
BLOG
- Attachment Issues
- Coronavirus
- Couples Therapy
- Extramarital Affairs
- Family Life and Parenting
- How to Fight Fair
- Inlaws and Extended Families
- Intercultural Relationships
- Marriage and Mental Health
- Married Life & Intimate Relationships
- Neurodiverse Couples
- Separation & Divorce
- Signs of Trouble
- Social Media and Relationships
- What Happy Couples Know
The Spiritual Return of Monogamy (With a Wink)
Why Is monogamy whispering its way back in? What a quaint development for 2025. Because nowadays everyone has a poly friend. Or three.
Relationship structures come with menus.
“Monogamish” is a lifestyle, not a phase. We’ve got flowcharts for fluid bonding agreements, Google Docs for jealousy protocols, and a booming TikTok market for explaining how to manage six partners with two full-time jobs and a kombucha starter.
But amid all the spreadsheets and sacred slings, a new voice is emerging. It’s quieter, less judgmental than the moral purity of the past. Less purity, more poetry. Less “one man, one woman,” more one person, one universe.
This isn’t a return to 1950s constraint. It’s a philosophical return to erotic containment—an intentional, almost mystical monogamy that says: What if choosing one person over and over again is the actual thrill?
“Quiet Orphaning”: The Slow-Fade Estrangement of a Generation
Or, How Gen Z Learned to Ghost Their Parents Without Smashing a Single Plate
In another era, family estrangement arrived with the drama of a stage play: slammed doors, shouted ultimatums, maybe even a birthday party ruined by a bottle of wine and some long-simmering truths.
But now? Estrangement has gotten quiet. Sneaky. Bureaucratic, even.
Adult children are walking away not in rage but in silence. They stop answering texts. They miss a few birthdays.
They “forget” to return a call. Over time, the thread wears thin. Then one day, the parent realizes they’ve become someone their child used to know.
Researchers call it “low-contact.”
Reddit users call it “voluntary orphaning.” Parents call it betrayal. And therapists? We're calling it a symptom of something bigger.
Why Now?
The Covert Narcissist Divorce Epidemic
Covert narcissists kick down the door shouting, “Behold, it is I!” slipping in through the mail slot, borrowing your sweater, and softly complain it itches.
Thanks to TikTok therapists and hashtag diagnostics, clinical offices are now crowded with clients carrying self-applied labels—and lawyers wielding affidavits that read like DSM-5 karaoke.
The term "narc" has become the internet’s new four-letter word, while in real life, judges wrestle with a murky question: where does diagnosable personality disorder end and plain old spite begin? (Seo & Kim, 2024)
Why Now?
Post-Therapy Plateaus: How Couples Maintain Progress After the Breakthrough
“We did the work. We cried. We repaired. Now what?”
For many couples, therapy ends not in collapse or triumph—but in a strange, quiet plateau.
They leave the therapist’s office with a set of tools, a few shared phrases (“is this a protest behavior?”), and maybe even a laminated communication card.
But in the months that follow, the intimacy starts to dull like a kitchen knife used without sharpening. The rituals fade. The conflict patterns sneak back like raccoons through a back fence.
Welcome to the post-therapy plateau.
This under-discussed stretch of time—after therapy ends but before change is fully lived-in—is becoming a serious topic of inquiry among relationship researchers and clinicians.
And the best minds in the field are starting to ask: How do couples keep growing when the therapist isn’t in the room anymore?
Rethinking Breakfast and Depression, One Skipped Meal at a Time
If you’re depressed and skipping breakfast, science has something tepid and interesting to say: they might be related.
But not in the way your grandmother insisted when she told you, “No toast, no future.”
A new study out of Hong Kong (Wong et al., 2024) suggests there’s a statistically significant—though clinically modest—link between skipping breakfast and depressive symptoms in young people.
The mechanism? Impaired attentional control, which might be the scientific equivalent of staring into space while someone tells you your GPA is tanking.
But before we panic and declare war on empty stomachs, let’s consider what this research really tells us—and what it doesn’t.
We will explore this from two angles: with compassion for the human condition and suspicion for our overeager interpretations of weak correlations.
Delusional Jealousy, Daggers, and Dopamine: What is Othello Syndrome?
Once upon a Tuesday, a woman stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife—not out of rage, or revenge, or some carefully cataloged betrayal, but because she believed he had seduced her younger sister.
He hadn’t. But her brain told her otherwise.
This wasn’t a Shakespearean tragedy, though the name it now carries—Othello syndrome—tips its hat to the Bard.
This was a clinical case report out of Morocco (Hjiej et al., 2024), published in Neurocase, where a seemingly ordinary stroke turned into a portal for psychotic jealousy.
Welcome to the strange land where blood clots spark betrayal, thalami go rogue, and love, quite literally, loses its mind.
7 Subtle Signs You’re Being Love Bombed—And How to Slow Things Down Before You Get Hurt
Falling for someone new can feel exhilarating.
The long texts, the spontaneous gifts, the breathless compliments—it all adds up to a heady cocktail of romance.
But sometimes, what seems like a dream come true is actually the opening act of manipulation.
Let’s revisit love bombing—a tactic often used by those with narcissistic or controlling traits to gain rapid influence over a partner through overwhelming affection and attention (Stines, 2017).
Unlike healthy romantic excitement, love bombing often feels too intense too fast, and leaves you emotionally dizzy.
Below are 7 subtle signs that may indicate you're not being adored—you’re being targeted.
When Your Family Pretends Your Sister’s Wedding Is a Peace Treaty
Somewhere in the middle of the second champagne toast, just after Cousin Brian quoted Friends in his speech for no reason, and just before the band started in on “Don’t Stop Believin’,” you realized:
This wedding is not about love.
It’s about keeping the family from combusting long enough to get through a group photo.
There you are, dabbing at your sweat, trying to pretend this isn’t the first time your divorced parents have been in the same room in a decade.
Meanwhile, your sister is floating through the day in a Vera Wang dress, surrounded by florals and metaphors.
Everyone is smiling, including the ghosts.
Love Languages Are a Useful Lie (And Why We Still Use Them)
Once upon a time, a kind Southern Baptist marriage counselor gave us a miracle. It had 5 parts, it came with a quiz, and it fit on a fridge magnet.
We called it The Five Love Languages.
You know the types.
Words of affirmation.
Acts of service.
Receiving gifts.
Quality time.
Physical touch.
Chapman’s premise was simple: if we can just speak each other’s “language,” we’ll finally feel loved.
And like many simple ideas, it went absolutely feral in the wild.
What We Keep: Untangling Physical and Emotional Hoarding in Kentucky Homes—and Hearts
From Owensboro barns packed with unridden bicycles to cloud drives overflowing with decades of “someday” emails, Kentuckians are skilled at holding on—both to things and to feelings.
On good days, that instinct is an art form: it protects heirloom quilts, handwritten recipes, and the emotional echoes of tent revivals and front-porch stories.
But on harder days, it slips into something heavier: hoarding.
Not just of physical objects, but of grief, regret, unfinished conversations, and the past itself.
The American Psychiatric Association now defines hoarding disorder as more than just clutter.
It becomes a clinical issue when the thought of letting go—of anything—triggers distress, panic, or even despair (American Psychiatric Association, 2023).
Whether it’s stacks of yellowing newspapers or unspoken resentments filed away in the mind, the struggle is real.
And often, emotional hoarding hides beneath the surface long before a family realizes what they’re up against.
Running the Eye of the Needle: A Group Therapy Ritual for Emotional Hoarders
If you’ve ever sat in a circle of adults who’ve lost a spouse, packed up their childhood home, survived their parents, or outlived their regrets—you know what emotional hoarding looks like.
It’s not about being broken. It’s about being full. Too full.
And like a suitcase with a busted zipper, it just doesn’t close right anymore.
That’s where the Eye of the Needle Ritual comes in.
Inspired by that famous Gospel mic-drop—"It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"—this group exercise invites people to imagine themselves as spiritual millionaires.
Not in gold or crypto, but in emotional inheritance.
Some of it earned, much of it imposed, and nearly all of it overdue for sorting.
Here’s how to run it like a pro therapist—or at least like a well-meaning soul with a clipboard and a knack for asking hard questions gently.
How to Talk to Your Kids About Your Partner’s Mental Illness: A Modest Guide for the Tender, the Tired, and the Trying
Let’s not sugarcoat this: Parenting in 2025 is already hard.
Now try parenting while your partner is cycling through depression, or struggling with panic attacks, or sobbing quietly in the bathroom while your kid finishes their math homework at the kitchen table.
You love your children. You love your partner.
But when the weight of mental illness seeps into your daily life like a fog that doesn't lift, you start asking yourself impossible questions:
“Should I tell them?”
“What if I say the wrong thing?”
“Are they already scared?”
“Am I failing them?”
Here’s the good news, friend: You are not failing.
You’re just in the thick of a very human story—one in which truth, care, and gentle honesty can do a lot more good than silence ever could.