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Love comes in many forms. We all know that. But because of what we’ve been taught by pop culture, the retail industry, and even our own friends and family, we tend to believe that there’s an ultimate form of love: the love we share with a romantic partner. In other words, we’ve come to believe that our romantic partner is our one true love.

So if you’ve been struggling to find love with a romantic partner, you might be feeling pretty frustrated. You might be thinking, “Why can’t I ever experience that highest form of love? Why does everyone else seem to be in a great relationship except me?”

How do I know that these are the thoughts that have been running through your mind lately? Because I’ve been there.

You see, I used to think that I was the only woman on Earth who kept making stupid mistakes and falling for the “wrong” guy over and over again. I kept desperately asking myself things like…

“Why me?”

“Why can’t I find the right guy?”

“What’s wrong with me???”

I was deep into t...

If you’re happily married or partnered up, you might be looking forward to Valentine’s Day as a chance to celebrate your relationship, eat some decadent chocolate, and enjoy a romantic evening with your love.

But if you’re single, widowed, divorced, or struggling to feel happy in your relationship, you might be dreading it. In fact, you might even be wishing that you could somehow find a time machine that would let you jump straight from February 13 to February 15.

If this is you, I want you to know that I TOTALLY get it.

Because when I got divorced many years ago, I was full of dread leading up to that first Valentine’s Day without my former husband. I was convinced that it was going to be a challenging day full of pain, loneliness, and endless tears.

So if this is how you’re expecting to feel this Valentine’s Day, I want you to know that I’ve been there.

I also want you to know that how you’re feeling is completely normal.

After all, most of us are used to thinking of Valentine...

If you’re looking to reconnect with your partner or deepen the emotional intimacy, this blog post is for you.

My clients are usually surprised to learn that the secret to boosting intimacy in their relationship isn’t just going on a romantic vacation or spicing things up in the bedroom. It’s spending time with their partner and truly getting to know them.

But if you’ve read my posts before, you probably aren’t as surprised. Because as I’ve shared time and time again on my blog, the very definition of emotional intimacy in a relationship is to truly be seen by your partner and to truly see them in return. So you might already know that if you want to deepen your connection and enjoy more intimacy in your relationship, it’s important for you and your partner to share who you truly are.

But you might not know how to actually do this. After all, getting to know your partner on a deep level isn’t as simple as asking them what their favorite color is, where they went to school, and what t...

I’m often wondering if there is anyone on this planet that doesn’t want or long for a deeper connection with their loved ones?! I simply think that we are wired for connection whether we are fully aware of it or not.

Recently, in my other blogs, I’ve explained why emotional closeness is important if you want to have a deep, loving relationship with your partner. And I’ve revealed some of the key ingredients for having a strong emotional connection in your relationship.

But what if your relationship lacks emotional closeness right now?

Or what if you and your partner are somewhat close but not as connected as you want to be or know you could be?

Well, I’ve got good news for you.

There are steps you can take to deepen your emotional connection with your partner and feel more bonded to them—even if you didn’t develop a secure attachment style as a child (if you read my post from December 1st, you’ll know what I’m talking about).

And in this blog post, I’m going to share some of the ...

In my last couple of posts, I shared with you why emotional connection matters so much in relationships. And I explained how your attachment style shapes your ability to form close emotional bonds with romantic partners and loved ones.

However, it isn’t that secure attachment itself leads to more emotional closeness. In other words, just having a secure attachment style doesn’t guarantee more emotional closeness in your relationships.

Instead, it’s that having a secure attachment style allows you to do something that’s absolutely critical for becoming deeply emotionally connected to someone you love: being vulnerable.

These days, I see the word “vulnerability” get thrown around a lot in blog posts, magazines, and TV shows. And I bet you do too. So even though you might be very familiar with the term, you might not know what vulnerability actually is.

That’s why in this blog post, I’m going to clarify what it really means to “be vulnerable” (and why it’s impossible to be emotionally...

In my last post on why being close is more important than sex, I talked about why we crave a deep emotional connection with our partner.

Like a lot of my clients, you might long for a deeper and more intimate bond with your partner. But you might have a hard time actually cultivating it in your relationship. And you might not know why.

If you’ve ever reflected on your desire for closeness and emotional connection, you might have realized that it isn’t just missing from your current relationship. You’ve struggled to create it in your past relationships too.

For example, maybe you’ve realized that you always end up in relationships where you seem to be more emotionally invested in the relationship than your partner is. Or perhaps you crave connection but any time that a relationship has gotten serious, you’ve panicked and pulled away.

If you notice that you keep running into the same problems with different partners and in different relationships, you might worry that there’s somethi...

Why do we usually call rom coms and romance novels “guilty pleasures”? Because even if we enjoy them, we tend to think that they’re silly or ridiculous—that they don’t show us what “real life” or a “real relationship” is like. After all, these movies and novels often feature couples taking long walks on the beach, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes, and texting love notes to one another all day long.

The honeymoon phase of a relationship may look something like that, we think. But in our eyes, a mature, long-term relationship just isn’t like that. A “real” relationship isn’t a passionate whirlwind of being deeply in love with your partner and feeling like you can’t bear to be separated from them. It’s more like being business partners with someone you hopefully like and have sex with from time to time, right?

You know what, though? That’s not really right.

Yes, it’s true that the intense passion that characterizes the honeymoon phase of a relationship tends to fade over time. Bu...

It’s never fun when conflict arises in your relationship. It feels unpleasant, it can be uncomfortable, and it can make you worry about the future of your relationship or your bond with your partner.

Plus, as I shared in my last post, conflict can negatively affect you and your relationship in a number of ways.

That’s why you might try to avoid conflict in your relationship.

For example, instead of having a conversation with your partner after they forgot to do the laundry yet again, you might just keep your mouth shut and do it yourself.

Or when your partner asks if their friends can come over on Sunday for the fourth week in a row, you might agree even though you were really looking forward to enjoying some time just as a couple.

Initially, avoiding conflict can seem like a good strategy. Because on the surface, it might seem like everything is a-okay between you and your partner. After all, there are no overt arguments, disagreements, or emotionally charged conversations.

But ...

In my last two posts on the #1 thing that couples fight about and how to know whether you and your partner fight too much, I told you that conflict is inevitable in every relationship. Because when two people decide to share their lives, it’s only a matter of time before a difference in opinion, preferences, or dreams triggers a disagreement.

You know what this means?

It means that if you want to enjoy a happy, loving relationship, the goal isn’t to eliminate conflict from your relationship. As unpleasant as conflict can feel in the moment, it just isn’t possible or realistic to completely remove conflict from your life. So to some extent, it’s important to be comfortable with the idea that conflict will arise in your relationship from time to time—no matter how much you and your partner love each other and how long you’ve been together for.

At the same time, though, you don’t want to brush off just any kind of conflict that arises in your relationship and convince yourself that it’...

What do I hear most often from clients who are struggling with their relationship?

“My partner and I fight all the time!”

In other words, many of the people I work with worry that they and their partner fight too much.

Where do these concerns come from? They’re usually rooted in unrealistic beliefs and expectations that people have about what a “healthy” relationship looks like.

Specifically, like some of my clients, you might think that if a relationship is healthy, you should hardly ever argue with your partner.

Why?

You’ve probably watched movies or read romance novels where the characters who are in love spend their days staring into each other’s eyes, cuddling in bed, and strolling down the street hand-in-hand, not arguing about how to manage their budget or who’s going to drive their kid to basketball practice at 6 a.m.

As a result, you might think that ANY kind of conflict in your relationship is a sign that something is wrong. And every time that conflict arises in your ...