The Best Relationship Advice No One Ever Told You

Love and desire aren’t driven by the same things. In fact, sometimes their ingredients are polar opposites. The ingredients for a loving, stable relationship are commitment, intimacy, and egalitarianism, while the ingredients for desire are mystery, distance, risk, and playfulness. Throw in some external pressures such as cultural messages and parenthood, and it might seem impossible to have a good erotic life within a long-term relationship.

Mating in Captivity looks at what makes up our individual sense of desire and our desire for our partners. Although desire and love may have some fundamental contradictions, there are ways to balance the clashes, and ways to manage extra-relationship stresses.

Maintaining emotional love and connection in a relationship can be hard. Often, the problem is in the way you are communicating love to your partner, and vice versa. Have you ever demonstrated a gesture of affection, only to not have it appreciated? Does your partner ever say they don’t feel loved enough?

These conflicts happen because every person receives and experiences love differently. The way you experience love dictates your love language. There are 5 love languages: Word of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Learning to speak your partner’s love language can help you understand how to make them feel loved. And learning your own love language helps you understand what makes you fulfilled in a relationship.

In his book Reflections Of A Man, Amari Soul offers advice on cultivating healthy romantic relationships. He discusses how to identify incompatible partners and remove toxic influences from your life. Soul also emphasizes the importance of establishing high standards and not settling for less than you deserve in a romantic partner.

The book delves into understanding a woman's emotional needs in a relationship, such as open communication, affection, encouragement, and stability. Additionally, Soul shares strategies for fostering cooperation and mutual respect between partners, such as tackling problems as a team, maintaining honest dialogue, and prioritizing the relationship over personal desires.

Whether you're a man seeking to understand your partner better or a woman wanting to provide your partner with a resource for understanding you, The Man's Guide to Women is a practical guide to navigate the complexities of female psychology. Renowned relationship experts John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman, together with Doug Abrams and Rachel Carlton Abrams, employ scientific research, real-life examples, and years of clinical experience to demystify the intricacies of women's inner world.

From dating to sex to marriage, this guide equips men with the tools to initiate, build, and sustain a successful and mutually fulfilling relationship. We’ll supplement the authors’ advice with a range of perspectives on psychology, gender, love, and marriage from authors like Esther Perel (Mating in Captivity), Ian Kerner (She Comes First), and Rollo Tomassi (The Rational Male).

Love and desire aren’t driven by the same things. In fact, sometimes their ingredients are polar opposites. The ingredients for a loving, stable relationship are commitment, intimacy, and egalitarianism, while the ingredients for desire are mystery, distance, risk, and playfulness. Throw in some external pressures such as cultural messages and parenthood, and it might seem impossible to have a good erotic life within a long-term relationship.

Mating in Captivity looks at what makes up our individual sense of desire and our desire for our partners. Although desire and love may have some fundamental contradictions, there are ways to balance the clashes, and ways to manage extra-relationship stresses.

We all have a deep-rooted need to be loved, but often a rift opens between our romantic partners and ourselves. Why does this happen, and can anything be done?

In Getting the Love You Want, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt suggest that we unconsciously seek out romantic partners to help us resolve unfinished business from our childhood. When our partners fail to meet our unconscious expectations, our relationships fall apart. To prevent this, Hendrix and Hunt designed a process to change the way couples interact, allowing them to learn about their unconscious needs and to transform their lives into a conscious, loving union.

This guide will explore the psychological principles that affect how we relate to those closest to us, what science and relationship experts reveal about how our childhoods shape our adult lives, and how a struggling couple can learn to talk to each other, heal, and grow. We’ll also examine how the authors’ approach compares to other methods of couples therapy and to the ideas of other relationship experts.

Whether you're a man seeking to understand your partner better or a woman wanting to provide your partner with a resource for understanding you, The Man's Guide to Women is a practical guide to navigate the complexities of female psychology. Renowned relationship experts John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman, together with Doug Abrams and Rachel Carlton Abrams, employ scientific research, real-life examples, and years of clinical experience to demystify the intricacies of women's inner world.

From dating to sex to marriage, this guide equips men with the tools to initiate, build, and sustain a successful and mutually fulfilling relationship. We’ll supplement the authors’ advice with a range of perspectives on psychology, gender, love, and marriage from authors like Esther Perel (Mating in Captivity), Ian Kerner (She Comes First), and Rollo Tomassi (The Rational Male).

What would happen if you faced your fears and said “yes” to everything outside your comfort zone for a whole year? In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes, the celebrated television screenwriter and producer of the hit series “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal,” answers that very question. Rhimes recounts her journey of personal growth and transformation as she embarks on a year-long experiment to say "yes" to everything that scares her. From giving public speeches to prioritizing playtime with her daughters, Rhimes pushes herself out of her comfort zone and learns to embrace new experiences.

In this guide, we’ll explore Rhimes’s journey from a life of merely surviving to full-hearted thriving and outline the meaningful lessons she wishes to pass on to her readers so they, too, can reclaim their lives from fear. Along the way, we’ll compare the author's ideas to those of other similar self-help writers and provide additional context from sociology and psychology experts to help you better understand and apply Rhimes’s insights to your life.