Relationships

Our moral problem is man’s indifference to himself… We experience and treat ourselves as commodities, and [as if] our own powers have become alienated from ourselves… We are a herd believing that the road we follow must lead to a goal since we see everybody else on the same road. We are in the dark and keep up our courage because we hear...

Daily stress is a good excuse to avoid other people's needs, but this choice is a double loss. The kindness we display to make other people's days better is a very strong antidote to the high level of stress we experience daily.

More than half a century has passed since the beginning of the sexual revolution, which was characterized by a period of suspension of conventional boundaries, in order to experience a deeper sexual freedom. Fifty years of experimentation, however, do not seem to have been enough to dispel the persisting suffering and confusion present in romantic relationships.

When we are isolated with our family, problems that are sometimes easy to ignore become more acute, and the need to receive and offer forgiveness to those around us becomes increasingly evident.

The promise to live with our loved one “until death do us part" has gradually lost its meaning. Today, it is considered unrealistic to get married with the idea that the relationship will last forever.

How do parents influence their children's marriages?

Compromise is always present in relationships. It may pull us down, but it can also be a good reconciliation exercise when there are differences that cannot be resolved in any other way.

Because life in developed societies follows a more or less regular pattern, sociologists have managed to identify the age at which conditions are most conducive to forming a friendship. It's not that people who are not of this age are unable to form meaningful connections with other people, but at other ages, life takes us on different paths, without asking for our permission.

Among the greatest disappointments of life is having our expectations unfulfilled; not by politicians, or publications that promote false news or weather forecasts, but by those close to us—people in whom we have invested our confidence.

Next to family and health, friends are among the top reasons that make us happy. But what if we are solitary, recluse or shy?

A lack of self confidence is like a stain that doesn't go away by itself. It is like oil dripping out of a machine, its drops collecting in the puddle of an inferiority complex. Such a problem is difficult to mitigate, even with motivational speeches or hopeful injections of fragile optimism.

We see it in movies, read it in modern children’s stories, and hear it in romantic songs: love is the most beautiful, most desirable, and most precious asset of humanity. Many argue that if there is anything that can save the world from itself, it is love. But how is it that love itself has led to profound systemic issues, by dissolving the...

After a chance meeting of mutual friends, I was introduced to Tim and Sonia in a restaurant in central Toowoomba, Queensland, eight days before their home was washed away.

Aside from fuelling jokes about how women impose unrealistic standards on men, or how men are just grown-up children who want their wives to be their mothers, the expectations couples place on their relationship define how they relate to each other, and influence marital satisfaction.

The TV-series Friends was recently reviewed in The New York Times as “enormously easy to watch”. This characteristic however does not make the show unique, nor can it account for its popularity today, more than 15 years since its final episode.