The Quiet Cure for Sexless Couples: Why Foreplay Starts at Breakfast

It turns out, there is a cure for couples who’ve stopped having sex.

It’s not tantric yoga. It’s not couples’ retreats where you whisper affirmations at each other while covered in rose quartz. It’s not even a new mattress.

According to Professor Gurit Birnbaum—a psychologist at Reichman University in Tel Aviv who’s spent three decades studying sexual desire—your libido isn’t dead. It’s just... uninvited.

If your relationship feels like a long layover in Cleveland—safe, predictable, and sexually inert—Birnbaum has news: You can rebuild desire, but you’ll have to stop waiting for spontaneous combustion. Because in long-term love, the spark doesn’t reignite itself.

You have to strike the match.

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Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw

Alpha Humor Explained: Why Your 10-Year-Old Is Laughing at a Toilet With Eyes

Who Are Gen Alpha?

Gen Alpha includes kids born from roughly 2010 to 2025.
They are:

  • Post-iPad natives

  • Raised during the COVID-19 pandemic

  • Socialized through YouTube Kids, TikTok, Roblox, and Fortnite

  • Entering middle school with a better grasp of AI voice filters than most adults have of their taxes.

And their humor?
It’s not just “weird.”


It’s post-everything.

So… What Is Alpha Humor?

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Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw

Introducing Your Parents to 2025 Memes

When Boomer Blinks Meet Zoomer Irony—and Something Unexpected Happens

The Setup: One Phone, One Parent, One Cryptic Meme

The trend is deceptively simple.


On TikTok and Reels, a Gen Z or late Millennial sets the stage:

“I’m going to show my parents the memes we laugh at in 2025. Let’s see what happens.”

Then, armed with a phone and a sense of ironic detachment, they swipe through memes like:

  • A raccoon in a wedding dress captioned “marrying into chaos.”

  • A crying emoji photoshopped onto a Roomba captioned: “Self-care after group therapy.”

  • Text: “It’s not gaslighting, it’s adaptive reality rendering.”

  • A 4-panel meme where a frog says, “I am the problem,” then sighs and makes a spreadsheet about it.

Their parents blink. Or worse—nod slowly, trying to understand. Sometimes they chuckle out of social obligation. Sometimes, they erupt with genuine, confused laughter.

But always, you can see it on their faces:

“I have absolutely no idea what any of this means.”

And that’s the point.

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Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw

Memes as Emotional Codes in a Neurodivergent World

We live in an attention economy saturated with aesthetic wellness influencers, fake vulnerability, and burnout masquerading as achievement.

In that landscape, neurodivergent communities—those living with ADHD, autism, C-PTSD, OCD, bipolar disorder, and more—are creating their own coded systems of emotional expression.

Their currency?
Memes.

More specifically, trauma-informed memes—darkly funny, painfully honest, and sometimes intentionally alienating to neuro-normies.


These memes aren’t “content.”

They’re bidirectional neuro-emotional code—designed to both comfort insiders and confuse outsiders.

They're not just jokes.


They're love notes, litmus tests, and emotional handshakes.
They say, “Here’s my pain, encrypted for those who know.”

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Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw

“We Listen and We Don’t Judge”: When TikTok Becomes a Divorce Deposition in Disguise

Setting the Scene: A Phone Camera, a Couple, and a Dangerous Prompt

In a trend that is somehow equal parts confession booth, reality TV, and improv theater, couples on TikTok have been engaging in a viral challenge called the “We Listen and We Don’t Judge” trend.

The idea seems innocent: one partner invites the other to “just share”—whatever’s on their mind. They promise, solemnly, with deadpan delivery, “We listen and we don’t judge.”

And then the chaos begins.

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Family Life and Parenting Daniel Dashnaw Family Life and Parenting Daniel Dashnaw

Soft Prepper Parenting: Raising Kids in Collapse Without Making Them Weird About It

The End of the World as Bedtime Routine

Your child asks, “Why is the sky orange again?”

You respond, like any good post-apocalyptic parent:

“Because Western Canada is on fire, sweetie. Let’s read Goodnight Moon.”

Welcome to Soft Prepper Parenting—the emerging meme, mindset, and possibly moral obligation for raising children in a world where the infrastructure is shaky, the vibes are feral, and yet… you still have to pack lunch.

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Attachment Issues Daniel Dashnaw Attachment Issues Daniel Dashnaw

What Is Radical Acceptance? A Brief History of an Idea

Radical Acceptance: Not Just Another Mindfulness Buzzword

Radical acceptance sounds like something a yoga instructor with a Bluetooth headset might shout across a canyon.

And yet, like many deceptively chill-sounding concepts, it carries philosophical weight, clinical utility, and a complicated history rooted in both Eastern and Western traditions of human suffering.

In the hands of pop psychology, “radical acceptance” often becomes a meme for emotional surrender. But in its clinical and philosophical roots, it is less about giving up and more about waking up—particularly to the kinds of pain you can’t fix, outrun, or intellectualize.

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Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw

Soft Apocalypse Summer: How Gen Z Learned to Love the Collapse with Banana Bread and Vibes

Welcome to the Apocalypse. Bring Snacks.

There’s a new vibe this summer, and it’s not just the rising heat or the smell of burning plastic in the air.

It’s Soft Apocalypse Summer—a viral aesthetic, a coping mechanism, and maybe the healthiest form of existential dissociation America has ever produced.

Picture this:

  • A rooftop rave lit by solar-powered lanterns.

  • A young woman in a prairie dress planting basil in a cracked Rubbermaid bin.

  • A TikTok tutorial on how to make off-grid oat milk while air quality is at “don’t go outside.”

It’s not just ironic. It’s optimistic nihilism with a can-do spirit.
It’s the end of the world, but make it whimsical.

What Is “Soft Apocalypse Summer,” Exactly?

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Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw

Hot Girl Existentialism: Bikini Pics and the Burden of Consciousness

It’s 88 degrees. The ocean is screaming. Her skin is luminous. Her caption?

“Sun’s out, soul’s hollow.”

Welcome to Hot Girl Existentialism—where thirst traps are a philosophical cry, and the timeline is a curated blend of serotonin, despair, and dead philosophers with abs.

This is not bimbo nihilism. That era has passed like the last season of Euphoria.


This is not just ironic sadness. That was 2015 Tumblr Sad Girl.


This is the existential thirst trap:


A gorgeous selfie paired with a crisis of meaning.

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Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw

“Cottage Divorce”: The Meme of Midlife Liberation in Linen

“He got the house. I got peace, rosemary, and hardwood floors.”


There it is—the viral seed of Cottage Divorce, the quietly insurrectionary meme where post-marital grief is steeped in earl grey, lavender baths, and artisanal sourdough.

While some midlife memes scream (see: post-affair glow-up), this one exhales. It doesn’t ask for your attention. It crochets a table runner while listening to Brandi Carlile. And then goes viral anyway.

What Is Cottage Divorce?

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Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw Social Media and Relationships Daniel Dashnaw

Romantic ADHD Brain: Neurodivergent Love in the Age of Dopamine and Disruption

“Sorry I love you so much I forgot to text back for 9 hours and now I’m crying because I miss you even though I ghosted you.”

This meme—equal parts chaos and candor—captures the experience of love through an ADHD lens.

It’s not just funny because it’s relatable; it’s funny because it’s true.

The “Romantic ADHD Brain” meme reflects a real cognitive and emotional experience that’s finally making its way out of diagnostic manuals and into the emotional vernacular of the internet.

It's part confession, part cry for understanding, and part chaotic love letter to anyone who’s ever felt both intensely attached and emotionally overwhelmed.

Let’s go deeper into this meme: the neurobiology, the attachment entanglements, the societal implications—and yes, the cultural charm of someone who forgets their date but writes you a 2,000-word apology at 2:00 AM.

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Family Life and Parenting Daniel Dashnaw Family Life and Parenting Daniel Dashnaw

Breaking the Chain: How to Interrupt the Abuse-to-Addiction Pipeline in Teens

Why early intervention isn’t just a strategy—it’s a moral imperative

When a child is abused, their nervous system learns the world is dangerous.

When that same child becomes a teenager, they don’t magically unlearn this lesson. They learn to cope—often in the only ways they know how: smoking, drinking, scrolling, numbing.

In my last post, I discussed a recent study out of China which mapped a troubling pathway: childhood abuse → irritability and impulsivity → teen addiction.

It’s a heartbreaking chain reaction. But chains, by definition, can be broken.

The real question is: where?

This post is your roadmap—for parents, therapists, educators, and anyone who refuses to believe that addiction is inevitable.

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