Why Psychedelics Make Some Relationships Better (And Others Fall Apart)

The Psychedelic Blog is an independent media brand covering drugs, altered states & the culture surrounding them.

This week: What happens when Psychedelics change the way you see the person you love.

I wrote something about relationships that unexpectedly took off:

The note wasn’t really about Greece, sharks, or even choosing the right partner. It was about something more fundamental: the lens through which we experience the person we’re with.

And that, I think, is where Psychedelics become interesting.

The Messy Middle

In a rare moment of vulnerability, I recently asked a very wise friend of mine:

Have I been single so long it’s become a red flag?

For context, I’ve been single for almost 4 years. But I’ve also been in more than a dozen what I call “mini-relationships”: 2 or 3 months with one person before ultimately realizing there isn’t enough potential for long-term alignment.

Her answer was as insightful as it was reassuring:

No. That’s discernment. You’re dating with intention.

God I love her.

A vast majority of relationship content online comes from 2 camps: people who have been married for decades & people who have turned being single into an identity. There’s not much from those of us occupying the messy middle: dating seriously, falling for people, ending things, occasionally getting our hearts broken & repeatedly trying to figure out what actually makes 2 people work.

On this path, I started noticing something about Psychedelics & relationships.

We talk about Psychedelics as though they improve relationships:

• More empathy
• More vulnerability
• Better sex
• Deeper conversations
• Reconnecting after years of drifting apart

All of that can happen. But I think the more interesting truth is that Psychedelics don’t necessarily make relationships better…they make the lens clearer. Whether you like what you see is another question entirely.

The Stories We Build About Each Other

Long relationships accumulate narrative.

The person sitting across from you is no longer simply the person you fell in love with. They’re also the person who forgot your birthday, leaves dishes in the sink, rejected you sexually last Tuesday, embarrassed you at dinner 3 years ago, or said something during an argument neither of you has completely forgotten.

Enough of those moments accumulate & eventually we stop experiencing the person directly…we experience our history with them.

This happens in the other direction too.

We tell ourselves they’re our person. That every relationship gets stale. That things will improve when work settles down, the kids get older, money gets easier, or life becomes less stressful.

We build stories that keep relationships together just as easily as we build stories that tear them apart.

Psychedelics have an unusual ability to interrupt those stories.

Sometimes, for a few hours, you look across the room & actually see the human being underneath everything that has accumulated between you.

And sometimes you really fucking like that person.

Why Some Relationships Get Better

There’s a reason MDMA-assisted couples therapy has fascinated researchers for decades. Lower the defenses, quiet some of the fear, increase emotional openness & suddenly conversations that normally end in screaming or silence become possible.

And there may be something happening beyond people simply feeling more connected. A recent study of romantic couples found that LSD increased synchrony between their brains, with greater synchrony associated with stronger feelings of connectedness.

Yep, have experienced this personally. LSD with someone you love can create this bizarre feeling that you’re completely locked into the same wavelength. Conversations flow differently, sex can be incredible & there are moments where you feel like you know exactly what the other person is thinking. I always assumed that was simply part of being on LSD together.

I’m usually wary of neuroscience being used to make Psychedelics sound more profound than they are. But finding out that 2 people who feel completely in sync may actually be showing more synchronized brain activity? That’s pretty fucking interesting.

And it doesn’t always need to be MDMA or LSD. Sometimes 2 people take mushrooms together & remember that they actually have fun. Sometimes sex becomes intimate again instead of routine. Sometimes you look at someone you’ve seen every day for 10 years and, for a moment, see them without 10 years of baggage attached. Like you did on your first date.

The relationship didn’t change…the lens did. And occasionally that’s enough to realize how much love was still sitting underneath everything else.

Why Others Fall Apart

Of course, removing the story can reveal something else entirely.

Maybe you’ve spent years telling yourself you’re just going through a rough patch. Maybe you’ve confused familiarity with compatibility. Maybe you love someone deeply but realize you don’t particularly like the life you’ve built together. Maybe the resentment isn’t temporary. Maybe you’ve simply changed.

Psychedelics can make those realizations difficult to ignore. That doesn’t mean the mushrooms told you to get divorced.

I’m deeply skeptical of treating anything experienced on a Psychedelic as unquestionable truth. Altered states can produce profound insight, but they can also produce complete nonsense with extraordinary conviction.

An insight should still make sense Tuesday morning. But sometimes an altered perspective exposes a thought that has been sitting underneath everything else for years.

And once you’ve seen it, pretending you haven’t becomes much harder.

Intensity Is Not Truth

There’s another side to this that Psychedelic culture doesn’t talk about enough: Psychedelics can convince you a mediocre relationship is cosmically ordained.

You take MDMA with someone you’ve been dating for 6 weeks & suddenly you’re soulmates (been there). You eat mushrooms together & become convinced you’ve known each other across 12 lifetimes. You have incredible sex on LSD & decide the universe obviously brought you together.

Maybe…or maybe you’re on drugs. One of the great dangers of altered states is confusing intensity with truth.

The experience can be real, the love can be real, the connection can be real. None of that means the conclusion you draw from it is necessarily correct.

Which is why the most important relationship insights from Psychedelics are probably the ones that remain convincing long after you’ve come down.

The Lens

I keep coming back to that original note.

Two people can go on the exact same date & experience completely different evenings depending on who is sitting beside them.

The shark museum isn’t inherently boring & Greece isn’t inherently romantic. The person changes the experience…but the lens through which we see that person changes it too.

Psychedelics don’t decide whether you’re with the right person. They don’t fix incompatibility, manufacture love, or provide some supernatural relationship diagnostic. They change perspective. Sometimes that perspective lets you see past years of accumulated bullshit & fall in love with the same person again.

Other times it makes it impossible to keep pretending you are.