Psychology

"I was wrong. I'm sorry"—these words can have a magical effect on a struggling relationship. But if we fail to show empathy, the apology will sound fake or hurt the offended person even more.

Although we may not like everyone, we want everyone to like and accept us. We raise our eyebrows suspiciously if someone treats us with indifference or, worse, with hostility. We feel misunderstood and rejected. And the feeling of rejection is as intense as physical pain.

How can we protect ourselves against expecting too much of our friendships? Can we do something to prepare for the disappointment? And what does one do to deal with it?

Some forms of love come easily to us. A parent's love, for example, is a natural instinct: you love because it would be impossible not to. But marriage demands a longer commitment. Marital love does not come ready-made; it must be learned, cultivated, and tested.

Lace-edged rumours wafted through the student campus in Sagunto, Spain: Devin, one of the American boys who had come to Spain for a year of study, was dating Teresa, a second-year theology student who was hard to miss. Her striking beauty and cheerful nature attracted gazes like a magnet. No one suspected then, not even the protagonists of this relationship, that their love...

One can hardly overestimate the role the relationship between a parent and their child plays in forming a matrix for the child’s future relationships, whether healthy or dysfunctional. The quality of the parent-child relationship is essential because it directly impacts the child’s social and emotional development, and its quality influences the child's ability to deal with future conflict.

People have always loved and cherished music, investing time into both composing and listening to it. Journalists from The New York Times sought to find the reason behind our deep attachment to this intangible thing that, for most of us, yields no material gain.

Let him that would move the world first move himself. – Socrates

“Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you.” With this message, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, launched the telephone. The door had opened to distant, personal and instant contact.

An experimenter is like a hunter who, instead of waiting quietly for game, tries to make it rise, by beating up the locality where he assumes it is. – Francis Bacon, 17th-century English philosopher

I spoke very little in my early years and my mother says that my silence scared her. She never knew what was going through my mind. She was afraid I was hiding something.

One of the mind’s most pleasant and, at the same time, most tormenting occupations is to dream of a better life. How many times have we tried to generate a change for the better by means of a new purchase, new friends, new house, new job, new relationship or other ideas for a fresh start?

The documentary Leaving Neverland (HBO) tells the story of two of the men who accused superstar Michael Jackson of ongoing sexual abuse.

“To them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever” (Isaiah 56:5).

Disagreements between husbands and wives happen no matter how much they love each other, and this isn’t necessarily bad. Conflict is normal in daily life, even for happily married couples. It happens when two very different people grow closer to each other and notice that they have different priorities, beliefs, habits and values.