"Coupling" has always been a particularly weak word for the software problems to which it's been applied, IMO. After all, when you connect 2 Legos together you couple them.
"Complicate" was a candidate, but is decidedly unsatisfying. It just means "make complex", saying nothing more about how; nor about what it means to be complex. For many people, simply adding more stuff is to "complicate", and that was another presumption I wanted to get away from. There is also some intention in "complicate", as in, "to mess with something", vs the insidious complexity that arises from our software knitting.
I wanted to get at the notion of folding/braiding directly, but saying "you braided the software, dammit!" doesn't quite work :)