare the living daylights out of Zendaya at some point just by being you. She is guaranteed to do the same to you. There is a whole the science behind trapping and the way couples accidentally try to cope with this by becoming too fused, and that doesn’t save you from the scary part. Nothing does. The scary part is the price of admission for love.
The part of you that needs love the most is not a weak or needy part. It is the best part of you and it deserves love.
What being his person really asks of her, and her of him
So if the disconnect is coming for Tom and Zendaya, what’s the real draw?
Give up the dream of never fighting again. Good relationships are not defined by the amount of good times you have. They are defined by how good you each become at giving yourselves and each other a chance to repair.
When you struggle, try to see it through a lens of attachment. Do you see your own responsiveness as driven by the need to be important to your partner, or the need to be enough for them? If you can, you will realize that you only fight because you love each other. Nothing else happens. That reframe, repeated over a thousand little moments, is what actually keeps a marriage alive.
Repair is the proof. Not the absence of breakage. The return.
One more thing to the happiest he’s ever been
Tom, if you ever read this, congratulations. You really found her. And the day she does something small that knocks the wind out of you, or you do it to her, that’s not the end of love. It is love that becomes real.
The happiest you’ve ever been isn’t a finish line you crossed at the altar. It’s something you’ll build over and over again, every time one of you reaches back over the interruption and says, I’m here, come back.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Figs O’Sullivan, the founder of Empathy and his wife, Teal, are couples therapists in San Francisco, relationship experts to the Stars and Silicon Valley, founders of Empathy and built Figlet, our AI relationship coachan AI relationship coach trained in their clinical work.
