December 2021 With being vaccinated and boosted as well as working out how to safely carry on with our lives during the pandemic, most of us will be celebrating the holiday season with our families this year. We will be getting together with our own unique variety of loved ones: those we adore as well as the quirky ones, the grumpy ones, even the ones we don’t really get along with. Everyone acknowledges that these visits can be challenging, thus the recent onslaught of advic

How the pandemic exposed my self-deception October 2021 I have been blessed with a very lucky life. I was born into a middle-class family in a modern, developed country. My children and my loved ones have all been healthy. Medical attention has been available to us. I have never suffered from financial hardship. I have always had friends. I’ve enjoyed the work and interests I have pursued. I know that a lot of my feeling lucky has to do with what I choose to focus on. Everyth

September 2021 Photo: Kolipoki My daughter was married last month, which, in sitting down to write this blog, made me think: what advice could I offer her (and her partner) about committing to a long-term relationship and being married? What have I learned from the 40-plus years that I’ve been married? What have I learned from studying psychology and relationships, as well as from other people’s experiences of marriage? My advice is certainly humble, but I am offering it with

August 2021 Actions we can take to make romance burn brighter. August is National Romance Awareness Month, and I am well aware that there are a gazillion blogs and unlimited advice out there about how to maintain romance in a relationship. Just google “keep romance alive” if you don’t believe me. And it’s really helpful advice: talk to each other, make time to be together, stay positive, be intimate. But here’s some advice that digs deeper and hits on more core issues that sq

Real-World Romance for Real-Life Partners July 2021 Last month, I finished revising and updating The Fantasy Bond with my husband, Robert Firestone. While working on this book, now called Challenging the Fantasy Bond, I became aware of what a delicate balance it is to keep a relationship real. In a romantic relationship, people have a tendency to either move toward idealizing their partner or going in the other direction and being overly critical of them. These reactions resu

How your attachment style may be sabotaging your finding love. June 2021 Over the years, I have witnessed many people turning to dating sites to find a romantic partner. I have witnessed some of them finding love and companionship and others experiencing disappointment, frustration and rejection. And with these observations, I have become aware of how much a person’s attachment style plays a part in who they are drawn to and, in the case of on-line dating, who they swipe righ

Understanding the fantasy bond to get your relationship back on track May 2021 Many of us are in the process of recovering from the last year of living under the threat of Covid19: we are vaccinated, pulling off our masks and moving in to hug the people we have been quarantined from. We are venturing out into the world: visiting friends’ homes, dining in restaurants, shopping in stores. Now that the fear is lifting and our focus is not solely on our survival and the safety of

April 2021 Being vulnerable is a popular topic of conversation these days. In fact, at this time, Brene Brown’s TED talk “The Power of Vulnerability” has had more than 30 million views. In spite of all the talk and of how much we may want to be vulnerable, especially in our romantic relationships, it’s not easy to drop our defenses and open ourselves up to another person. My book, Daring to Love, looks at the different reasons we push love away. One is that love makes us feel

March 2021 Now that we are not only seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but we are almost there and about to step out into that light, what will re-entry actually be like? Will it be all sunshine and happiness? I was on a Zoom call with a group of friends who have been checking in with each other weekly over the past year. These folks of various ages, sexes and living situations have all been experiencing some form of quarantine or lifestyle restrictions during this pe

February 2021 Photo: Kzenon With vaccines being approved, manufactured and distributed, with vaccination centers opening up and people starting to be vaccinated, it seems like it is safe to say that we will be returning to some form of a normal life before the end of the year. Single people for whom dating has been interrupted for the past year will be able to go back out into the world and resume their search. If you are one of these people, now seems like the perfect opport