Staying With Series
Relational Integrity is not a destination, but a stance.
It asks us not to perform ourselves into love, but to stay with the parts of us that can’t yet believe they’re lovable as-is.
Thank you for staying in the room.
Relational Integrity:
The Ethics of Presence
It asks us not to perform ourselves into love, but to stay with the parts of us that can’t yet believe they’re lovable as-is.
Thank you for staying in the room.
Relational Integrity:
The Ethics of Presence
NEW ESSAY/ Sep 2025:
Staying With The Eight Minutes On timetables, small refusals, and the room that learned to travel. and Staying With The Doors That Yielded An alternate cut set in Paris—on entrances, repair, and the lives that climb into our laps. ⸻ Let the clock give shape, not verdict. Decline catastrophe without arguing with it. A right-sized sentence is a small kindness. Stay where the feet are; let the mind arrive. Let the world be exact; I will be gentle. Presence first; then decision. Notice three things; return. Between trains, we still belong. Carry what is yours; don’t confiscate what isn’t. READ THE FULL STORY ▶︎ 
|
About the Series: Staying With Reflections on Relational Integrity What does it mean to stay? Not to fix, not to flee—but to stay. In a world that rewards clarity, speed, and coherence, therapy—and life—often unfold in the opposite direction. In murk. In uncertainty. In the space between rupture and repair, performance and presence, hope and heartbreak. Staying With is a series of long-form essays on the psychology of love, loss, longing, and becoming—written from inside the therapy room and the human heart. It explores the inner architecture of relational life through the lens of Relational Integrity: a framework that centers truth, responsibility, containment, and emotional fidelity in the space between self and other. Each essay is a story. A meditation. A clinical reflection. And an invitation: To linger in the in-between. To meet yourself—and others—without rehearsal. To stay, even when it hurts. |
Esssays
Staying With
|
Staying With
|
About the Author
Nikos Marinos is a clinical psychologist and psychodynamic psychotherapist based in Paris, working with clients internationally. His practice centers on attachment, trauma, and emotional development across the lifespan, with a particular interest in identity, relational rupture, and the ethics of presence.
He is the founder of the Relational Integrity framework and the author of the Staying With essay series, which explores what it means to love, lose, and live in the spaces we cannot always name—but must learn to inhabit.
More at: www.nikosmarinos.com
Contact: [email protected]
Relational Integrity: The Ethics of Presence
Nikos Marinos is a clinical psychologist and psychodynamic psychotherapist based in Paris, working with clients internationally. His practice centers on attachment, trauma, and emotional development across the lifespan, with a particular interest in identity, relational rupture, and the ethics of presence.
He is the founder of the Relational Integrity framework and the author of the Staying With essay series, which explores what it means to love, lose, and live in the spaces we cannot always name—but must learn to inhabit.
More at: www.nikosmarinos.com
Contact: [email protected]
Relational Integrity: The Ethics of Presence