Relationships

Relationships

She met him at work, and he has been known to jump from woman to woman there. I've heard that her fiancé will date women in his office and then all of a sudden start ignoring them-speaking to everyone around them but giving them the silent treatment. One woman already quit her job over how he treated her. Another chewed him out but says she won't give him the "satisfaction"

My sons are married and live quite a distance from me. I try to visit several times a year because I want to see my grandchildren as often as I can. Sometimes I stay with them; other times I rent an Airbnb. The problem is that I am a neat-nut. When I'm at their house, I empty full sinks of dishes, clean bathrooms, sweep floors, polish mirrors/windows, dust furniture, etc. I'll even do laundry if they want.

My ex got paid under the table by his parents' large family business, and used this to avoid child support for almost six years. This situation was kind of an open secret in our area. My ex's brother started doing the same thing a few years ago. It sucked, but there wasn't much I could do about it because I was broke and trying to tread water for my kids after the divorce.

What's being referred to as "Shrekking" on social media may seem a little ogre the top. It's the practice of purposely dating down-meaning dating someone whom you consider below your standards-so that you can have the upper hand in the relationship. The belief is that the other person should be so grateful to have you and therefore will keep going extra miles to keep you happy.

"I just had this conversation with my mother, who's been married for 30-plus years. Here's what she wants and needs to feel pursued." "Emotional safety, consistently. A messy house and a lack of flowers are neither here nor there. She wishes that she could go to her husband and say 'this thing is really bothering me,' and him not exploding (even on her behalf, not necessarily at her) and just being another thing she has to mitigate.

Seventeen years ago, when my now-husband proposed to me, he gave me a small Our 10th anniversary came and went. I reminded my husband about the ring, but we had some significant expenses at the time, and ended up prioritizing an anniversary trip over gifts. I've tried to have a good attitude about this, but in recent years, it's started to hurt my feelings.

I'd clocked him as I walked up to the restaurant. Well dressed, not Irish. Nice tattoos. What did you talk about? Having quickly established that we are both from the same part of London, we ascertained that we'd had the same driving instructor as teenagers (shoutout to Ollie). We also talked about recent plays we've seen, our tattoos and their meanings, trainspotting (the actual activity) and the fact I've been reading this column religiously since I was seven.

Touch is one of the most important ways people communicate nonverbally. If you know someone who's a "touchy-feely person," you've probably had the experience of pulling away once in a while when you feel your personal space has been invaded. However, there are many times when a touch is comforting, especially if you're going through a difficult life situation. The Nature of Touch Aversion For some individuals, even an occasional expression of sympathy and support through physical contact can be intolerable.

They broke an agreement that you made together and took advantage of you by not contributing at all to the cost of the trip. They should be ashamed of themselves! You have every right to speak to them about this. Remind them that you all agreed on the travel plans and the sharing of costs. They reneged. When you offered to let them ride with you anyway, they should have at least contributed to gas and tolls.

And there is certainly truth to that, but it is only part of the picture. The real value of connecting with others does not lie in how many business cards you collect or how many LinkedIn connections you can boast about. It lies in the depth of those relationships, in the human bonds you create when you meet someone without a hidden agenda.

Healthy intimate relationships require that both partners see each other and love what they see. Sometimes, needy individuals see what they want to see in others, rather than seeing who they really are. This causes them to frequently experience and express disappointment with their partners. If your partner is chronically disappointed with you, you are in an unhealthy relationship that is harmful to your mental health.

I was twenty-two when I pulled my car across six lanes of traffic in Delaware. I should've made a right, circled around, and waited for the light. Instead, I aimed straight for the median, a shortcut I'd taken a dozen reckless times before. Headlights came at me fast. Then the slam: metal folding into metal, my body flung sideways, glass exploding. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. If I had been, I believe the door would have cut me in half.

My previous posts on agreements between relationship partners have focused on sexual agreements, the rules or understandings couples form related to sex with partners outside their relationship (Cain & Starks, 2024). Almost two decades of research has examined the types of sexual agreements couples form, challenges with sexual agreement formation, and associations between sexual agreements and sexual behavior outcomes (most notably sexual HIV transmission risk, use of sexual risk reduction strategies, and drug use). Our recent paper (Starks & Cain, 2025), published in Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, extends this work on behavioral agreements to substance use.

I am unemployed right now, so I try to be mindful of my expenses and always account for my necessities first. My friend reached out and invited me to a private dinner party at her home and requested $200 for attendance. That would cover the cost of the private chef and some other things. I couldn't spend that kind of money on a party. I explained to her that I could not afford to be there, and since then, she's been cold.

Three to five years from now, probably sooner than that, honestly, it will feel relatively arcane to feel like you had to go through hundreds of profiles, if not more, in order to get out on a date,

"Golf was how I bonded with my stepdad after I lost my biological father when I was young," Carson wrote on Instagram. "It was where we had uninterrupted quality time to talk, share & learn about each other. It was the backdrop where he taught me about life." One of his most cherished memories with his stepdad was a weekend golf trip to California. "I never forgot it."

Dear Good Job, My married best friend introduced me, a single and long divorced woman, to one of her single and long divorced male clients, to discuss working together on one of my projects. After knowing him professionally for a year, he asked me out on a date. I was delighted. We hit it off. And we have been seeing each other every week ever since. This does not sit well with my bestie at all!

Now she's feeling optimistic about her reconstruction and new breasts, and we've slowly started getting back into things. I feel horrible, but her breasts don't feel the same anymore, and it's really throwing me off during sex. Everything feels off in turn, and then I guilt myself for even caring about something as unimportant as a change in her body, after everything we've been through. How do I move past this and give her the enthusiasm she so deserves?

Numerous studies over the last decade have shown the negative impacts of the invisible burden of confronting racism on interracial couples. A recent study, conducted in 2024, showed that interracial couples were, on average, more likely to experience discrimination, higher perceived stress, more depressive symptoms, and worse overall self-rated health compared to White couples due to the impact of discrimination.

Sure, it's possible. It'll be even more likely to happen if your friend and her boyfriend have an honest, frank conversation about their wants and the details of their individual timetables. While it might seem obvious that, after 20 years, he should want to propose, especially considering he's already designed a dream wedding, the only way to find out what he's really thinking is talking to him about it. This is also the only way for your friend to let him know what she's thinking.

When it gets close to my menstrual cycle, he gets into an angry panic for us to be intimate because he travels for work and is home only four nights a week. If we're not able to, he pouts, then becomes angry and distant, and peppers me for updates to determine how soon we can resume intimacy. Regardless of how I feel at my time of the month, my feelings are ignored.

Most textbooks and self-help manuals about communication are based on models that are seldom about what is between and beyond the interactions of individuals. There is assertiveness training, refuting irrational thoughts, conflict resolution, and so on. All without the infinitely wider contextual applications of living. Adversarial disagreements and polarization are at a high level, and couples therapists are overloaded with the presenting problem of "They are having communication discord."

The internet is frothing. This time, over Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's engagement, a spectacle reminding us how celebrities function as wish machines. Us normies ride shotgun, living vicariously through the highest peaks and, at times, the lowest valleys, making up for our own grayscale lives. But, while Taylor and Travis are about as mainstream as you can get, in the 1990s there was a celebrity couple who catered for the eccentrics, misfits, and outsiders.

She wants to see me have sex with another woman while she watches. I kind of want to try it, but I am afraid that she will ask for something else in return, e.g., sex with another man while I watch. She hasn't said this, but a few years ago, she let me go down on her friend, and for us to be equal, she went down on my friend, who's a man. She gets turned on by this voyeurism fetish.

Just the prospect of interacting with that person can be unpleasant or feel draining. There is a powerful tool that is often counterintuitive for quickly shifting your approach with such people and finding opportunities for breakthroughs. After making this shift it becomes possible to communicate effectively and in a more positive way with them. And you tend to find them much less annoying.