When we were in our twenties, Joyce and I were criticized for being too close. Some people even quoted Kahlil Gibran from The Prophet, “…and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.” They accused us of smothering one another. Early in our marriage...
Many couples struggle with the disconnect between the need for emotional connection and physical intimacy. Men often seek sex to feel love, while women require love to engage in sex. This article explores how to foster deeper connections by prioritizing emotional fulfillment before physical encounters.
“Fears about women’s higher earnings reflect theories, and anxieties, that if women had the financial means they would not stay with men so that women’s dependency holds couples and society together.” The study which included cohabiting couples found that there was no significant...
Looking for an antidote to modern culture's emphasis on romantic love? Perhaps we can learn from the diverse forms of emotional attachment prized by the ancient Greeks.
Everyone wants to stay in love, so why do some relationships make it, while others don’t? Why does the love in some relationships flourish, while getting buried in others? What are the secrets of a healthy and fulfilling relationship?
Divorce is an individual problem. It cannot be generalized. In some cases, divorce is not the solution, no more so than marriage is the solution for a lonely man. Divorce takes place first in the mind; the legal proceedings follow after. If you are in doubt as to what to do...
Love is what creates life, maintains life, and nurtures life. It is the magnet that holds the cosmos in place and the glue that makes relationships last. Without love, there is no life. Therefore, we seek love everywhere. Because love is the motivating factor on this planet, let us now use...
While they say that "love is blind", one should not enter blindly into marriage or any committed relationship. Here are a few of the questions to consider before marriage (and even for current married relationships)...
We can become so used to dysfunctional relationships that when we are finally presented with a healthy one, it seems foreign. Yet what is normal is often not natural. Our natural state is soul fulfillment, reflected through rewarding relationships. Anything else...
Women as well as men often receive strong indoctrination against showing love. It’s too often viewed as a sign of weakness. I have to admit, I fell into this category when I was eighteen and newly in relationship with Joyce...
When I was twenty-seven, a woman friend became frustrated with how much love and attention I was giving my husband. I was making my relationship with him my top priority, even over career and friends. She saw my devotion as old fashioned and “unliberated.”
The funny thing about love is that the more you try to organize it, the less like love it becomes. As spiritual master Meher Baba noted, "Love and coercion can never go together. Love has to spring spontaneously from within...."
Can men and women really understand each other? Sometimes it seems like the wall between the sexes is impenetrable. At my annual men’s retreat last month, the difficulty understanding women became a central theme. One after another of the men shared his challenges with his female partner...
Our beliefs about love no longer match up with what's going on in the world, and they are contradicted when our relationships end. I call these out-of-date notions the obsolete mythologies of love.
The statement that time heals all wounds is such a cliché that even the mention of time as a healer may seem either irrelevant or insulting. Nevertheless, it is patently true that time is a miracle healer. When we are going through a difficult experience, however...
Once upon a time many thousands of years ago, the Devil Himself was sitting in his boiling hot corporate headquarters in Hell, looking at his mission statement. It read: "To make as many people as possible as unhappy as possible for as long as possible." The Devil was actually a bit...
Meet somebody, fall in love, get married. That’s how it goes, right? Then what? We hear of astronomical divorce rates, couple therapy, and extramarital affairs, but we also hear of the picture-perfect fifty-year happy marriages. What is this need to get married, and why do we think it will fulfill us?
How can we tell if our intimate relationships are based on need or something deeper? Here I share some common indicators of codependency and other behaviors that erode goodwill and harmony in relationships and...
"Until Death Do Us Part"... How much do these words have to do with the reality of life in the 21st century and with modern-day relationships? Let's compare the reality of women and men today with the time when this marriage vow arose...
Ending a relationship is so painful and makes us feel so awful — bad, hopeless, inadequate, desperate, lost, lonely, and worthless — that most of us are afraid we won't live through it. We feel bad about what our families will think, we're afraid of what...
From time to time, Joyce and I hear people refer to their partner, male as well as female, as high maintenance, meaning the relationship takes too much work. Naturally, there is an undercurrent of unfairness and even resentment, as if they...
Americans are losing faith in establishment politics. Bernie Sanders argues that...
September 2026 begins at a powerful turning point as eclipse season winds down and...
Letting go of the past doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. It means releasing the...
When love begins to unravel, do you walk away or pick up the thread? “Thread By...
What if winning didn’t require someone else to lose? “Winners Together” imagines a world...
Every morning is another chance to choose what stays with us and what we finally leave...
How much of yesterday are you still carrying today?
In a world of swipes, matches, texts and disappearing conversations, sometimes the most...
A chatbot told someone it loved them, and that person felt genuinely comforted. That...
Accepting oneself is crucial for navigating change without fear. This article explores...
Despite advancements in technology and education leading to higher IQ scores in...
The New Moon is birthed in Virgo on September 11 (Sept. 10 in US time zones)—a lunation...
Exploring the relationship between light and darkness reveals profound insights into...