When I moved into a rented cottage on Maui, Hawaii, some years ago, I found a little Russian Blue cat with gray fur and yellow eyes sitting on the porch staring at me. I learned that she was feral and that my neighbor Koa called her Pepper, and that she came by around the same time every day.

We can only trace romantic love back to about a thousand years ago. Prior to that, there wasn't any romantic love. It's an idea that has been invented, like a philosophy or a religion. It has been made very special.

The image of the partner who is most attractive to you is buried deep within your unconscious mind. You began sketching this picture soon after your birth and before you were a teenager the composite was nearly complete. Your Imago has a dominant influence over the type of partner you seek, the way you relate to him, and how happy you will be together. The relationship script you wrote as a child is based on both the Imago you created and the childhood wounds you suffered.

It’s been said that whatever brings us to face the essential truth of our lives may be called “grace.” Frequently, grace assumes a form that feels more like a curse than a blessing. It can be a life-threatening illness, the loss of a family member, being fired from a job, the kids leaving home (or coming back), divorce, a serious accident, or any number of possible crises that can be encountered in one’s life.

A successful relationship has two very important components: learning to love yourself first, and then learning to love another person. Too many people ignore the first part, then wonder why it’s so hard to love another. It’s like expecting to water a plant with an empty water pitcher. Or trying to put on your child’s oxygen mask when the airplane cabin pressure drops, but passing out from lack of oxygen before you can get it on.

Children of divorce are less likely to earn a four-year or graduate degree, according to a new study. The study is one of the first to look specifically at divorce and graduate education. Susan Stewart, professor of sociology at Iowa State University, says it is important to understand this relationship as more jobs require a graduate or professional degree.

A critical step in the embrace of silence and solitude is setting aside the notion that we have to be "doing something" throughout our waking hours. For most of us, this goes against what we have been taught since childhood...

Many of our "life lessons" come to us through what we might usually call a "negative" experience, or possibly a "negative" person in our life. However, the addition of the term negative to any person or situation is simply a perception, or a judgment, on our part.

Each of us has the opportunity to accept and welcome the gift of living fully in the present. When we awaken to the eternal here and now, we feel alive, mobilized, our senses quickened. Each moment fully experienced becomes an integral part of the sculpting of our future. As we live today, we create our tomorrows.

While some kids may be lucky enough to skate through their parents’ separation relatively unscathed, the majority are going to suffer at least some short term, if not longer term distress. As an adult, you’ve likely forgotten just how central your family was to your sense of stability and even identity. Children have yet to develop autonomy, independence or a secure sense of self; instead, their entire frame of reference is strongly centred around their family. When that framework is broken, their world can feel as though it has fallen apart.

A pattern of breaking up and getting back together can be bad for your mental health, according to a new study. While on-and-off-again couples like Sam and Diane from Cheers or Ross and Rachel from Friends may keep audiences watching, Kale Monk, assistant professor of human development and family science at the University of Missouri, suggests people in these kinds of relationships should make informed decisions about stabilizing or safely terminating their relationships.

We spend much of our time talking about trivial matters and practical ones -- the weather, plans for the day, routine office events, frivolous gossip, the next technological miracle, etc. So little of our conversation addresses our passions, loves, emotions, dreams, or our creative insights...

Exposure to an acute stress in utero can have long-term consequences extending into childhood—but only among children in poor households, according to a new study. The study, which took place in Chile, did not find the same effect among children in upper- or middle-class families.

Imagine that someone you care about is procrastinating in advance of a vital exam. If he fails the test, he will not be able to go to university, an eventuality of major consequence in his life. If positive encouragement doesn’t work, you might reverse strategy, making your friend feel so bad, so worried, so scared, that the only strategy left is that he starts studying like mad.

The most common sexual problem is low desire, according to a research study we recently published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Around 40 per cent of the women we asked, and 30 per cent of men, reported experiencing problems with low desire during the last six months.

A grey divorce is simply a divorce that occurs at or after the age of 50. Even though the divorce rate across all age groups has stabilised, the number of grey divorces in the United States has recently dramatically increased.

The majority of people who are online dating seek out partners who are more desirable than themselves, new research suggests.

When it comes to predicting who is most likely to act in a trustworthy manner, one of the most important factors is the anticipation of guilt, according to a new study.

One emotion holding many of us back is negative love: our tendency to repeat the behaviors we used to win our parents’ love, and to repeat our parents’ attitudes, behaviors, and treatment of us. Generation after generation pass on the same type of negative love...

Using coercion to get your kid to eat healthy foods doesn’t really have effect, good or bad, on their weight. But it can cause meal-time tension and damage the parent-child relationship, a new study suggests.

A relationship is something to appreciate. A relationship allows you to share experiences. It lets you see yourself through someone else's eyes, and if that can be annoying at times, it is also a wonderful opportunity for self-awareness and growth...

In five states that decriminalized marijuana between 2007 and 2015, there was no corresponding rise in the drug’s use among young people, a new analysis shows.

‘The world has always belonged to males,’ wrote Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949), ‘and none of the reasons given for this have ever seemed sufficient.’