Tom Holland only the quiet part said out loud. He is married Unpleasant Zendaya. He called her his person. He said he is the happiest he has ever been.
And the internet melted, as it should. These two have been the most quietly devoted couple in the Marvel orbit for years. No messy red carpet drama, no cryptic Instagram unfollows, just two people who seem genuinely stable together.
So why, when I read his quote, did I feel a small therapeutic sense of protection for them?
Because “I’ve found my person, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been” is one of the most beautiful and precarious sentences a person can say out loud. I hear it all the time in my office. Usually about a year before the first real fight.
The biology of “my person”
This is 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 connected 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 needed more than just food and shelter. On the other side of your birth, you needed someone else who was good enough, someone who would be there for you and show you that you were enough. Without it you would have died. That wiring doesn’t disappear as you get older. It just gets transferred.
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?
That’s what “I found my person” actually means. He has installed her as his main attachment figure. That’s beautiful. And it’s also why the stakes quietly rose for both of them.
During the honeymoon, everything your partner says and does feels like further proof of “I am loved, I will be cherished forever, I knew this day would come.” You both live in an exalted state and you will definitely feel this way forever.
And then inevitably something changes.
No one noticed the buffalo
In my office I see this transition happening over the most mundane things you can imagine.
You ride in the car. You say to your partner, “Hey, look at that buffalo over there.” And they don’t respond. Or they pull the blanket towards them a little too quickly and you think: what have you done?
That’s it. That’s the moment. The first little tear in the honeymoon fabric. Your nervous system registers 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. Usually people don’t notice until it escalates into something resembling a fight. But it happens all the time, just like little children checking in with a parent on a playground. Mom, are you there? Where are you now?
The more one of you feels abandoned, the more you reject the other. 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 even more. This is where most couples get stuck, and it has nothing to do with being each other’s person. They are. That’s exactly why it hurts.
If you want discover your relationship pattern Before the first big break hits you, I’d rather you do it now than at 2am after the fight you didn’t see coming.
Disconnecting is a feature, not a bug
This is what I wish someone had told Tom and Zendaya at the wedding, and what I tell every couple sitting on my couch in the glow of their love.
A disconnect between two people who love each other is a feature, not a bug. Everyone walks around pretending that the disconnect is something that went wrong, a problem to be squashed. It’s not. A disconnect is proof that you really love each other and that you scare each other because you mean so much.
Your worst arguments with your partner only happen because you love him or her 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 are both hurting inside and both feel unloved at that moment.
And here’s something a little kinder that I want Tom to hear. If you really think you’re meant to be your fully authentic self in every corner of your life and never scare your partner, then you’re going to have a hard time. You’re guaranteed to scare Zendaya at some point just by being yourself. She will definitely do the same to you. There is a whole science behind entanglement and the way couples accidentally try to control this by becoming too melded together, and it doesn’t save you from the scary part. Nothing does that. The scary part is the price of admission to love.
The part of you that needs love the most is not a weak or needy part. It’s the best part of you and it deserves love.
What being his person actually requires of her, and she of him
So if the connection is coming for Tom and Zendaya, what’s the actual move?
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 each of you are at giving yourselves and each other a chance to recover.
When you fight, try to see it through an affirmation lens. Can you see your own reactivity as driven by the need to be important to your partner, or by the need to be enough for him/her? If you can do that, you will realize that you are only fighting because you love each other. There is nothing else going on. That reframing, repeated over a thousand little moments, is what actually keeps a marriage alive.
Repair is the proof. Not the absence of fracture. The return.
One more thing for 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 blows your mind, or you do it to her, is not the end of love. That is the love that becomes real.
The happiest you’ve ever been isn’t the finish line you crossed at the altar. It is something you will build again and again, every time one of you reaches over the disconnection and says, I’m here, come back.
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Fig O’Sullivan, the founder of Empathi and his wife, Teale, are relationship therapists in San Francisco, relationship experts at the Stars and Silicon Valley, founders of Empathi, and built Figlet, our AI relationship coachan AI relationship coach trained in their clinical work.
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