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The 9 Most Common Mistakes We Make When Choosing a Partner image

Relationships

The 9 Most Common Mistakes We Make When Choosing a Partner

Choosing a long-term partner may be the single most consequential decision any of us ever has to make. What then are some of the most weighty mistakes we make when attempting to find a lover?

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How We Can Feel Misunderstood – Without Ever Explaining Who We Are image

Self-Knowledge

How We Can Feel Misunderstood – Without Ever Explaining Who We Are

Did you ever explain yourself properly to the person who is meant to have ignored you? Did you work hard to make yourself known before surrendering to a sense of being unnoticed?

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The Challenges of Male Friendships image

Sociability

The Challenges of Male Friendships

Men are lonely because of an inherent conflict between what is required of being a man on the one hand, and what is involved in being a friend on the other.

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What Does the Child in You Need Today? image

Self-Knowledge

What Does the Child in You Need Today?

We’ll accede to a fairer, kinder adulthood once we accept how close we remain always to the delicate, sensitive, tear-prone little person we once were.

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Why We Can so Quickly End up Feeling Hated image

Self-Knowledge

Why We Can so Quickly End up Feeling Hated

We may be far more loved than we thought – once we remember the scale of the reservations that true love can encompass.

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Why We Sometimes Need to Be Tied to a Mast image

Self-Knowledge

Why We Sometimes Need to Be Tied to a Mast

There are situations in which we have to concede that only the blunt removal of temptation can save us.

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Good Endings in Love image

Relationships

Good Endings in Love

Many relationships cannot be resurrected; all relationships deserve dignified and thoughtful burials.

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On Castration Anxiety image

Relationships

On Castration Anxiety

If sex is going wrong, we may need to look beyond physical interventions and take an audit of the mutual suspicions that each side can be unconsciously carrying with them into the bedroom.

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How to Find Out What Might Happen With a New Partner image

Relationships

How to Find Out What Might Happen With a New Partner

When a new relationship is on the cards, we might greatly expand our sense of what could subsequently happen with our date by turning to one subject in particular…

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Trust What You Knew Then, Not What You Feel Now image

Self-Knowledge

Trust What You Knew Then, Not What You Feel Now

The further away we stand from the moment when we took a decision, the more our judgement is likely to be clouded and corrupted.

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Four Explanations for Self-Sabotage image

Self-Knowledge

Four Explanations for Self-Sabotage

One of the most curious and dispiriting of all psychological behaviours goes under the title of self-sabotage. In our search for answers, we can identify at least four explanations…

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Those of Us Who Need a War Zone image

Self-Knowledge

Those of Us Who Need a War Zone

In our personal lives, we may be rather more drawn to ‘war’ – conflict, intensity, anxiety, fear and jeopardy – than we are to ‘peace’.

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Why Introverts Are As They Are image

Sociability

Why Introverts Are As They Are

Introverts lack an experience that they could be with others and have their needs met. Their history has taught them that the only person who could possibly understand their needs is them.

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Those of Us Who Don’t Expect Kindness in Love image

Relationships

Those of Us Who Don’t Expect Kindness in Love

Why do we keep giving our partner so much leeway? Why do we hope against hope? Why don’t we cut our losses right now and leave?

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A Dark Way to Predict What Might Happen in Your Relationship image

Relationships

A Dark Way to Predict What Might Happen in Your Relationship

A dark and frightening way to predict what might happen in your relationship with a new person is to ask them what happened to them in their childhood…

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Naturally You Don't Trust Anyone! image

Self-Knowledge

Naturally You Don’t Trust Anyone!

We are continually on our guard. Our alarm is always on – even around our closest friends and lovers. We are always anticipating an attack.

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When It's Extremely Hard to Choose image

Self-Knowledge

When It’s Extremely Hard to Choose

We are obsessed by the idea that a wise choice will help to prevent a nightmare, but considered soberly, there will be something pretty difficult about every route we take.

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What We Can Always Do to Improve Our Relationships image

Relationships

What We Can Always Do to Improve Our Relationships

Once we know we’re not facing a uniquely misfiring human, only another version of our own broken selves, we can abandon once and for all the delicious yet ruinous sense that there is only one mad person in the couple.

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Who Actually Ends a Relationship? image

Relationships

Who Actually Ends a Relationship?

The one who ends a relationship is not necessarily the one says it’s over. The one who actually ends the relationship is the one who ceases to love.

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Why Some Of Us Are So Bad At Spotting Red Flags image

Relationships

Why Some Of Us Are So Bad At Spotting Red Flags

We can put it like this: the ability to respond actively to red flags depends on having had a certain sort of childhood.

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The Appeal of Rescuing Other People image

Relationships

The Appeal of Rescuing Other People

We might say that everyone, at the start, longs to receive love. But when it has not been especially forthcoming, one way to handle its absence is to turn into a compulsive caregiver.

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On Feeling Manic image

Calm

On Feeling Manic

Many of us are prone to slip into states of mind we might call ‘manic’ – in which we run obsessively and at high speed away from something within us that asks for our attention.

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Daring to Love image

Relationships

Daring to Love

It might take some of us the greater part of our lives until we no longer hold it against someone that they can warmly adore us.

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The Pains of Heartbreak image

Relationships

The Pains of Heartbreak

We should not try to be brave. This has to count among the greatest griefs of our lives. Only thereby can we give the love we had for them proper stature – and begin to let it go.

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What Is It Like to Be Mentally Unwell? image

Self-Knowledge

What Is It Like to Be Mentally Unwell?

Most states of unwellness are not radically different from those occasionally and briefly experienced by all of us; they are simply much, much more extreme.

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How to 'Grow' image

Self-Knowledge

How to ‘Grow’

What does ‘growing’ really involve? And, crucially, how might we train ourselves to grow a little more – and a little more quickly?

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Our Longing to Avoid Love

Relationships

Our Longing to Avoid Love

We won’t really have begun to properly understand human nature until we absorb a hugely awkward and strange sounding fact:…
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