Make Asking "How Was Your Day?" a Daily Ritual

How Was Your Day?

Is there a more banal question than How was your day? When asked, we often treat it as a throw-away and reply with a quick and mindless "fine" or "okay," our eyes never leaving the computer or the television screen. We rarely expect it to be the start of a conversation.

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Providing Support For Individuals Experiencing Relationship Problems

Tips for Clinicians, Family Members, and Friends

When couples are dissatisfied in their relationship, couple therapy, in which both members of the couple participate in the treatment, has become one of the most widely practiced interventions. The effectiveness of couple therapy in improving couple relationships has been demonstrated by several studies.
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Poor Sleep Is Bad for Both Your Health and Your Relationship

Sleepless Nights = Worse Fights

We know that hunger can leave us susceptible to poorly-handled arguments with a partner. So, too, can insufficient sleep. Researchers have found that following nights of poor sleep (less than 7 hours), couples experience more conflict and more difficulty resolving conflict amicably. Sleep deprived partners may have a harder time bringing patience, humor and kindness to those heated moments that every couple faces, as compared to better rested partners.
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Love and Hate Are Not Opposites

Who hasn't at times hated a loved one?

It happens in every intimate relationship, a moment when frustration or upset or disdain grows so large that the thought crosses the mind: I hate him / I hate her. Love and hate - they aren't opposites, and it's not a zero sum game where the more of one means the less of the other. Both feelings can stir, as they inevitably do.
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The Power of Inside Jokes

90% of being a couple is just shouting "what?" from other rooms.

Particularly powerful are inside jokes —​​​​​​​ our shared funny takes on friends and family, our memorable and laughably embarrassing moments, our private vocabulary and expressions that always bring a smile to our faces. Inside jokes can lighten the moment as the relationship slides into darker territory. Self-effacing humor can be especially effective as a substitute for the defensiveness that erupts so quickly and easily during arguments.
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Stay Curious About Your Partner

Your Love Map

Couples with rich love maps know about one another's moments of great challenge, distress, and victory, moments of blushed embarrassment and times when things went really well. These couples keep updating their love maps as lives shift and change, as new people, jobs, and challenges come into the picture. 
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Acknowledge Both Partners Through Circular Stories

Resisting the urge to tell linear, blaming stories frees us to tell more helpful circular stories that acknowledge it takes two to tango. Circular stories call up our best and most generous self, conveying: We're a team and we're in this together.
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What Is Healthy Sexting?

Women once sent love letters on scented stationery, hoping the fragrance would arouse the object of their affection. Those days are largely gone, but the wish to arouse a loved one still remains. Only the vehicles of communication have changed.
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Women’s Sexual Desire vs. Men’s

Tip to all heterosexual men in long-term relationships: women’s sexual desire operates differently than your own.

Although research has found that heterosexual men in the early stage of relationships typically overestimate a woman’s sexual interest, this overestimation doesn’t persist once relationships evolve into long-term. Recent studies have found that men in ongoing, romantic relationships seem to underestimate their female partner’s sexual desire. In other words, men in long-term relationships appear particularly bad at guessing whether their wives or girlfriends are turned on.
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Ways to Express You're Sorry Beyond an Apology

“I’m sorry” doesn’t always end couple conflict in a satisfying way. Often something more is needed, an expression in words or actions that speaks to and “corrects” the underlying experience of one or both partners.

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