communication

How to Love Your Partner the Way They Want to Be Loved

As much as being in love can feel like a natural state we either experience or don’t, we have a lot more say in it than we may think. Research has shown that taking more loving actions can make couples feel more in love. In this way, there’s a great deal of truth to the… Read more »

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Advice From a Mother of the Bride

My daughter was married last month, which, in sitting down to write this blog, made me think: what advice could I offer her (and her partner) about committing to a longterm relationship and being married? What have I learned from the 40-plus years that I’ve been married? What have I learned from studying psychology and… Read more »

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Why We Must Keep Nurturing Connection

If these past 18 months have forced us to evaluate anything, it’s the importance of connection. Be it through new technologies, outdoor activities, or the little pods we’ve packed into to stay safe, we’ve all had to find creative ways to make connection work in a world of social distancing. Nurturing our relationships is one… Read more »

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3 Steps to Sustaining a Loving Relationship

A good relationship is all about connection, not just the one we feel when we first fall for someone, but the one we shape over time as we learn to share our lives with another person. For most couples, struggles tend to exist in the spaces where partners have either drifted apart or become fused… Read more »

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Why Do Couples Fall in and Out of Love?

“Falling in love is natural… sustaining love is unnatural. Sustaining love requires psychology, art and discipline.” ~Warren Farrell As a therapist who works with couples, I find this blog title to be the most compelling question faced by those in long-term love relationships. Why do most relationships lose that sense of promise and excitement and… Read more »

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Don’t Give Up Hope: Using Acceptance & Enthusiasm to Heal Our Troubled World

I’m sure people from every generation have felt this way, but I’m worried. From my perspective, the state of the world is troubled. It feels worse to me than any other point I can remember. Even setting aside the menace of climate change, headlines are frightening. Animosity and violence are looming large. More than ever,… Read more »

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How to Stop Feeling Triggered by Your Partner

In my last blog, I wrote about some of the psychological reasons we get triggered by our partner in a relationship. I explored why tensions can rise so quickly, and things can feel heated before either person has a chance to understand what’s going on. These conflicts can be fraught enough for some people to… Read more »

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How To Create Healthy Boundaries That Work for You

You have an important deadline at work. But you had to take your car to the shop. You skip breakfast and catch a ride to work. By noon your stomach is churning. On your way to lunch, your boss stops you to take care of something urgent. What do you do? We depend on our… Read more »

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How to Fall Back in Love with Your Partner

It’s perfectly normal to have times when you feel more or less in love with your partner. Yet, it’s painful to have lulls in a relationship that leave you feeling hopeless or questioning its future. At these times, even if you have lists of issues you know are causing problems with your partner, it can… Read more »

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Top 10 Effective Communication Techniques for Couples

Good communication skills are the keys to any successful relationship because relationships are emotional and rely on interpersonal verbal and nonverbal exchanges between the two people involved.  Most marriages start out with the idea of success not realizing the number one cause of divorce is bad communication.  In cases of parenting and co-parenting, communication is… Read more »

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