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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What Prevents You from Growing as a Person?: My Back

I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend these days. Even among psychologists, more and more authors in the blogosphere have begun to dabble in a form of writing that seems more like personal venting than informal professional guidance. It’s unconscionable. But don’t worry; I have some ideas about how to fix it all. You see, it all comes down to my back problems.

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Romance on the Road: Part Two

Or Talk Free Relationship Fix 12,005: Feelings First Couples have some of their worst fights in the car—and if you’ve spent any time at all on the road (or read my previous posts), you already knew this. In Keeping Love Alive in the Passenger Seat, I explored how a simple fight can often mask deeper existential and relational anxieties. But there are other, equally powerful factors that can fuel a car fight.

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Five Ways to Stay Close after Kids

As promised, here’s a selection of some of my favorite post-kid intimacy enhancers. Ultimately, I learned all of them from my work with couples over the years, but each one of them is also heavily informed by my personal experience. I could probably launch a whole blog devoted to this topic,  but in the mean time, here’s something to kick things off.

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Kids Will Save Your Marriage!

The headline you’ll never see. The news for couples with kids is generally pretty bleak. We’re inundated by messages that children can be the death of a good relationship. That’s bad enough. But what’s even more troubling is that the reasons cited often ring true. Kids invade your bedroom.  They rule your schedule. They dictate where you go and how you spend your time.

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