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Tips of the Month for Couples are regular tips for building strong relationships and healthy families. If you would like to sign up to receive these monthly tips, scroll to the bottom of the page and leave your email address.

Why It's Important to Have Device-Free Time and Space in Your Relationship

Machines that seem to care? Psychologist Sherry Turkle is referring to robots designed to function as companions. But she might as well be referring to Facebook and email and text messaging — all the ways we experience ourselves, via our devices, as the target of other people’s interest. The ding announces an email received and our heart speeds up: someone cares, someone is interested. Ditto when the sweet chime announces a text message, or new entries appear on our Facebook…

Exposing Vulnerability is a True Act of Courage

We’re thirsty — and so we say, “I need a drink.” We’re hungry and we say, “I want something to eat.” But when it comes to our essential need for secure attachment, we’re tongue-tied about saying, “I’m feeling insecure and need reassurance.”

Why We Feel Attached to Our Partner

Think it’s only the little tykes who seek security by clinging to their tattered blanket, like sweet Linus from the Peanuts gang dragging his security blanket everywhere? Think it’s only kids who get deeply attached to something — or someone — and look to it for absolute comfort? Think again.

Prioritize Your Relationship's Welfare over Your Ego

It happens all the time with our partner: the wish to win the argument, to Be Right, without regard for collateral damage. But too often, my personal “win” becomes a “loss” for us. Despite my victory, we’re feeling disconnected, no closer than when the argument began.

Texting Is a Bad Idea During Times of Conflict

In this text exchange, the responder might be playful … or angry … or indifferent — we can’t know for sure. That’s because all we see are the words; we don’t hear emotion.

Parallel Play Shouldn't Be the Norm of Your Relationship

Have you ever seen two-year-olds side by side in a playground sandbox, shoveling sand into their pails but essentially indifferent to one another’s behavior — leaving each other alone as they tend to their own activity? It’s called parallel play, each toddler engaged in an independent activity that is similar to but not influenced by or shared with the others.

You Can Free Yourself from Toxic Shame

Of all the darker human emotions — sad, angry, afraid, hurt, disappointed, jealous, etc. — there’s only one that’s always toxic, only one that’s sure to wreak havoc on our relationships. Perhaps because of its toxicity, it’s the emotion least understood or talked about: shame.

Understanding One Another's Emotional Reality

Have you ever found yourself bickering with your partner over what really happened? Debating your version versus mine? How easily we forget that there are always two realities at play: objective reality and emotional reality.