ABOUT ROMCONNED
RomConned is a true-crime series about crime inside relationships.
Because some of the most consequential crimes don't begin with a stranger in a dark alley.
They begin with someone you trust.
A partner. A date. A spouse. A person on the other side of a screen. Someone who learns what you want, what you fear, what you need — and gains access to your life through intimacy.
RomConned examines the behavioral patterns behind romance scams, fraud, coercive control, stalking, domestic violence, emotional exploitation, and other crimes where relationships become part of the mechanism.
Created and hosted by Human Connection Researcher and Relationships & Behavioral Dynamics Expert Laurel House, RomConned combines real stories, documented cases, lived experience, and expert analysis to understand not only what happened—but how it happened.
Because “Why didn't they just leave?” and “How could they fall for that?” are usually the wrong questions.
The better question is: What happened inside that relationship that made the abnormal begin to feel normal?
Laurel House
Human Connection Researcher
&
Relationships & Behavioral Dynamics Expert
Laurel House examines where relationships and crime intersect—where trust, intimacy, attachment, and access can become part of the mechanism.
A Human Connection Researcher and Relationships & Behavioral Dynamics Expert, Laurel translates complex relational behavior into patterns people can recognize in real life.
For six years, Laurel has contributed to eharmony’s relationship research by identifying emerging dating and relationship trends, helping shape subjects for consumer studies, interpreting findings, and translating the results into recognizable human behavior. She is a five-time published author with more than 15 years of experience working directly with dating, relationships, attraction, communication, and relational decision-making.
Laurel originated PrioriDating, a values-based dating framework featured by Cosmopolitan and discussed by Ryan Seacrest on air as a “low-key revolutionary” approach to finding lasting love.
Laurel is also the creator of the Intimacy Types and Relationship Intelligence frameworks. As Director of Relationship Intelligence for E3 Matchmaking, she created a deeper behavioral layer within the traditional matchmaking process—using relationship assessment, Intimacy Typing, compatibility analysis, pre-date strategy, and post-date evaluation to examine not merely who someone wants to meet, but who they can successfully build a relationship with.
As creator and host of RomConned, Laurel follows those dynamics further inside the relationship. Through survivor accounts, expert interviews, case analysis, and behavioral frameworks, she examines how trust is built, what changes, what people adapt to, what becomes normalized, and how confusion, manipulation, exploitation, abuse, fraud, or crime can develop.
Laurel has also lived the questions she investigates. Having been RomConned herself, she understands what betrayal feels like before the complete pattern is visible—and why behavior that looks obvious in hindsight often felt entirely different while the relationship was being lived forward.
Her work spans the relationship continuum: how connection begins, how it develops, how it functions, and what its patterns eventually reveal.
RESEARCH & APPLIED WORK
Laurel’s work draws from consumer relationship research, more than 15 years of direct professional practice, emerging cultural behavior, relationship assessment, survivor and expert interviews, and continuing case analysis.
These sources do not all carry the same evidentiary weight. RomConned distinguishes among published research, documented case facts, professional interpretation, lived experience, and developing conceptual frameworks.
EHARMONY
Laurel identifies emerging dating and relationship trends, contributes ideas and language for consumer studies, interprets findings, and translates research into recognizable relationship behavior.
E3 MATCHMAKING
Laurel applies Relationship Intelligence and Intimacy Typing at the inception of attraction—before introductions, during developing connections, and after dates—to assess compatibility behaviorally and refine matchmaking decisions.
ROMCONNED
Laurel examines relationships through the behavioral progression:
Attraction → Connection → First Shift → Adaptation → Normalization → Escalation → Outcome
Her method asks what was documented, what was reported, what changed, what repeated, what could reasonably have been understood while the relationship was being lived forward, and what became visible only in hindsight.
*Intimacy Types and Relationship Intelligence are original applied frameworks developed by Laurel House. They are not clinical diagnoses or scientifically validated psychological assessments. Laurel has proposed them to eharmony as potential emerging trends and subjects for future exploration; eharmony has not announced their adoption or validation.