Love is Blind...and Numb? Why You Can't Always Feel When Love Hurts

The fMRI has come in handy for researchers wanting to know more about what happens when we're falling in love. In the past, psychologists had to rely entirely on self-report when trying to understand what people feel from one moment to the next. Now we can take a picture. The advent of fMRI technology makes it easier than ever to see what happens to the brain in love.

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Talk-Free Relationship Fix #56: Self-Care

Want to improve your relationship? Run. Not away, of course. I just mean go for a run. In an earlier post, I wrote about the importance of knowing when to end a conversation. Sometimes, more talk isn’t the best solution to your romantic troubles. When I posted that article, I was already drawing on the considerable evidence that being in a high stress (“fight or flight”) state while discussing your relationship usually does more harm than good. This week I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the latest stress response research I heard cited at a conference a few weeks ago.

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Survival of the Funniest: Humor and Attraction

A journalist recently interviewed me about the link between humor and attraction. You probably guessed there’s some connection, but did you know just how strong it is? There’s actually a wealth of research devoted to this subject, and the article above mentions just a few of the highlights Bottom line: in dating—and in life—a sense of humor can only help.

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Re-Storing Love: Out of Sight Never Means Out of Mind

Keep getting angry, sad, or anxious in the same way—at work and in love? Try clearing out the bric-a-brac. I don’t mean the dusty old lamp foisted on you when great Auntie Alice passed away last winter; nor do I mean the plastic singing fish your mother slipped into a moving crate, years ago when you packed for college (that’s right—I know you have a singing fish). I’m talking about emotional bric-a-brac.

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One of the Top Questions I’m Asked: Answered Below

I’ve lost count of the number of clients and journalists who’ve asked me this one: Should people date while depressed? At a glance, the number last year looks like ten times from the press, alone, (eleven if you count, “Should people date while unemployed?”—in some ways, a variation on the same question, considering how often unemployment seems to coincide with depression).

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