You meant to co-parent. You really did. You read the blogs. You downloaded the apps.

You attended a “Parenting After Divorce” workshop with complimentary lukewarm coffee. And then reality arrived—wearing your ex’s face.

Every email became a trap. Every pickup a cold war.

You found yourself debating whether “Thanks for the update” was passive-aggressive or just aggressive-aggressive.

Welcome to the moment many parents reach: the one where co-parenting becomes aspirational and parallel parenting becomes necessary.

They used to argue about the thermostat. Now they argue about which driveway counts as “neutral ground.”

This is how love dies in the suburbs: not with a bang, but with a court order and a co-parenting app.

It’s called Parallel Parenting, and it exists for people who once promised to grow old together but now can’t make eye contact in the school parking lot.

It’s parenting in exile. Two governments. One child. No diplomatic relations.

Let’s say the hard part out loud. More people than ever are turning to ChatGPT not just for directions, recipes, or resume tips—but for emotional support.

It’s 2025, and your therapist might be a chatbot.

But here’s the catch: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says those heartfelt confessions aren’t protected by the same legal privileges as your real therapist’s notepad.

In a conversation this week with comedian and podcast host Theo Von, Altman laid it out plainly: “If you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there’s like a lawsuit or whatever, we could be required to produce that,” he said. “And I think that’s very screwed up.”

It is.

And it’s something that, until recently, didn’t seem like an urgent legal gray zone.

But now, with millions of users treating ChatGPT like an always-on therapist, life coach, and digital diary, the stakes have changed Significantly.

By now, you’ve probably seen one: a hyper-realistic toddler doll, complete with glassy eyes, mohair lashes, weighted limbs, and a name like Paisley or Jaxon.

If you’re lucky, they’re just sitting quietly in a pink stroller. If you’re unlucky, they’re buckled into the Target cart ahead of you while their owner argues with a cashier about expired coupons—pausing only to coo “It’s okay, baby girl” to five pounds of vinyl.

Welcome to the world of reborn toddler dolls, a niche hobby that refuses to stay niche.

Reborns started as hyper-realistic infant dolls in the 1990s, but they’ve grown—literally. Now we have toddlers.

And not just any toddlers: sleepy, chubby-cheeked silicone children that look like they should be in preschool but are instead being bottle-fed in YouTube “roleplay” videos for millions of views.

So… what’s going on?

In the sacred and solemn halls of couples therapy, a new hero has emerged. It’s not a fancy technique, a brilliant insight, or even a laminated worksheet.

It’s a rubber chicken.

Yes. A rubber chicken. Maybe plush. Maybe crocheted. Maybe plastic with squeaky feet.

But always, undeniably, a Therapy Chicken.

And it just might be the next viral couples therapy meme—equal parts hilarious and helpful. The kind of thing that starts as a joke and ends with tears of relief.

Why a Chicken? Why Now?

Is there a link between income and romantic intentions?

A new study in the Journal of Marriage and Family offers a compelling twist on the old adage: money can’t buy love, but it might increase your chances of starting a relationship.

Researchers Johanna Peetz and Geoff MacDonald found that single people with higher incomes were significantly more likely to say they wanted a romantic partner, felt more emotionally and logistically ready to date, and were more likely to enter a relationship within the year.

But here’s the catch: they weren’t any happier being single than lower-income souls.

In short, income predicted relationship pursuit, but not satisfaction with solo life.

In America, we’re used to zip codes determining your access to decent groceries, decent schools, or decent sidewalks.

But a new study suggests your zip code might also help decide how quickly you forget where you put your keys—or worse, your memories.

Published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, this large longitudinal study finds that women living in neighborhoods surrounded by high levels of poverty experience accelerated memory decline during midlife.

And for Black women, the effect was even more pronounced.

It’s not just where you live. It’s where your neighbors live. And their neighbors. Poverty, it seems, is not just contagious—it’s cumulative.

You know how some people seem to glide through life breaking rules, lying with charm, and punching holes in the social fabric without ever wrinkling their shirt collar?

Well, it turns out their brains might be wired for it—literally.

A new study out of Leipzig, published in the European Journal of Neuroscience, offers fresh evidence that psychopathic traits are not just personality quirks—they’re physically scaffolded by unique patterns of structural connectivity in the brain.

Yes, folks, there are now neurological floor plans for being a charismatic menace.

And they’re not just missing connections.

Some of the wiring appears extra tight in the very places you’d least want it to be—like giving an arsonist a flamethrower with an ergonomic grip!

They ask me at barbecues. In parking lots. Sometimes, in a whisper, after two glasses of wine at their child’s back-to-school night:

“So… what’s really the biggest problem you see in couples?”

There’s usually a nervous laugh, like they’re bracing for me to say “sex” and make it a punchline. A quick laugh, and then we’re back to potato salad.

But I’ve stopped giving the polite answer.

Because the real answer is quieter. Slower. And much more important.

The biggest problem I see in couples—the one that quietly wears love down—is this:

At some point, people stop being willing to be changed by the relationship.

Ever walked ten minutes in the wrong direction and refused to turn around—just because “you already started this way”? Welcome to the human condition.

Or, more precisely, to a newly documented psychological bias called doubling-back aversion.

According to new research published in Psychological Science (Cho & Critcher, 2025), people tend to reject more efficient options if those options involve undoing progress—even when it’s obvious that retracing their steps would save time and energy.

It’s not about being bad at math. It’s about the uncomfortable feeling of wasted effort.

If you're single and exhausted, you've probably already received more advice than a NASA launch team. “Put yourself out there.” “You’ve got to love yourself first.” “Don’t be so picky.”

Most of it’s well-meaning, some of it’s cruel, and none of it answers the real question:
Why do some people find love… while others seem to repel it like mismatched refrigerator magnets?

Now, thanks to a new study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, we have a better answer.

It’s not about how attractive, extroverted, or even ready you are.
It’s about why you’re looking in the first place.

Because, as it turns out, the universe has a sense of humor.

Let’s say it plainly and with love: getting cheated on feels like getting hit by a bus driven by someone you made dinner for last night.

It’s confusing. It’s cruel. It’s humiliating.

You go to sleep thinking you’re in a marriage and wake up in a courtroom of public opinion, with strangers in the jury box and TikTokers posting analysis videos of your last Instagram carousel.

So when the world sees a betrayal—say, a Coldplay kiss cam moment between a C-suite executive and someone clearly not his wife—the internet does what it does best.

It organizes itself into a moral army. It chooses sides.

And almost instantly, the betrayed partner is crowned: Saint of the Week. Patron of the blindsided. Keeper of virtue. Defender of vows.

But should we be doing this?

Do betrayed partners deserve automatic moral elevation?
Do we owe them our uncritical support just because they were the one left in the dark?

In a word: no.

In several more words: not unless we’re ready to flatten them into caricatures, ignore the actual emotional mess of long-term relationships, and assign sainthood like it’s a raffle prize handed out after a trauma drawing.