Relationships

Twenty-first century people are bombarded with fiction about romance.

Over the last few decades, the picture of family life has undergone dramatic changes. The pervasiveness and normalization of divorce are just two of these changes.

The beginning of a romantic relationship is often sweet and exciting, full of novelty, enthusiasm, and the thrill of discovery. These early stages create a sense of well-being that leaves little room for doubt. At this point, each partner tends to downplay their weaknesses and highlight their strengths.

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.

"Marriage: a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters written in prose." (Beverley Nichols)

There are many reasons why your daily interactions may become tense and even fractured, but if you decide to mend a relationship, you could also take a few extra steps to improve it.

We often associate divorce with the unhappiness of adults who reprehensibly decide to go their separate ways. For under-age brides Noora and Nujood, however, divorce was their escape from a nightmare of domestic violence and abuse, into which they were thrown at a young age by their own families.

Love stories have a way of creeping into the foreground and convincing us that their effervescent debut is just the overture to a marriage that will always rekindle, in a different intensity, the same fireworks of beginnings.

Love: the ultimate subject. We love people for who they are. However, there’s a kind of love too lofty to truly encompass all the nuances, a love that manifests itself toward people regardless of who they are or what they have become. Such a love beautifully encapsulates the story of Ian and Larissa.

We’d been married only a few weeks when we discovered that growing our spirituality as a couple was going to be much more complicated than the instructions on the packet suggested.

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.

Many families who feared that the new coronavirus would affect their health ended up dreading its effect on something seemingly even more difficult to protect: the well-being of their relationship.

Psychologists recommend all sort of things you should have to develop a healthy and strong mind, like tenacity, ambition or optimism. To achieve this objective, however, there are also some things you should avoid.

The face muscles relax, and the eyes become empty before boredom urges them to seek another centre of interest. The restlessness culminates with some leaving and others immersing themselves in the exploration of their phones. Others seek to divert the discussion with a joke or hasten its end through a detached or ostentatious silence.

More and more people are choosing cohabitation over marriage. Many young people believe that cohabiting helps them to make better decisions about marriage by giving the couple a chance to "practise" before making a lifelong commitment. There is also a belief that cohabiting before marriage reduces the likelihood of marital problems or divorce.