intimacy issues

How to Deal with Jealousy

No one enjoys feeling jealous. Yet, jealousy is an inevitable emotion that pretty much every one of us will experience. The problem with jealousy isn’t that it comes up from time to time, but what it does to us when we don’t get a hold on it.  It can be frightening to experience what happens… Read more »

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Trust Issues: Why Is It So Hard for Some People to Trust?

It is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.                                                                           ~ H. L. Menken… Read more »

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How to Tell if You’re in the Wrong Relationship

I’m a big believer in relationships. I don’t often encounter couples for whom I think the outlook is hopeless. Granted, some relationships are bad for both parties. What attracts people to one another can be the very defenses that hold them back in life, for instance, the shy, indecisive person who chooses a loud, dominant… Read more »

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Are You Sabotaging Your Relationship?

Most of us treat love like an external force. It’s something that happens to us, strikes us like an arrow or overcomes us like a storm. There is a problem with thinking of love this way, and that is that it can slant our focus outward. It overlooks our own sense of power and leaves… Read more »

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5 Things to Try Before You Give Up on Your Relationship

It’s a pretty common consensus that love takes work. Yet, 80 percent of Americans under 30 believe in a soulmate, the idea that there is one perfect person out there just waiting to be found. Even the expression “falling in love” makes it sound like love is out of our hands — that it just happens… Read more »

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Why Do So Many People Respond Negatively to Being Loved?

Love — kindness, affection, sensitive attunement, respect, companionship — is not only difficult to find, but is even more challenging for many people to accept and tolerate.  In my work with individuals and couples, I have observed countless examples of people reacting angrily when loving responses were directed toward them. One man felt a flash… Read more »

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Why Am I Still Single? 8 Reasons People Often Stay Single

Clearly, some people are single because they choose to be. They are simply not interested in being in a serious relationship at this time in their life. Others are single due to the circumstances of their lives. They may have just gotten out of a meaningful relationship or have dated relentlessly and just haven’t found… Read more »

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The Real Reason You’re Not Married

Whether it’s those lurking peak wedding months or the daily talk of royal nuptials, marriage is a subject we’re hearing a lot about lately. Feelings about this trend seem to range from wild enthusiasm to mild resentment. Forgetting for a minute the adversity surrounding the institution of marriage and setting all ceremony aside, stripped down… Read more »

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How to Not Lose the "Me" When Becoming a "We"

Typical relationship scenario: You start out feeling like the very best version of yourself that you have ever been and before you know it, you are digging around in the relationship looking for some remnant of that person you were when you fell in love. “Where did I put that person? Where is that “Me”?… Read more »

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A Happy Couple Makes for Happy Kids

Everyone knows that a happy marriage makes for a happier you but most don’t stop to ponder the psychological implications of a happy marriage for the children. Being loved by your partner and loving your partner in return makes you a happier, more cheerful being and this happiness is indubitably contagious. “The happiness and security… Read more »

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