So, this just in: People still have a weird, sanctimonious obsession with women’s bodies.

Shocking, I know.

A team of researchers—undoubtedly fueled by caffeine and the existential dread of living in a society—published a study in the European Journal of Social Psychology confirming what women have been muttering under their breath for centuries: their bodies are judged through a moral lens way more than men’s.

It’s as if, upon birth, women receive an invisible tag that reads:

“Public Property: Subject to Societal Scrutiny.” The study suggests that when it comes to bodily autonomy—decisions about appearance, health, or simply existing in a body—people are much more likely to cast these choices as moral quandaries if the body in question belongs to a woman.

Men, on the other hand, apparently get a free pass to make all kinds of bodily decisions without a chorus of disapproving murmurs. Lucky them.

Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death (1973) is one of those books that doesn’t just explain something—it rearranges the furniture of your mind.

It’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of what makes us human: our unique awareness that one day we will die, and our desperate, often absurd attempts to pretend otherwise.

According to Becker, everything from religion to nationalism, from consumerism to social media posturing, is an elaborate defense against the horror of our mortality.

It’s a bold claim, and like all bold claims, it is both brilliant and flawed.

Some readers find it revelatory, a skeleton key to human nature.

Others find it reductionist, even nihilistic. And yet, whether you embrace or resist Becker’s conclusions, one thing is certain: Denial of Death forces us to confront the uncomfortable truths lurking beneath our daily distractions.

So, what makes this book a masterpiece? Where does it go too far? And why, half a century later, does it still demand our attention?

It’s 2 a.m., the hospital chair is making a permanent dent in your spine, and the beeping machines have become the soundtrack of your life.

And somewhere in the haze of grief, exhaustion, and medically-induced small talk, the thought creeps in: If God is real, why does my kid have cancer?

Not exactly the kind of question that gets answered neatly in a Sunday sermon.

No tidy clichés, no Hallmark-card reassurances. Just a blunt, stomach-churning silence where certainty used to be.

Once upon a time, in the great and terrible landscape of family dynamics, someone had to take the fall.

Someone had to be the reason things felt off.

Someone had to be the cracked mirror reflecting all the jagged little pieces no one wanted to see.

This, gentle reader, is the tragicomedy of the Identified Patient (IP), the family’s sacrificial lamb, the bearer of the collective dysfunction.

Let’s get one thing straight: emotional abuse can be sneaky.

It’s the ninja of relational dysfunction—silent, strategic, and often only visible in hindsight.

If you’ve ever looked back on a relationship and thought, Wait a minute, was that… bad?, congratulations, my friend—you might have been emotionally bamboozled.

Emotional abuse doesn’t show up with a neon sign that says, “THIS IS TOXIC.”

It’s more like a slow gas leak. You don’t notice it at first, and then suddenly, you’re dizzy, disoriented, and questioning if you’re the one who’s crazy.

So, let’s break down some of the signs you may have missed while you were too busy blaming yourself for things that weren’t your fault.

Imagine you’re sitting across from a therapist. Maybe me. Maybe someone else. You clear your throat, you look down, and then you finally say it:

"My wife hits me."

And just like that, the universe seems to malfunction.

You expect disbelief, maybe laughter. Maybe a confused head tilt, like a golden retriever hearing a kazoo. After all, this isn’t how the story is supposed to go.

But here’s the thing: it happens. A lot more than most people want to admit.

And because I like telling the truth about therapy, even when it makes people squirm, let's talk about it.

Let’s talk about why women hit first, why men often don’t hit back, and why nobody wants to acknowledge the whole messy, contradictory, and deeply human reality of domestic violence.

You’re here because your husband is yelling at you, and you’re trying to figure out why.

Maybe he’s always been this way. Maybe it’s new. Maybe it’s getting worse.

Maybe you find yourself shrinking when he starts. And maybe, in a moment of solitude, you grabbed your phone, typed this question into Google, and paused before hitting search.

Because something about the question feels like a failure. Like you should already know the answer.

But you don’t.

And you are not alone.

So many women are typing this into Google that it auto-fills in the search bar. This isn’t a you problem. This is an epidemic.

And, thankfully, science has been studying this.

Family life in 2025 is becoming increasingly difficult because, financial strain is often an uninvited yet influential partner.

When economic pressures mount, families may find themselves "trading down," adjusting their lifestyles to accommodate reduced means.

This phenomenon extends beyond mere dollars and cents, deeply influencing the emotional and relational dynamics within the family system.

I

n this post, I’ll delve into the social science of financial belt-tightening, so we can uncover the multifaceted impacts on family relationships, and explore evidence-based interventions to foster resilience and cohesion.

Imagine waking up one day and realizing your spouse isn’t just a liar—he’s a work of fiction.

That’s exactly what happened to Tareasa "Reesa Teesa" Johnson.

In February 2024, she did something extraordinary: she turned personal devastation into a masterclass in digital storytelling.

Her 50-part TikTok series, "Who TF Did I Marry?" captivated over 400 million viewers with its tale of love, deception, and the slow-motion unraveling of a man who turned out to be more illusion than reality.

But beneath the surface of her saga lies a fascinating psychological case study in wounded narcissism, a term used to describe folks whose self-image is so fragile they construct elaborate fantasies to sustain it.

Once upon a time, in the not-so-distant past, people met their future spouses through friends, at parties, or after a prolonged period of staring awkwardly across a crowded room.

But now? Now, love is a multi-billion-dollar industry with algorithms, swipes, and a whole lot of existential crises.

With around 350 million people globally relying on dating apps and the industry raking in over $5 billion annually, we can confidently say that romance has been thoroughly monetized.

In Australia, for example, 49% of adults have used a dating app or website, while an additional 27% dipped their toes into the digital dating pool at some point.

And yet, in this brave new world of curated profiles and bio-optimized romance, something seems amiss.

If the 21st century had a patron saint of infidelity, it would be Esther Perel.

She is the high priestess of complexity, the shaman of sexual transgression, the goddess of "we should really talk about this more openly."

But what if, just what if, some hurt partners feel less like participating in a TED Talk on the joys of deception, and more like curling up in the fetal position with a pint of Häagen-Dazs?

Perel’s rise to relationship guru superstardom is no accident.

She is a spellbinding speaker. She is elegant, erudite, and, let’s be honest, charmingly European.

Her books, Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, have been devoured by those looking for a new lens on long-term love. And yet, in the dimly lit corners of the internet, a quiet but firm rebellion against her gospel has been brewing.

Isaac Asimov once remarked that the most exciting phrase in science is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."

And what could be funnier than the fact that our brains—those magnificent squishy machines—respond to beauty in music with an intricate dance of connectivity, while responding to non-beautiful music with the neural equivalent of a polite shrug?

A recent study published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts sought to decode what happens in the brain when we experience musical beauty.

Researchers Ruijiao Dai, Petri Toiviainen, Peter Vuust, Thomas Jacobsen, and Elvira Brattico used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how different regions of the brain communicate when we hear music that moves us.

Their findings suggest that when a piece of music is perceived as beautiful, brain regions responsible for reward and visual processing engage in a unique synchrony, while music perceived as "meh" keeps the brain stuck in more primitive auditory processing loops.