HI. I'm Kristen.
You probably know a hundred other women just like me. I’m a Midwestern-raised church-going mid-thirties millennial turned single mom. I adopted Southern California as my home straight out of grad school over a decade ago, though I still see my parents and siblings regularly. I’m a brand consultant and graphic designer by day, an author and podcaster by night. I never tire of being blindsided by new truths about myself. I love uncovering the surprising outcomes of my experiments in life and love.
At least, those are the self-definitions that feel true today. Don't hold me to them.
My plan was the same as many other girls growing up in the suburbs of Chicago: work hard in school, find success, and marry a good man. While they served me well in my studies, my analytic mind and apparent lack of a sexual compass meant that I struggled to understand the romantic rules that seemed to come so naturally to everyone around me. My relationships were chronically misunderstood, and the message I received loud and clear was that I was doing it wrong.
The wonderful result of this, however, is that my attempts to satisfy my overthinker’s curiosity in this grand human experiment we call ‘love’ has turned my entire life into a Love Lab. By approaching life as a never-finished series of experiments, I’ve discovered that the apparent chaos of the daily life (most notably, human relationship) need not be kryptonite to we orderly, controlled overthinkers. If we accept the freedom that comes with being masterfully misunderstood, we get to stop defining ourselves, our intimate relationships, and those around us and instead fully discover them as they are here and now.
"Definitions are getting so specific that soon we'll be able to recognize the commonality of our individuality."
Life (& Love) is a succession of small experiments.
My fellow overthinkers, overplanners, and do-it-right-ers: we are awesome. Our skill sets are the envy of all. We are the people who get sh*t done, who turn vague ideas into actionable steps, who make the world work in an orderly fashion so that everyone else can live in it…that is, so long as our skills of planning are in service of the deliciously unplannable, the shocking curveballs & the wonderfully un-expected, most notable of which is this: LOVE.
Have an experiment you want to launch? Maybe I can help. Let’s talk.
"Maybe the modern definition of heroic is having the bravery to claim every last contradiction of the human experience."
Welcome to the love lab
Feel free to leave your self-definition at the door. In this place we stop defining ourselves so we might discover ourselves, and every good discovery begins with genuine curiosity and a healthy dose of, "I don't know." This is a safe place to not know. It's a place to explore and express who you are in love right now. And when fresh incoming data changes the trajectory of your experiment, it's a place to explore a new hypothesis.
We are pioneers. In a world full of rapidly changing ever-more-fluid understandings of gender and sexuality, we have the opportunity to unsubscribe from our past definitions of love and be curious about what love feels like right now. It's our privileged responsibility to be wholly transparent with ourselves and one another while fully embracing and communicating our individual love style.
What is desire for intimate relationship but a desire to feel fulfilled? Each of us seeks fulfillment in different areas in different priority. And those priorities are in constant flux depending on age, where we are in our lives, our experiences, and whether we wake up on the sexy side of the bed. My interest is in each of us finding and fulfilling our unique versions of loving primary relationship. Let's experiment in love so we can experience our most aligned intimacy.
