I once met a woman named Bette Sue, who was about to marry a man named Davy.

And Bette Sue, God bless her, was unraveling at the seams.

She had lost 15 pounds in a matter of weeks, hadn’t slept in longer than that, and gagged whenever she tried to eat. It wasn’t food poisoning; it was something worse—the slow, sickening dread of realizing your world might not be what you thought it was.

She had no hard evidence. No lipstick on the collar.

No hotel receipts stuffed into a jacket pocket. Just an unshakable gut feeling that something was wrong. “This wasn’t supposed to be my life,” she sobbed, which is a thought that precedes every Greek tragedy and at least 70% of bad country songs.

To make matters worse, she wasn’t just marrying Davy.

She was also set to adopt his children—the only mother figure they had ever known. And now, she was wondering if she’d been playing the part of ‘reliable caretaker’ while someone else was cast as ‘passionate affair partner.’

She needed answers. And because human suffering is oddly predictable, science has already cataloged them.

In a world where swiping right is practically a reflex, neurodiverse relationships are finding their own unique groove.

From sensory-friendly clubbing to practice dating programs, social media is percolating with fresh and dynamic ideas about how neurodivergent folks can connect, date, and build relationships.

Forget generic dating advice—the neurodiverse community is rewriting the rules of love, and it's about time!

In a world where relationships come with an instruction manual that no one actually reads, Living Apart Together (LAT) is the quiet revolution whispering, "What if love doesn’t require a shared utility bill?"

You love your partner, but you also love your personal space. You’re committed, but you don’t think commitment means arguing about who left crumbs in the bed.

And here’s the beautiful part: you’re not weird. You’re just ahead of your time.

Welcome to LAT, where love isn’t measured in square footage.

New York—where love stories are as diverse as the skyline, rent is astronomical, and the subway tests even the strongest relationships.

Here, Living Apart Together (LAT) isn’t just a quirky relationship style; it’s often a practical necessity.

You love your partner, but you also love your space.

You want intimacy without arguing over thermostat settings or whose turn it is to take out the trash.

And guess what? That’s not just okay—it might be the secret to a thriving relationship.

Welcome to LAT in New York, where love isn’t measured in shared square footage, but in intention, connection, and choice.

So, here we are, America. Land of the free, home of the medicated.

Nearly 14% of working-age adults—adults!—now report having been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives.

This is according to the latest research published in the Journal of Attention Disorders, which, if we’re being honest, is probably a thrilling read, assuming you can focus long enough to get through it.

Fourteen percent! Let that sink in.

There is a new breed of men stalking the internet—slick, pugnacious, and deeply convinced that women have gotten too much, taken too far, and left them stranded in the dust.

They call themselves men, warriors, seekers of lost honor.

But the data says something different.

They are, more often than not, young, spurned, and utterly enthralled by the gospel of "manfluencers"—those digital preachers of the manosphere, the loudspeakers of a movement that whispers to the wounded male ego and tells it precisely what it wants to hear: It’s not your fault, kid. It’s them.

By now, we all know that alcohol is basically social lubricant in a bottle.

It smooths out the rough edges, adds a touch of charisma you don’t actually possess, and makes that guy from accounting seem hilarious.

But is drinking with others actually more fun? Or is that just the booze whispering sweet nothings in your ear? A new study published in Psychopharmacology (Molla et al., 2024) suggests that, yes, alcohol makes social interactions feel better—but the magic really happens when both people are drinking.

This is great news if your idea of a good time involves cocktails and camaraderie. It’s also, perhaps, a cautionary tale.

Kurt Vonnegut once said, "There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind." If he had been a marriage therapist, he might have added, "...especially when you’re lonely, married, and wondering how you ended up in this existential mess."

Because loneliness in marriage is real.

You can be in a legally binding, till-death-do-us-part arrangement and still feel utterly alone. But before you throw your wedding ring into the nearest body of water, let’s talk about a little miracle drug called gratitude. And its scrappy sidekick, forgiveness.

A recent study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy suggests that gratitude and forgiveness can weaken the corrosive effects of loneliness on marital satisfaction (Leavitt et al., 2025).

While they don’t seem to work their magic on the sexual relationship (sorry, no gratitude-fueled orgasms here), they do help keep the overall marriage from spiraling into despair.

Let’s talk about love.

The kind of love that starts with spontaneous weekend road trips and endearing forgetfulness—until you realize you’re the one who has to pay the speeding tickets and remember to buy toilet paper for the third time this week.

A new study out of Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Zeides Taubin et al., 2025) confirms what many women in relationships with ADHD-diagnosed men have long suspected: life with a partner who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can be an adventure, but it often comes at a cost. Specifically, a higher risk of depression and a lower overall quality of life.

Now, I hear you.

Relationships are tough for everyone, ADHD or not.

But this study found that these women reported more severe mental health struggles than even caregivers of partners with schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, or stroke.

That’s not just “a little extra stress.” That’s an “I feel like I’m drowning” level of exhaustion.

What if Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Esther Perel were to engage in an intellectual duel?

I don’t think it would be over facts. It would be a battle of worldviews—clashing visions of love, desire, and human connection.

Both thinkers are preoccupied with intimacy, longing, and commitment.

But their fundamental premises are irreconcilable

Soloveitchik, the architect of covenantal philosophy, sees love as existential devotion—a sacred bond that transforms loneliness into shared responsibility.

Perel, an advocate of mystery and erotic desire, insists that love thrives on tension, autonomy, and the intoxicating pull of the unknown.

So, which is it?

Does desire require distance, as Perel maintains, or does it find its true expression in radical devotion, as Soloveitchik suggests?

This debate gets to the heart of modern relationships and would undoubtedly leave Perel grappling with the implications of her own ideas.

Once upon a time, marriage was a lockbox—ironclad, eternal, and stubborn as an old priest who refused to retire.

Now, in the era of express divorces and self-help gurus who brandish phrases like "self-actualization" and "conscious uncoupling," we’re tearing apart the institution of marriage like it’s a lease on a bad apartment.

The numbers are stark.

In the United States, the divorce rate has fluctuated over the years, with long-term trends reflecting significant shifts in marital stability.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, approximately 39% of American marriages ended in divorce as of 2019, meaning nearly four out of ten couples eventually called it quits.

This marks a dramatic rise from 1960, when only 9% of American marriages dissolved.

The odds grow even steeper for those giving matrimony another shot—research suggests that around 60% of second marriages and a staggering 73% of third marriages ultimately fail, indicating that experience does not necessarily translate to success in love. What’s going on?

History has a wicked sense of humor when it comes to saints.

The halo usually comes out only after the heretic’s pyre has gone cold.

In their lifetimes, many of the Church’s greatest saints were treated less like holy heroes and more like misfits, rabble-rousers, or outright threats to the status quo.

The very people who redefined virtue often did so by thumbing their noses at convention – and for that, they paid the price, at least at first.

It’s as if the Church and society couldn’t recognize a saint until after giving them a good hard shove out of this world.

Now lets meet 3 of history’s holy iconoclasts – the saints who redefined virtue on their own terms.

Expect no syrupy hagiography here.

I admire these figures, yes, but always with a raised eyebrow.

Their lives remind us that real virtue often rattles cages before it earns a halo.

Over time, the Church and society came around to celebrating the very qualities that once made these people pariahs.

In doing so, they turned rebels into role models, proving that sometimes sainthood is just history’s way of saying “oops, we didn’t quite feel ya.”

The stories that follow will shine a light on how our ideals of goodness evolve – and how yesterday’s eccentric, principled troublemaker can become tomorrow’s saint.