#relationships

#relationships

My father was a Marine during WWII. He was a tough taskmaster in the home and always insisted we be awake and dressed by 8:30 a.m. on weekends, weekdays without school, and during the summer (unless we were legitimately sick). While a bit harsh at times, I've kept this habit as I've aged. It gets you up and moving, productive and prepared in case someone pops by or a service tech is expected. I schedule all my appointments as early as possible. The end of the day is another story. Bring on the soft pants and relaxation!

The play is a two-hander starring Clive Owen (Closer) and Saskia Reeves (Catherine Standish in Slow Horses) as Alfie and Julie, a successful Gen X couple both aged 59 and living in Highgate. The ninety minute one-act play has the couple wrestling with the emotional turmoil caused by Alfie's terminal cancer diagnosis as they try to negotiate their way through this ultimate disruption to their comfortable life.

I realized that I still loved her and knew this would be our final goodbye. Then I experienced a feeling, a new feeling I had never felt before, about her. Although she had left me three times and I had spent the past 18 months convinced that, for that reason, we had no stable future together, I realized that all of that emanated from my mind and that my heart had never stopped loving her.

Next: different walks around different parks with different friends, each with the same feeling of being warmed from the inside out; also, bumping into neighbours at the playground and feeling a part of my community. I remember powerful moments with my patients, who have felt understood, by me and within themselves. And I think of the moving messages from readers who have got in touch, sharing precious stories from their lives.

We are listening to more than music. In addition to music, SiriusXM, a satellite radio company, provides sports talk, news, talk shows, and podcasts. As of 2024, SiriusXM boasted 150 million listeners. As of 2025, 4,509,765 podcasts have been registered around the world, with Apple alone hosting 2,800,138. In the United States, over 200 million people have listened to a podcast at least once, and 158 million consume podcasts on a monthly basis.

The Sun is a major arcana card that represents big themes like happiness, optimism, and contentment, as well as a sense of confidence and youthfulness. In the days ahead, don't be surprised if you find yourself thriving more than you'd think. When this card appears in a tarot reading, it suggests you'll be in a good mood, and you might even have some extra energy to... I don't know... go out on a Wednesday night?

She thinks it is just fine to kiss it right on the nose, repeatedly. She basically kisses it, and makes this "om nom nom" noise while doing so. I think it's gross, and she thinks my reaction is funny. I honestly feel ill when she does this, and can't stand the thought of kissing her afterward unless she washes up first. She thinks that makes me a loon.

When we're under a lot of stress, our brains do something fascinating and often harmful to our relationships: They shift into scarcity mode. Often, people think of a scarcity mindset only as something related to our finances and resources: We don't have enough money, food, or time. But scarcity mindset, or the general belief that there isn't enough, impacts people in every area: their skills, their worth, their general capacity in life.

"Parallel play is when two people do unrelated things together in one space at the same time without really talking to each other," Monica Lynne, a relationship and sex therapist with the dating app Flirtini, told HuffPost. "In romantic relationships, it shows two partners can be in the same space, do their own thing and remain connected through attunement to each other."

But I managed to access my inner professional by simply showing curiosity and asking, "What story are you telling yourself about why he is doubling his efforts to help out?" She replied, "It makes me think that he feels I'm incompetent and that he can do it better than me. I think it's his job to support our family, and mine is to be responsible for all things related to our home."

And while these factors are good enough to bring two people together, love alone is not strong enough to keep a relationship healthy and thriving. A partner who does not respect you can quickly turn the relationship dynamic unhealthy in many ways. You might still feel deeply for each other, and love may be present, but without respect, boundaries get crossed, and conflicts only escalate instead of being resolved.

I sat in my therapist's office and said the words out loud for the first time: "That lightning isn't there." I was talking about Vanessa. About how when she touched me there was this comfort and calm I hadn't felt before. It lingered. It confused the hell out of me. Every relationship before her? Lightning. That activated, can't-eat-can't-sleep, my-stomach-is-in-knots feeling. The kind of intensity that made me feel alive. The kind I thought was proof we were meant to be.

Have you ever frustratingly mumbled to your partner that it "must be nice to have a partner who walks the dog" in hopes of them walking the dog more often? Or have you ever sighed that you'll "just do the errands alone" even though you don't want to? Turns out, you may be dry begging, a tool that people use in relationships of all sorts to get their needs met.

When couples come to us for therapy, they usually want the same thing: fewer fights, less hurt, more harmony. They imagine that the healthiest relationships are the ones with the least conflict. But that's not how love actually works. The goal isn't the absence of conflict (rupture)-it's how we use the conflict to repair-create and sustain meaningful connection. In our book, Love. Crash. Rebuild, we teach every couple two unexpectedly simple rules.

Call me crazy, but I think that you can make a point of ending your relationship in a manner that does not include an email, a doorman, or a missing person's report. I think you could all get over your fear of looking like the bad guy and actually have the uncomfortable breakup conversation. Because here's what, avoiding that is what makes you the bad guy.

I once completely lost my voice, on a flight from New York to London, and spent the next week having to communicate through gestures and mime. Without a voice, it became difficult for me to express what I thought or felt or needed. For humans, the voice acts as a fundamental tool for communicating a spectrum of meaning, emotion, and intention to others.

But by the episode's last act, Joanne has realized that Noah can't maintain his faith and be with her if she won't commit to conversion. "You can't have both, and I would never make you choose," she tells him tearfully over the din of his niece Miriam's bat mitzvah. And so she dumps him - it's the most painless way to move forward - until the episode's final two minutes, when the pair run back into each other's arms once more.

Contrary to popular belief, smaller, quieter relationship habits are the ones that do most of the heavy lifting in sustaining intimacy, rather than lofty promises. And one of the most underappreciated of these is the act of "kind defaults." It's the reflexive, baseline you adopt toward your partner in everyday moments of life. Attachment patterns, communication styles, and conflict resolution often take center stage when discussing the fate of a relationship.

I lied when I told her on our first date that I had watched Once Upon a Time. She was amazing, and I wanted to have some immediate connection to her, so I said I had seen it, but fewer episodes than she had. I then proceeded to binge an entire show in less than a month (mind you, a show that would normally never cross my radar) so I could talk about it with her. We are getting married in a few months, and I'm debating confessing it in my speech during the reception.

I've been single for a long time, and while I'd like to share my life with someone, the idea of sharing my space with anyone other than my cat makes me a little antsy. It's not that I don't want a partner - that's different. But the thought of truly merging lives and being part of each other's day-to-day, all day, forever? That feels a little claustrophobic.