I’ve come to the realization that most of us don’t allow ourselves to feel joy most days. Sure, maybe on some kind of big occasion, we’ll let ourselves run around …
How to Actually Follow Through on the Relationship Advice You Get
You could read a dozen articles to improve your love life, but if you don’t use any of it, why bother? Here’s how to put that good advice to use. …
How I Survived Wedding Season in My First Year of Sobriety
There’s more to weddings than an open bar. It just took giving up alcohol for me to realize it. Weddings are for partying. I learned this much at my first …
How People Want to Feel Determines If Others Can Influence Their Emotions
New Stanford research on emotions shows that people’s motivations are a driving factor behind how much they allow others to influence their feelings, such as anger. In a new study, …
What Happens to Your Body When You’re Thinking?
What happens to your body when you’re thinking? You might think that is a simple question to answer: a thought is just words in your brain that cause you to …
Sleep Training My Child Almost Put My Marriage to Bed
The baby was screaming. We were screaming. Something had to change. It was 3:24 a.m. when my wife finally lost her cool as the indignant screams of our 1-year-old son …
Sharing Passwords Is Romantic, But Not Without Risk
Some couples see sharing online passwords as a symbol of love and trust. But technology experts say there are both personal and legal risks to password sharing. In a new …
Moving Past the Betrayal: How to Rebuild Trust in Your Relationship
Trust in an intimate relationship is rooted in feeling safe with another person. Infidelity, lies, or broken promises can severely damage the trust between a husband and wife. That, however, …
Making the Decision to End Your Marriage
How to know when divorce is the right move If you’re thinking about ending your marriage, you’re likely facing one of the most difficult decisions of your adult life. Many …
8 Tips for Coping When Your Partner Is Unfaithful
Finding out that your partner has been unfaithful can hit you like a ton of bricks. Your marriage may be thrown into a state of crisis that may destroy it. …
The Benefits of Couples Therapy While Separated
Love is a top priority when thinking about entering into a long-term committed relationship. In fact, 88 percent of Americans report that love is the most important reason to consider …
How to Deal with Feeling Bad About Your Feelings
New research explores how “meta-emotions” work, such as feeling sad about feeling anxious. For a moment he felt good about this. A moment or two later he felt bad about …
A Case For Spending Time In The Counselor’s Office
John Jay Osborn is a screenwriter and novelist who often mines his own life for material. In 1970, he based the book The Paper Chase on his time in law …
Can Gratitude Help Couples Through Hard Times?
New research suggests that thanking our partners for supporting us through hardship may increase their joy and satisfaction in giving. When my best friend went through multiple surgeries and dislocations …
Can You Affect Another Person’s Behavior With Your Thoughts?
Do you think that the private thoughts in your head could influence how other people — or creatures — act? The answer is “Of course not,” right? Because to say …
How Seeing Good in People Can Help Bridge Differences
When we witness acts of goodness, we’re more likely to see our common humanity. Americans seem awfully divided these days. Everywhere I look, I see signs of antagonism and conflict …
Does your job suck? It Might Be Missing Two Ingredients
Let’s be honest: For many people, work sucks. But for others, work is an adventure. The difference doesn’t always lie in the nature of the work. Two different people can …
Sense of Smell & Sexual Attraction
Scent plays an often under-appreciated role in sexual attraction, helping to account for why visual attractiveness alone can’t explain just how physically attractive a person is perceived to be. But …
Study Finds Women Over Estimate & Men Underestimate Advances
Imagine that, during a quiet evening at home watching a movie with your romantic partner, you feel intense sexual desire and sensually put a hand on your partner’s thigh. Your …
How to Know if You’ve Married the Wrong Person
Christine Carter has clearly married the wrong man—again. Or did she? When my first marriage failed, I wanted desperately to fall in love and start again. I wanted to show …
The Psychological Dynamics When A Couple Changes A Habit Together
Changing an unhealthy habit depends a lot on your belief that you can do it, something psychologists call self-efficacy. Take smoking, for example. Your belief that you are capable of …
How Online Dating Shapes Our Relationships
It’s peak online dating season. According to Match.com, late December through Valentine’s Day is the busiest time of the year for dating apps and sites. It’s sometimes called “cuffing season” …
Rethinking Infidelity
Couples therapist Esther Perel is an expert in cheating. She’s spent the past six years of her career focusing on couples who are dealing with infidelity — and she’s heard …
Love at First sight Might Really Be Lust at First Sight
We’re sorry to spoil the mood music, but a new paper in Personal Relationships – one of the first attempts to study this phenomenon scientifically – concludes that while believing …
Nobody Knows What The Hell They Are Doing
There’s an old puzzle that philosophers like to ponder: how could you ever be certain that anyone else has a mind at all? The truth is that you can’t. Ultimately, …
We Expect Too Much From Our Romantic Partners
A new book explores how marriage has changed in recent years, and why that’s made staying married harder. Tall, dark, handsome, funny, kind, great with kids, six-figure salary, a harsh …
The Benefits of Shared Media For Close Relationships
My wife and I were ridiculously excited about watching the recent season finale of Game of Thrones together – we’d watched all the previous 66 episodes together too, and the …
Fear Of Rejection Isn’t About Them — It’s About You
I started to work with Ashley, a successful 36-year-old entrepreneur, soon after her husband asked her for a divorce and moved out. Ashley was shattered by the end of her …
Couples Therapy
Couples counseling helps partners experience their relationship differently by better understanding one another, creating consideration and respect within the relationship, and working to regulate conflicts. Couples therapy can provide a …