February 4, 2026
Through this series, I’ve shared many of the love relationship lessons I learned through my personal experiences finding my partner and fulfilling our vision, and professional observations while working with so many individuals and couples through the years. The topics Read more…
Successful partnerships operate on consensus (win/win) decision-making, so once you’ve committed to each other, neither of you should make a unilateral decision that affects your partner without their agreement. Depending upon your life experience, it’s quite a leap of faith Read more…
February 3, 2026
A frustrating thing about intimate relationships is when we most need to communicate positively, we’re least able to. We get mad, stressed, hurt, or scared, and do and say things we wish we hadn’t, or we don’t feel like talking Read more…
Prepare for Lifelong Love When you connect with a potential partner, commit to each other so you can experience the relationship over time— ideally for six months or more. If the other person doesn’t wish to make this commitment, they Read more…
As you saw during the post on couple combinations, the highest intensity relationships with the most conflict are high- strung + high-strung/different couples, but all couples must learn to resolve conflict fairly. As a marital counselor, I discovered many of Read more…
January 22, 2026
Congratulations, you’re ready to connect with a potential partner! You’ve examined your life, prepared your life foundation, built a support network, analyzed your relationship field research, and completed your old relationship business. As you review partner candidates, consider each personal Read more…
January 21, 2026
Is your relationship working? Sometimes, you know deep down that your relationship isn’t giving you what you need and is never going to. But we all have a basic fear of abandonment. Conflict with our lover or considering whether to Read more…
January 19, 2026
In the last two posts, you learned to classify couples using the levels of sexual relationships, relationship availability, low-key and high-strung personalities, similarity and differences in background, the couple combination matrix, and balance of power and responsibility. In this post, Read more…
January 18, 2026
Very few people marry their high school or college sweetheart and live happily ever after. Most of us need more time and relationship experience before we’re ready for a long-term relationship. I refer to all your previous intimate relationship experience Read more…
Personalities, Differences and Power Opposites attract, or do they? Statistical odds favor the probability that you’ll marry someone similar to you in terms of intelligence, height, and body mass index (BMI). A study of thousands of couples revealed that we Read more…
January 16, 2026
When you start a new relationship, you also enter a relationship (directly or indirectly) with that person’s parents, siblings, and extended family (and vice versa). Even though you might not meet or spend time with these people during the early Read more…
January 15, 2026
Your Life Foundation Before we can build a life partnership, we need to mature and get to know ourselves as fully as possible. This prepares us for the responsibilities of long-term commitment. To illustrate the preparatory tasks we need to Read more…
January 14, 2026
There are four progressive stages during the life partner search process, and my first guideline encompasses all of these. Because your search is unique, and because many of us as young adults are still figuring out our love lives, careers, Read more…
“One day someone will walk into your life and make you see why it never worked out with anyone else.” Anonymous Preparing for Partnership and Life I arrived at adulthood not ready for partnership (or life). My parents’ troubled marriage Read more…
January 13, 2026
Modern life is amazingly complex. It’s no wonder it takes years for many of us to prepare for life partnership and be clear about what kind of partner we want and need. Unfortunately, training for intimate relationships isn’t part of Read more…