Marriage & Partnerships

Keeping Intimacy Alive When You Become a Caregiver

Caregiving has a way of moving into your marriage like an extra roommate. It means well. It’s necessary. It also leaves wet towels on the floor and somehow ends up with the best side of the bed. If you’re caring for a spouse with chronic illness or disability, you already know the hard truth: love...

Supporting Your Partner After a Parent Dies

When your partner loses a parent, your relationship suddenly has a third presence in the room: grief. It can be loud and chaotic, or so quiet you almost miss it. It can show up as tears, irritation, numbness, busywork, insomnia, a strange burst of energy, or a flat stare at the pantry shelf like...

Handling Difficult In-Laws Without Hurting Your Marriage

There is a special kind of argument that starts with: “Your mom said…” and ends with two people who love each other feeling oddly alone on the same couch. Difficult in-laws are rarely just about the in-laws. They press on the tender spots of loyalty, belonging, culture, and old family roles. If you...

Emotional Intimacy When Your Spouse Travels

There is a particular kind of loneliness that can show up when you are technically married, technically loved, and still eating dinner alone for the third night this week. Frequent travel can turn a relationship into a relay race. One of you is running logistics at home, the other is running on...

Reconnecting With Your Spouse After Kids

The first time I heard a new parent say, “I love my partner, but I don’t recognize us,” I nodded so hard my neck hurt. Not because it’s dramatic. Because it’s ordinary. Having kids is one of the biggest identity shifts a couple can go through. Your schedules change, your bodies change, your nervous...

First Year of Marriage Survival Guide

The first year of marriage is a little like moving into a house that looks adorable from the curb, then realizing you need to figure out where the breaker box is, why the bathroom door sticks, and whose job it is to take out the trash. You love each other. You also have habits. And families. And...

Couples Therapy vs. Relationship Coaching

When your relationship feels wobbly, it is natural to look for help and then get stuck on the first fork in the road: Do we need couples therapy , or would relationship coaching be a better fit? I spent 12 years as a marriage and family therapist, and now I write about family life from the inside...

5 Strategies to Strengthen Your Marriage in a Blended Family

Blended families ask a lot of a marriage. You are building a relationship while also managing history, loyalty binds, schedules, ex-partner dynamics, and kids who did not choose the new arrangement. If it feels like you spend half your week negotiating and the other half cleaning up feelings, you...

10 Tips to De-Escalate a Heated Argument with Your Partner

Most couples do not fight because they are “bad at love.” They fight because they are tired, scared, overstimulated, or protecting something tender with a voice that accidentally turns sharp. I have sat with many partners in my therapy office, and I have also been one of them in my own kitchen,...

15 Budget-Friendly At-Home Date Night Ideas to Keep the Spark Alive

There is a specific kind of tired that lives in long-term love. The kind that comes from packing lunches, answering emails, caring for parents, paying bills, and then looking up at 9:17 p.m. thinking, “We should probably… connect.” The good news is you don't need a fancy reservation to feel close...

How to Discuss Finances with Your Partner Without Fighting

Money talks have a special talent for turning two reasonable adults into defensive attorneys arguing a case called Who Is the Problem Here . If that sounds familiar, you are not broken. Money carries history: how we were raised, what we fear, what we value, and what we feel guilty about. When you...

Dividing Chores Fairly When You Both Work Full-Time

When two adults are working full-time, the house does not magically “know” that everyone is tired. Dishes still appear. Laundry still multiplies. And somehow the trash always chooses the exact moment you sit down. In my therapy office, and later in my own kitchen with teenagers wandering through...

Marriage vs. Civil Union: Legal and Financial Differences

Most couples do not choose a relationship status because they are excited about paperwork. They choose it because they want to build a life that is protected when life gets messy. And it will get messy at some point. That is not pessimism. That is just adulthood. Marriage and civil union can feel...

7 Signs It’s Time for Couples Counseling

Most couples do not wake up one morning and decide, casually, to look for a therapist. Usually it is more like this: you are doing dishes, or driving to soccer practice, or lying in bed staring at the ceiling, and a small, steady thought shows up. We cannot keep doing it like this. As a former...

How to Keep Romance Alive With Young Children

There is a particular kind of loneliness that can happen when you are parenting small children with someone you love. You are together constantly, yet somehow you miss each other. You might even share a bed and still feel like coworkers running a tiny, loud startup with sticky hands. If this is...

50 Questions to Ask Before Getting Engaged

Engagement is romantic. It is also logistical. Both can be true without ruining the vibe. In my work with couples, I learned a simple rule: love thrives when expectations are spoken out loud . Many couples do not break up because they “didn’t love each other.” They unravel because they never...