Blogs / Articles

These venoms, with which you can poison your relationship, can all be characterised as ways of “turning against” each other’s bids for emotional connection. We do this in the hope that the examples below will allow you to recognise these behaviours in your interactions with your partner, allowing you to catch and learn to reverse these toxic patterns of behaviour in order to stop them from causing serious damage to your relationship.

According to psychologist Daniel Goleman, “emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us.” In his book Emotional Intelligence, Goleman tells us that anger causes blood to flow to our hands, making it easier for us to strike an enemy or hold a weapon. Our heart rate speeds up and a rush of hormones—including adrenaline—create a surge of energy strong enough to take “vigorous action.”

Dr. John Gottman’s research proves that 69% of problems in a relationship are unsolvable. These may be things like personality traits your partner has that rub you the wrong way, or long-standing issues around spending and saving money.

Marriage is one of the oldest social, economic, religious and legal institutions in the world, and there’s no shortage of opinions on what makes it work. But much of the conventional wisdom is not based on evidence, and some is just wrong. After researching thousands of couples for more than 40 years at The Gottman Institute, these are some of the myths that have been encountered most often.

Helen Mirren says sex isn’t essential to a lasting union. But can happiness prevail without it? I can’t remember which relationships counsellor it was - it could have been the second we went to, or it might have been the third - who told us we were setting too much store by sex.

Helen Mirren says sex isn’t essential to a lasting union. But can happiness prevail without it? I can’t remember which relationships counsellor it was - it could have been the second we went to, or it might have been the third - who told us we were setting too much store by sex.

An article by Wendy Atterberry who writes the Dear Wendy Colum in the USA. Some good, practical advice, in particular I love the thoughts on Ikea: I've been writing an advice column in some shape or form for close to 10 years now, and I can say with confidence that at least 75 percent of the letters I receive from married people are about issues that could have been avoided if the couples had better communicated their expectations about married life before tying the knot.

You may not have heard of Brené Brown, an American researcher who has done a couple of excellent TED Talks. So here's why I'm mentioning her here.She has found an intentional connection between love and belonging, and now recognises as fact that 'A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all women, men and children.'

One of their main focuses is to see you happy, freed from restrictions, and using your highest potential in order to achieve your desires. This partner may gently push you ‘out there’ because he or she sees your potential and wants to see you shine. This partner encourages you on a daily basis and tenderly shifts your focus from ‘I am not good enough’ to ‘I can do it’.

If you had to make a choice, would you choose your phone or your partner? Do you love your phone more than your partner? I know you’re going to say “no”, because I would, too, but I’d be lying, and so are you. My boyfriend and I spent last night, as we spend many nights, sitting on the sofa, our attention torn between each other, a Netflix original box set (Iron Fist, since you ask), my iPhone and his tablet . . . ah, but when I describe our attention as being “torn”, it wasn’t. Not really. Not at all.

No one likes to think they’re having less sex than their married friends. And Alex, 45, a graphic designer from Surrey, is acutely aware that when he and his wife, Kate, 47, laugh and flirt on nights out, friends assume they’re “going home to go to bed together”.

Here's a blog posted by Miss Fran Jan San on Reddit. It was shared on Facebook, and is one of the few relationship posts that I have seen that attracted only male responses. I have come across cases where this behaviour has applies to men as well, but as MissFranJanSan points out, it is so common that women do this that it has become a stereotype.