---
title: Ignite and Settle
slug: ignite-and-settle
subtitle: Three essays on companionship, attachment, and getting close
date: 2026-06-28T20:00:00+08:00
description: >
  Three interlocking long-form essays: the quality and time of companionship, avoidant attachment, anxious attachment. You can enter from any of the three. Read together, they form one map.
type: columns
---

This column has only three essays — but they form a single map.

The first asks the most often-misanswered question about companionship: between quality and time, which matters more. The answer is not in the options. They are two different systems — one ignites, the other settles. From there it lands on the most common and least recognised move of all: why we turn away just as we come close.

The second goes to look at how the one who turns away is made — avoidant attachment, its soil, its underlying beliefs, its path of repair.

The third is its mirror, and its sibling: anxious attachment. It looks opposite to avoidant, but bites tight to the previous one at the bottom. Together the two essays are one complete picture.

You can enter from any of the three. But if you have the patience, reading 1, 2, 3 in order is closer to assembling a map.
