Convincing your partner to try couples therapy can feel like selling kale to a kid—it’s good for them, but they’re not buying it.

The good news?

Research says therapy works (Doss et al., 2009).

The bad news? Your partner might think it’s a trap.

So, how do you make the pitch without starting another argument?

Surviving a year of science-based couples therapy deserves a trophy—or at least fewer arguments about who loads the dishwasher wrong.

But here’s the real question: How often should you return for a tune-up? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but research offers some solid guardrails.

Think of couples therapy like car maintenance—ignore it, and you’ll be on the side of the Emotional Breakdown Highway.

According to Doss et al. (2020), couples who had regular check-ins were 40% less likely to hit crisis mode.

Meanwhile, Stanley et al. (2021) found that annual sessions work like relationship physicals—preventative, not reactive.

On the battlefield of love, how you fire the first shot matters.

Let’s discuss soft start-ups, a tool from the gospel of Dr. John Gottman.

They're the difference between a grenade and a peace offering.

According to Gottman, 96% of conversations that start soft end well. Hard start-ups? They’re the verbal equivalent of friendly fire—painful, avoidable, and, frankly, dumb.

Simone Weil, the philosopher, mystic, and social activist, offers profound insights that, when applied to family therapy, create a value system centered on radical attention, humility, truth, and the sacredness of human relationships.

It’s not for the faint of heart.

Weil’s thought challenges modern notions of power and self-interest, replacing them with a call to self-emptying love (décréation) and an intense, non-possessive regard for others.

What emerges is a family therapy philosophy that prioritizes attention over control, truth over comfort, and suffering as a site of meaning rather than pathology.

Simone Weil (1909–1943) was a human tuning fork, a highly sensitive person, highly neurodivergent, vibrating with every sorrow of the world.

She lived like a woman who read the Gospels and said, "Alright, let's see if this works," and then decided to find out the hard way.

Was she a philosopher, a mystic, or a secular saint?

All three. Or maybe none.

Titles didn’t interest her. Only truth did. Simone lived her 34 years with a saintly, almost asinine integrity.

Because I was one of the founders of what is perhaps the largest science-based couples therapy practice in the world, I enjoy many scientists and researchers as clients. Many have entered therapy to manage their social anxiety.

Why? So, it turns out some people hate scientists.

Not just the kind of hate where you roll your eyes at some nerd in a lab coat, but the kind of hate that gets scientists harassed, threatened, and, in at least one case, nearly mobbed in Amsterdam.

Why? Because of science cynicism, which is just a fancy way of saying, "I don’t trust those guys because they seem smart and therefore must be up to something."

So, it turns out cats have attachment styles. Just like dogs. Just like babies. Just like you. Just like me.

This is unsettling news for a few reasons.

First, it suggests that your cat might actually care about you—or not. Second, it means science has taken another bold step in proving that nothing is special, not even our relationships with our pets.

And third, it means some poor researcher spent their days filming cats to confirm what any cat owner could have told them over a glass of wine: some cats like you, some cats tolerate you, and some cats would burn your house down if they had opposable thumbs.

A new study in Frontiers in Psychology suggests that staring at your phone while your partner is trying to connect with you—what many call "phubbing"—can lead to some nasty relationship behaviors.

In plain English, ignoring your partner in favor of doomscrolling might make them more likely to lash out.

The study found that people who feel snubbed by a screen get aggressive in ways that mess with emotional intimacy.

And for women, the gap between how much support they want from their partner and how much they get plays a big role in that aggression.

A recent study published in Psychopharmacology has found that some autistic adults report lasting improvements in mental health and social engagement following psychedelic experiences.

This research suggests that psychedelics, including LSD and psilocybin, may reduce distress and social anxiety while increasing social connectedness.

However, the study also underscores the need for caution, as a minority of participants reported negative experiences.

If love were a stock market, we’d all be terrible investors.

We dive in at an all-time high, convinced we’ve struck gold, only to watch the market crash into a series of disappointments, mismatched socks, and arguments about which direction the toilet paper edge dishwasher should face.

And yet, despite the inevitable declines, we keep reinvesting in love like a bunch of optimistic fools.

A new study published in the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology confirms what anyone who’s been in a relationship longer than a Netflix trial already suspects: relationship satisfaction starts strong but fades over time.

This downward spiral is even steeper in relationships that eventually go up in flames.

And if you think jumping into a new romance will solve the problem—well, buckle up, because you’re just strapping yourself into another ride on the same emotional rollercoaster.

Listen up, lovebirds and gentle readers: Science has spoken, and it turns out that being a little too invested in your partner’s daily miseries might actually help keep your fledgling romance afloat.

Yes, you heard that right. Your tendency to spiral into existential dread when your partner’s barista gets their latte order wrong? That could be the glue holding your love life together—at least for now.

This revelation comes from a research team led by Emre Selçuk, published in the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology.

Their studies suggest that when people lose their emotional composure in response to their partner’s stress, it signals investment, care, and commitment.

In new relationships, this is like waving a giant flag that says, I really, really care about you—even your completely ridiculous micro-stresses! And weirdly enough, that seems to matter.

Dr. Emily Impallomeni, Dr. Jacob L. Stiegler, and Dr. Brittany McGill are the kind of people who look at the world and think, Maybe relationships don’t have to be so hard.

This makes them optimists, which is not always a safe thing to be when studying human relationships.

In 2020, while most of us were busy overcooking sourdough and side-eyeing our quarantine partners for breathing just a little too loudly, these three researchers had a question:

Can people argue less just by pretending to be someone else for a few minutes?