Relationship Advice

A couple I worked with once apologized for having a fight in front of me during a session, as if the conflict itself was evidence of failure. I remember the wife looking embarrassed, the husband’s jaw tight with frustration. I told them what I have come to believe after sixteen years of listening to people … Read more

You’ve read the articles. You know what anxious attachment is. You know what avoidant attachment is. You’ve nodded along to descriptions of the “anxious-avoidant trap”—how one partner pursues while the other withdraws, how this triggers more pursuing and more withdrawing, how it’s all very understandable from both sides. And then you’ve looked up from your … Read more

Nobody prepares you for what happens to your relationship when a parent gets sick. The logistics alone — hospital visits, medication schedules, emergency calls at dinner — are crushing. But the harder part is the emotional asymmetry: one partner is drowning in grief and duty, and the other feels shut out, resentful, and guilty about … Read more

When I searched for advice on dating after being widowed young, everything I found was aimed at people in their 50s and 60s. The guidance assumed you’d been married for decades, that your friends understood loss, that you’d already done the work of being partnered as an adult. But dating after being widowed young — … Read more

Research into how couples actually communicate keeps turning up the same uncomfortable pattern: knowing the “right” way to argue and being able to use it mid-conflict are two completely different skills. I ran headfirst into that gap myself a few years back, when a counsellor advised me to “fight fair.” I nodded along as if … Read more

Why does every disagreement with your partner seem to circle back to the exact same place? Usually it’s because you’re not actually having new arguments at all — you’re replaying one familiar pattern without realising it. I noticed this myself years back, while I was working through my own anxiety: my partner would raise something … Read more

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with not knowing whether to stay or go. It’s not the tiredness of a rough patch—those you can usually feel your way through. This is different. It’s the paralysis of genuinely not knowing if you should break up, of lying awake at 3 a.m. replaying conversations, of … Read more

We have turned relationships into projects. There are goals. Check-ins. Growth metrics. Communication frameworks. Date night schedules colour-coded in shared calendars. Quarterly reviews of emotional intimacy. Couples therapy workbooks with homework assigned like GCSE revision. I want to argue — carefully, and with genuine reluctance — that this relentless optimisation might itself be a source … Read more