The plays, in full.

§ 181 · Boundaries & Conflict

He is never coming back

With time, you forget that he had irritating sides. Every small preference, every favourite food, the blanket he would let fall to the floor because he was always too warm.

Read the article → § 180 · Work & Power

Most of the right things in our lives we do without motivation

Successful people don't have high motivation. They made motivation irrelevant.

Read the article → § 179 · Work & Power

Make your peace with grey days

Success is not a peak experience. It is a sustained condition — and it is composed mostly of tasks that are boring.

Read the article → § 178 · Work & Power

The secret of failure: you start well and break in the middle

What if I told you that beginnings are meaningless? I believe in persistence. I believe in love at third sight.

Read the article → § 177 · Work & Power

Persistence has nothing to do with the outcome

It is no great feat to persist at something faithfully when the positive result is guaranteed. That is the bug that makes people miss their own lives.

Read the article → § 176 · Work & Power

Astonishing news: successful people are diligent

Here comes the queen of clichés, handed down from generation to generation. Disappointing, isn't it? Allow me to be precise: disappointing, but true.

Read the article → § 175 · Work & Power

To succeed you need only two things

Twenty years of watching people, relationships and businesses flourish, and I keep arriving at two super-factors: sense, and endurance.

Read the article → § 174 · Parenting

To love is a great responsibility. To be loved is an enormous one.

A note for the children rather than the parents — though not for the small children. The thirteen, twenty-four and thirty-three-year-olds are invited to read.

Read the article → § 173 · Parenting

The six ages of looking at your parents

At five they represent everything good in the world. At fifteen, everything bad. It carries on from there.

Read the article → § 172 · Parenting

We told the children all the secrets, and it is terrible

A child is supposed to have to work to uncover secrets. He has to make himself worthy of them — to prove that if we give him the information, he will use it well.

Read the article → § 171 · Parenting

“I hate you”: why the child turns over in adolescence

Any resemblance between her and the sweet girl who was wandering about your living room two years ago is entirely coincidental.

Read the article → § 170 · Parenting

Philosophical, anxious and egocentric: an introduction to the adolescent

No longer children, and a considerable way from being fully adult — and thoroughly capable of imposing a charged unease on everybody around them.

Read the article → § 169 · Parenting

"I was a centimetre from hitting her"

Something in me snapped. The Neanderthal holding the baby was not the lecturer, and not the empathetic counsellor. He was a sweating, stubbled creature who wanted to sleep.

Read the article → § 168 · Parenting

Screamed at your child uncontrollably? Forgive yourself.

What do you do when the collection of repellent aspects of your personality is revealed to your child's eyes, and sometimes erupts over their head?

Read the article → § 167 · Parenting

No guilt: let parents make mistakes quietly

The dangerous working assumption of consumer culture seeps into us constantly: there is no need to endure any frustration. There is a technological solution to every human ache.

Read the article → § 166 · Parenting

Stop preoccupying yourselves with the children quite so much

The excessive preoccupation with parenthood and child-rearing is damaging the quality of our parenting and making it less effective.

Read the article → § 165 · Parenting

Your fear of damaging the child invites the damage

When they are three or four there is still something comic in it. Then adolescence bursts into the house, and with it something more troubling: threats.

Read the article → § 164 · Parenting

Children, your father has to disappoint you

Do you know what a small child absolutely must have in the first years? Not toys, not perfect nutrition. He must know that it will be all right.

Read the article → § 163 · Parenting

"Why did I wrap him in cotton wool all his life?"

Have you ever found yourself running a horror scenario like that in your head? If so: everybody does, you are entirely normal, and you may have fallen for a myth.

Read the article → § 162 · Parenting

Every parent has two contradictory jobs

The first is to protect the children. The second is to abandon them. Yes, abandon — I could have written release, but the sentence would have had less impact.

Read the article → § 161 · Overthinking & Decisions

It will not sort itself out

Your dead relationship will not suddenly rise again. The financial hole will not erase itself with time. The stalling career will not become a dream job by itself.

Read the article → § 160 · Overthinking & Decisions

When you are in a hole, stop digging

The hole is an umbrella term for all the things you are doing right now that are doing you harm. And the emphasis is on doing.

Read the article → § 159 · Overthinking & Decisions

Despair is a bad internal decision

Despair is something you do. Something you fuel. And if that is so, it is the most optimistic fact in the world.

Read the article → § 158 · Overthinking & Decisions

Things are bad

You want to feel good about yourself, and I have no problem with that. My problem starts with the fact that you want to feel good about yourself right now.

Read the article → § 157 · Overthinking & Decisions

It will be worse before it is better

That sentence will be a far better companion in stormy weather than any of the mantras the internet is full of.

Read the article → § 156 · Overthinking & Decisions

I will not ask you to put on a happy face

Right now every demon is running loose. All of it is legitimate. I will demand only that you know one thing: it is temporary.

Read the article → § 155 · Overthinking & Decisions

Hold on

A few words for anyone going through a hard period. Sometimes the greatest effort available to you is doing nothing at all.

Read the article → § 154 · Overthinking & Decisions

Leave the comfort zone? How did we get in there?

You cannot inject us with technology that removes every possible frustration and simultaneously dispatch battalions of coaches preaching that we must leave our comfort zone.

Read the article → § 153 · Overthinking & Decisions

Don't break

After you decide, nothing happens. The world is sceptical, and it responds slowly. What you get is not failure but ambiguity.

Read the article → § 152 · Overthinking & Decisions

Thought creates reality? Nonsense. Reality creates reality.

For change to occur in your life, it has to occur. With all due respect to mental preparation, this world does not live inside your head.

Read the article → § 151 · Overthinking & Decisions

Three mental positions that stop you changing

Real change is change you sustain and turn into a habit. Went for a run once after five years? So what. Keep it up for two months and we can open the champagne.

Read the article → § 150 · Work & Power

Here is what you do not understand about change

Not long, but it requires two readings. The technique comes second. First you meet two tedious and essential words.

Read the article → § 149 · Overthinking & Decisions

When should you make a change — when things are bad, or when they are good?

Most of you come to change with a sense of emergency, out of hysterical internal statements. You have already started badly.

Read the article → § 148 · Overthinking & Decisions

You are not looking for change, you are looking for relief

When you dream of change, your eyes naturally lift upwards. Away, out, far from here, up above this dreary reality.

Read the article → § 147 · Overthinking & Decisions

Three things you have to say to yourself in front of the mirror

Even if you always thought you were self-aware, you are probably talking nonsense. Here are three pieces of introspection I consider the entry fee.

Read the article → § 146 · Boundaries & Conflict

Here is your mistake

You think that on the day your self-worth rises you'll be able to set more boundaries. It works the other way round.

Read the article → § 145 · Boundaries & Conflict

The only person who can humiliate you is yourself

Imagine everyone around you is a salesperson marketing ideas about who you are. Here's a brilliant idea: you don't have to buy.

Read the article → § 144 · Relationships & Attraction

“I would not join a club that would have me as a member”

Groucho Marx's funny-sad line is the distilled essence of a self-image that is too low.

Read the article → § 143 · Overthinking & Decisions

Wait on self-love. Start by not hating yourself.

People who genuinely love themselves do not make a thing of it. They are busy with tasks. They are busy with life.

Read the article → § 142 · Overthinking & Decisions

Mirror, mirror — am I all right?

What if your self-image is a matter of decision? Not new-age self-love. Something else, and more severe.

Read the article → § 141 · Overthinking & Decisions

You consult your self-image before you move a centimetre

The way you answer the question “what do I actually think of myself?” has an enormous practical significance, because nothing you do escapes it.

Read the article → § 140 · Boundaries & Conflict

“I feel bad that I feel good”

Somebody once said that brilliant sentence to me. If you are nodding along with it, that is not good news.

Read the article → § 139 · Overthinking & Decisions

Self-criticism is good. Self-flagellation is bad.

Sometimes all we need is the grey, clichéd, calming word: proportion. And nowhere is it needed more than in how you relate to yourself.

Read the article → § 138 · Boundaries & Conflict

Three things you have to do to actually forgive yourself

Automatic self-forgiveness is a bad thing. Automatic self-flagellation is a catastrophic one. The first is considerably preferable.

Read the article → § 137 · Boundaries & Conflict

Guilt — a user's manual

Eight points, including the psychological definition of a rotten human being.

Read the article → § 136 · Boundaries & Conflict

Envy, and the trap of resentment

Most people know how to feel for a friend's suffering. Very few know how to feel for a friend's success.

Read the article → § 135 · Boundaries & Conflict

Instead of getting angry, start getting curious

Anger is information. When someone loses their temper at you, they are shouting out their operating software in the most direct way there is.

Read the article → § 134 · Boundaries & Conflict

Sometimes pity is a particularly nasty form of condescension

When I pity somebody, I lower them in my own mind to the rank of pitiable — attributing weakness to them, diminishing them in comparison with myself.

Read the article → § 133 · Work & Power

The good and the bad in being blunt

Everyone worn out by waffle is drawn to whoever promises to cut to the point. There is something genuinely right in that, and something genuinely dangerous.

Read the article → § 132 · Work & Power

Learn to take criticism

Somewhere in Siberia lives the only person in the world who enjoys receiving criticism. The other nine billion of us simply hate it.

Read the article → § 131 · Boundaries & Conflict

Before you criticise, here is what to remember

Intelligent people are eager to listen to criticism. Unintelligent people are eager to deliver it.

Read the article → § 130 · Boundaries & Conflict

Giving praise is a remarkable move. Just do it properly.

Five red heart emoji — that is not it. "Legend", "you're the best" — also not it. Everyone preaches that praise matters, and they are right. So make an effort.

Read the article → § 129 · Boundaries & Conflict

“I told you so” is an expression that should die

It manages to fold two of the lowest human phenomena into two words: the urge to come out right, and the need to prove your superiority.

Read the article → § 128 · Boundaries & Conflict

Advice: learn to keep your mouth shut

Do you really have to say the barb currently going round your head? Have you thought what will happen a minute after you humiliate her?

Read the article → § 127 · Boundaries & Conflict

Stop using psychological vocabulary on the person you love

If you cannot express what you want in direct, simple terms, the chances are you are talking nonsense.

Read the article → § 126 · Boundaries & Conflict

Sorry I did not listen to you

Attention behaves exactly like a current account. It is a zero-sum game — spend more on one thing and less remains for the people dear to you.

Read the article → § 125 · Relationships & Attraction

"If you talk to me, there is always a danger I will listen"

When you talk to someone about personal things, two bad outcomes are available: that they will not listen at all, or that they really will.

Read the article → § 124 · Boundaries & Conflict

Why did we stop talking to one another?

There is no better way to become acquainted with another person than by talking to them. And in this era, that medium has quietly faded.

Read the article → § 123 · Boundaries & Conflict

The envious friendship: the pit you do not want to fall into

The internet is full of advice about romantic relationships. About friendships that soured and turned poisonous — not a word.

Read the article → § 122 · Boundaries & Conflict

"I deserve it" — a character sketch

Nobody deserves anything. Not me, not you, not Bill Gates. Two versions of a mental position that ruins relationships.

Read the article → § 121 · Boundaries & Conflict

“What I may do, you may not”: hypocrisy

Without doubt the most dangerous trait of them all — and it blocks your ability to notice other people at all.

Read the article → § 120 · Boundaries & Conflict

The condescension problem

One of the fastest and surest ways to make a person loathe you: explain how clever you are, and in the same breath imply how small they are.

Read the article → § 119 · Boundaries & Conflict

Passive-aggressive, the quiet lie

A relationship conducted for months in the shadow of passive aggression rests on a lie: that we are really a couple.

Read the article → § 118 · Parenting

When you divorce: seven steps for the children's sake

The real subject of this piece is those who cannot yet read it. Set your own case aside for a moment.

Read the article → § 117 · Relationships & Attraction

Staying together for the children: good or bad?

The hostility is not loud or aggressive, but you will not find intimacy or compassion either. And still the contract between them is clear and agreed.

Read the article → § 116 · Parenting

When you argue in front of your children, your children are terrified

They understand, unconsciously, that if a parent can abandon them for five minutes, abandoning them for five years is on the table.

Read the article → § 115 · Relationships & Attraction

Must you always back your partner in front of the children?

Some questions look at first glance like classic child-rearing questions. Shake them slightly and you discover they belong to the field of the relationship.

Read the article → § 114 · Parenting

Stay at home or go out to work: which is better?

In many cases couples set out with no clear definition of roles, only to discover a year or two later that a model has established itself which nobody ever agreed to.

Read the article → § 113 · Relationships & Attraction

It is not her — it is the children

When you do not want to go home, and again and again do not want to go home, you treat it as a sign. On the other side of the city, she is not dying for you to come back either.

Read the article → § 112 · Relationships & Attraction

When the relationship is in the bin, the parenting is on the ropes

Look under the bed. Something of yours has fallen down there — folded in like a bashful cauliflower, next to yesterday's socks. Your relationship.

Read the article → § 111 · Boundaries & Conflict

"Rely only on yourself" — the lone wolf's classic error

A sensible rule of life, clung to in extreme form, becomes an infection that poisons every good patch of your existence. Self-reliance is the clearest example.

Read the article → § 110 · Boundaries & Conflict

The tragedy of strong people

The dependable one treats himself as a savings plan. Everyone around him treats him as a current account with an endless balance. That gap is where it breaks.

Read the article → § 109 · Boundaries & Conflict

Why the most giving people attract the biggest parasites

In twenty years of advising people and couples, I have run into the same phenomenon again and again.

Read the article → § 108 · Boundaries & Conflict

The dark side of the people-pleaser

They are such good souls. Always ready to help. Always putting other people's needs before their own. So why does the world walk over them?

Read the article → § 107 · Relationships & Attraction

You are not a beautiful soul. You are a doormat.

If you are the one who gives everything, without limits, automatically placing your partner's needs before your own — do not be surprised when they climb you like a ladder.

Read the article → § 106 · Relationships & Attraction

"Hearts are made to be broken"

Every good thing in your life carries within it the potential for pain. That's the trade the human heart makes.

Read the article → § 105 · Relationships & Attraction

Rejection

It catches you ninety seconds after you entered a very vulnerable position — having shown the world, openly, that you badly wanted something.

Read the article → § 104 · Relationships & Attraction

"Why doesn't he want me?" I don't know, and it doesn't matter

You cannot persuade another person to love you. Simply not. But the reverse is not true — and the complementary sentence is one of the most provocative I have written.

Read the article → § 103 · Relationships & Attraction

Realising someone has stopped loving you

When they leave you, they leave you because of you. Your friends are probably lying to spare you — and the lie costs you the lesson.

Read the article → § 102 · Relationships & Attraction

A short letter to the one whose heart just broke

Your pain is real. Do not let anyone dare tell you that you are making a drama of it. Your body is suffering something tangible.

Read the article → § 101 · Relationships & Attraction

How do you know it is time to leave?

Let us start with the answer. You do not know. It is possible you never will. What is broken about modern sign-reading is the foolish wait for an answer.

Read the article → § 100 · Relationships & Attraction

"Freedom is calling me to a new life" — really?

If your main motive for leaving is to get back the freedom you lost, a serious disappointment is probably waiting for you.

Read the article → § 99 · Relationships & Attraction

It's time we got rid of the fifty-fifty illusion in relationship crises

There are cases where the blame for the breakdown rests mostly on one side, and we shouldn't be embarrassed to say so.

Read the article → § 98 · Relationships & Attraction

Threatening to leave is the doomsday weapon, drawn far too early

You feel powerful. Enjoy it while you can. That counterfeit sense of strength will evaporate shortly.

Read the article → § 97 · Relationships & Attraction

You know somebody has stopped loving you the day they stop setting you limits

They no longer interfere. They let you do whatever you want, come and go as you please. Sounds wonderful, does it not?

Read the article → § 96 · Relationships & Attraction

Contempt is the final nail

It is better to say "I no longer love you" than "I despise you". From contempt onwards you can call the undertakers.

Read the article → § 95 · Relationships & Attraction

It can end — and there are two things to do with that

Separations always strike people with a kind of astonishment. That fact can take you to two opposite positions.

Read the article → § 94 · Relationships & Attraction

The romantic recommendation you will not take

Ninety per cent of arguments between couples would be resolved if, halfway through, one of them spontaneously embraced the other.

Read the article → § 93 · Boundaries & Conflict

Never, ever shut your partner up

The fact that your partner was left with nothing to say does not mean they have nothing to say.

Read the article → § 92 · Relationships & Attraction

Usually only one of you takes on resolving the arguments

Which is precisely why they do not get resolved. You are not solving a painful problem — you are conducting a ceremony.

Read the article → § 91 · Relationships & Attraction

Nagging one another is a terrible psychological mistake

I believe wholeheartedly that one of a partner's most important roles is to needle you. In proportion. But nagging is a lethal and efficient killer of relationships.

Read the article → § 90 · Relationships & Attraction

You do not have to take every word seriously

Ninety-nine per cent of partners say things in the heat of a storm that they do not mean. And ninety-nine per cent of us remember those things best.

Read the article → § 89 · Relationships & Attraction

A short memory is an asset in a relationship

Suddenly everybody has become a historian. A routine argument arrives, and the arrows of the past are drawn with fanfare.

Read the article → § 88 · Relationships & Attraction

Either love is an existential need, or you spend your life on procedures

Calm down, this is not a honey-dripping piece about cosmic fate and soulmates. I am building a simple equation: if love is an existential need, you have to work at it.

Read the article → § 87 · Relationships & Attraction

There are three kinds of love, and all of them are fine

You have been sold the idea that only the first kind is acceptable — when most people, in my view, are stuck in the second or the third.

Read the article → § 86 · Relationships & Attraction

The marital desert: four pits you fall into

You used to be, and now you are not. Welcome to the arid, quiet plain that replaces the intimate friendship that once existed.

Read the article → § 85 · Relationships & Attraction

The fear of boredom runs love over

The need not to be bored drives us far more powerfully than the need to look for love. And that is a disaster.

Read the article → § 84 · Relationships & Attraction

What actually holds love together?

What creates love beyond the initial exchange of fluids? And once created, what perpetuates it?

Read the article → § 83 · Relationships & Attraction

The lovey-dovey part is nice, but a relationship is tested in crises

The beginning of a romantic relationship is deceptive, mainly because it fills you with the sense that this business is fairly simple. It is not.

Read the article → § 82 · Relationships & Attraction

Two kinds of love, and the switch between them

Love is a process. It starts as one thing and over the years becomes something else. That is the rule.

Read the article → § 81 · Relationships & Attraction

Love is where your world finally makes sense

Our mission is not to find a click or chemistry. It is to find somebody with whom we can sit down and draft a sensible emotional contract.

Read the article → § 80 · Relationships & Attraction

A relationship is not an upgrade of sex. It is an upgrade of friendship.

It may astonish you, but the overwhelming majority of the hours we spend with a romantic partner do not take place in the bedroom.

Read the article → § 79 · Relationships & Attraction

A new practical definition of love

Forget words. You can throw two hundred of those around for nothing. And how do you distinguish love from being in love?

Read the article → § 78 · Relationships & Attraction

Do not talk to me about love. Talk to me about caring.

Everyone is looking for love. A legitimate aspiration perhaps, but it seems more sensible to try to manufacture it.

Read the article → § 77 · Relationships & Attraction

To love me is to change plans for me

The most practical, everyday definition of love I have found: whoever loves you is willing to change plans for you.

Read the article → § 76 · Relationships & Attraction

Love is a verb, not a noun

If you are busy crowning the perfect, correct love that stars in your amorphous internal fantasies, you are forgetting to do the most important thing.

Read the article → § 75 · Relationships & Attraction

Wake up — nobody is going to love you "for who you are"

Don't dare settle for someone who will love you as you are. Build a relationship with someone who pushes you to be more than you are now.

Read the article → § 74 · Relationships & Attraction

Ten brief truths about love

The magical "click" is a myth, opposites don't attract, and a pleasant everyday life beats any romantic peak.

Read the article → § 73 · Relationships & Attraction

Your other half is inside you, not on the app

Behind the myth of "my other half" hide two slippery, poisonous lies: the lie of precision, and the lie of filling the gaps.

Read the article → § 72 · Relationships & Attraction

Short love — why did it end so fast?

Because it was not love. That is precisely why we give things names, and invent words to describe the various things in the world.

Read the article → § 71 · Relationships & Attraction

Leave the butterflies in nature

Butterflies are charming and free, but they are responsible for one of the most lethal metaphors going — the one that condemns a relationship from its opening moment.

Read the article → § 70 · Relationships & Attraction

Finding my soulmate? The myth of the perfect match

Practically speaking, there is no partner in the world who suits you. And if you follow the thought, there is no profession on the planet that suits you either.

Read the article → § 69 · Relationships & Attraction

Five irritating notes that will help you build a relationship

The compromises you make are supposed to hurt a great deal. That is not a malfunction — it is the entry fee, and nobody told you.

Read the article → § 68 · Relationships & Attraction

A good relationship requires you to hurry

"It's moving too fast for me." There is no spontaneous sign that will show you the moment is right. There is no such moment.

Read the article → § 67 · Relationships & Attraction

Why do we succeed at diets more than at dates?

Because of expectations. When you resolve to go on a diet, you have three mental advantages over the person going out on a date.

Read the article → § 66 · Relationships & Attraction

"Is he serious?" is the wrong question

Someone can be terrifyingly serious about one woman and utterly unserious about another. The better question is whether he is serious about you.

Read the article → § 65 · Relationships & Attraction

Dating fault number 37: he does not know himself either

The problem with dating is not only that you are going out with somebody you do not know. It is double: you do not know him, and he does not know himself.

Read the article → § 64 · Relationships & Attraction

The real checklist: three things to look for in a date

Everyone wants signs. I have spent years saying the whole approach is foolish. Then I took a drink and thought: fine, which signs would I actually look for?

Read the article → § 63 · Overthinking & Decisions

The only question worth asking at a crossroads

Not "is this the right thing?" but: what are the alternatives in front of me, and what price am I willing to pay for each?

Read the article → § 62 · Overthinking & Decisions

"I want" is idiotic. "I choose" is better. "I decide" is excellent

Decisions are like sex — people talk about them about fifty times more than they actually do them.

Read the article → § 61 · Overthinking & Decisions

“What is not important to me?” is the better question

“What matters to you in life?” is a poor question, because it invites defensive nonsense. There is a more mischievous and more effective version.

Read the article → § 60 · Overthinking & Decisions

Only after you decide can you know whether it was right

You think that only once you know whether it is right can you decide. You have it backwards.

Read the article → § 59 · Overthinking & Decisions

Deciding is a fast business. It is the preparing that takes years.

Hundreds of thousands of people turn over on the mattress night after night. Their circumstances differ enormously, but there is one lethal common denominator.

Read the article → § 58 · Overthinking & Decisions

The fear of losing that stops you deciding

In the executive offices at the top of your head, the mind has already finished its report. It has already reached a decision.

Read the article → § 57 · Overthinking & Decisions

Most of us simply avoid making decisions

When did you last make more than three significant decisions in a month? Decisions that change direction, that abandon an existing route for an alternative one?

Read the article → § 56 · Parenting

Woe betide you if your child gets everything he wants

No sane parent wants their child to suffer. And a child who does not develop some resistance to measured frustration is far more likely to become an unhappy adult.

Read the article → § 55 · Parenting

Want to educate the children? Just stop lecturing.

The common error of identification that occurs in family life: the frequent confusion between a difficulty and a problem.

Read the article → § 54 · Parenting

Threatening the children and not following through? Never mind.

Ninety-nine per cent of parents agree that empty threats are useless, and ninety-nine per cent of parents make them. First of all — forgive yourselves.

Read the article → § 53 · Parenting

How do you punish a child? Firmly, fast, clearly, and without anger

A rat in a cage learns which button produces food and which produces a shock. The lesson is not about cruelty. It is about timing and clarity.

Read the article → § 52 · Parenting

Why are you afraid of your children obeying you?

We have devoted so much to parental soul-searching that we forgot something basic: parenthood is a position of power.

Read the article → § 51 · Parenting

Children need compassion — and one more thing

A spoiler: you are not going to like this. Compassion is essential, and compassion is not enough.

Read the article → § 50 · Parenting

Empathy will not make your child empathetic. Boundaries will.

Contrary to the cliché, love is not the answer — or rather, warmth and love alone are not enough.

Read the article → § 49 · Boundaries & Conflict

When the victim becomes the monster

They really were victims. All of them. It was not their fault and not their responsibility. But then the years pass, and the injured party becomes the injuring one.

Read the article → § 48 · Boundaries & Conflict

My way or the highway: the mystery of the rigid person

A rigid person is not someone who insists on his own way. A rigid person is someone who cannot see that other ways exist.

Read the article → § 47 · Boundaries & Conflict

What does one do with the chronically offended?

Some of us have developed the skills of a ballet dancer from walking on eggshells around one of them. Every random thing you do turns out to be a cruel act of inconsideration.

Read the article → § 46 · Boundaries & Conflict

"Who even are you, to leave me?" — on narcissistic injury

A particular and lethal kind of insult: an act that burns your self-image mainly because you feel the other party is unworthy, inferior, and has no standing to do such a thing to you.

Read the article → § 45 · Boundaries & Conflict

The worst of them: the narcissist

First of all, proportion. Not everyone who once performed a selfish act is a narcissist. Our habit of hurling psychological labels empties the terms of content.

Read the article → § 44 · Relationships & Attraction

The date was dismal. Give it another chance?

My unequivocal answer to the question in the title is: yes and no.

Read the article → § 43 · Relationships & Attraction

The perfect date — a mental exercise

You think what makes a date successful is the qualities of the person arriving at the pub. You are so wrong. The main causal factor is the mental position you bring.

Read the article → § 42 · Relationships & Attraction

"Chemistry" on a first date does not interest me

That elusive spark everyone writes about is no more than sexual attraction plus some random signalling from your unconscious. A date is for something else entirely.

Read the article → § 41 · Relationships & Attraction

A first date measures your ability to do a first date

Not everybody who does well at a job interview will be a good employee. And I am talking about dating.

Read the article → § 40 · Relationships & Attraction

It takes time to know a person

Talking to someone for an entire evening does not give you knowledge. It gives you the illusion of knowledge.

Read the article → § 39 · Relationships & Attraction

The meat market of love: being on the apps is exactly like sending a CV

Opening data are exactly that: data relevant only to the opening stage. Not the middle, and certainly not the happy ending.

Read the article → § 38 · Overthinking & Decisions

The revolt of the worriers

All the careful people, all those who build in a safety margin and arrive half an hour early, have convened this morning to say something to the easy-going.

Read the article → § 37 · Overthinking & Decisions

Courage is not the absence of fear

I'm slightly ashamed to say it, but one of the life sentences I connect with most I stole from a forgettable film.

Read the article → § 36 · Overthinking & Decisions

Why does embarrassment frighten us so much?

People once did everything in order not to die. Two hundred years of progress later, we will do anything in order not to be embarrassed.

Read the article → § 35 · Overthinking & Decisions

It will never be "completely safe". Move anyway.

When people walk about shouting that they are looking for happiness, what they usually mean is that they want exemption from worry.

Read the article → § 34 · Overthinking & Decisions

Paralysed — two small pieces of advice about large anxiety

Beating anxiety means going against the survival instinct that screams at you to run. You have to move toward it.

Read the article → § 33 · Overthinking & Decisions

Getting organised in the face of anxiety

There is an enormous miss in the fire-fighting mentality. The crisis will come and go, but we are left with anxiety in its genuinely problematic form — existential, nagging, humming quietly.

Read the article → § 32 · Overthinking & Decisions

Do not let anxiety win

Anxiety is an outstanding salesman. Apart from depression, psychology knows no better one. Its entire job is to convince you the world is a dangerous place.

Read the article → § 01 · Work & Power

The subtle connection between the World Cup and psychological development

Every player at the World Cup could retire tomorrow morning — and not one of them does. What they know about happiness is a pattern, and it isn't the money.

Read the article → § 31 · Relationships & Attraction

Eight things you should have said to each other by now

"So what am I supposed to say to him?" Eight sentences that restart a stalled couple — and the psychology behind each one.

Read the article → § 30 · Relationships & Attraction

Let him be. Let her be.

One of the most exalted relationship skills is the ability to step aside and do absolutely nothing. Here's when — and why.

Read the article → § 29 · Overthinking & Decisions

A critical life tip: how to treat yourself

Your self-image should be positive AND critical — in that exact order. Get the order wrong and the trouble starts.

Read the article → § 28 · Relationships & Attraction

Write it fifty times: infatuation is not love

Infatuation is something that happens to you. Love is something that happens to the two of you. The difference will save you years.

Read the article → § 27 · Overthinking & Decisions

The two words bridging between you and happiness: "I'll manage"

Happiness is first of all a mental posture — and the classic posture underneath it is the quiet confidence of "I'll manage."

Read the article → § 26 · Relationships & Attraction

Should your partner know all your secrets?

The short answer is "no, but..." — and the long answer is a better definition of intimacy than the one you're using.

Read the article → § 25 · Relationships & Attraction

The elephant in the living room: breaking a couple's silence

You've stopped talking to each other. Not fighting — just silence. Five field-tested ways to restart the conversation.

Read the article → § 24 · Overthinking & Decisions

If you understood it and didn't do it — you didn't really understand it

"But I'm very self-aware" is usually a hall pass for inaction. Real insight shows up in behavior, or it isn't insight.

Read the article → § 23 · Relationships & Attraction

You didn't break my heart. I broke it.

Eight points men don't want to read after she leaves — a sad, modern indictment, written in the first person so it stings properly.

Read the article → § 22 · Boundaries & Conflict

How to break someone you love

There is one reliable, field-tested template for wrecking a person close to you: punish them for the good things they do.

Read the article → § 21 · Boundaries & Conflict

Ten short ones about bitter people

Bitterness is one of the most dangerous postures a mind can settle into. Ten quick observations about the monster — use as needed.

Read the article → § 20 · Boundaries & Conflict

The tragedy of the emotional blackmailer

They drain you through a straw, beg for attention everywhere — and their real tragedy is that no compliment they extract can ever be trusted.

Read the article → § 19 · Relationships & Attraction

"Doctor, can I change him?"

The two clichés that wreck the change-your-partner question: "if he loves me he'll figure it out" and "real love accepts everything."

Read the article → § 18 · Relationships & Attraction

Ten sentences you should have said to your wife long ago

Your problem probably isn't "communication." It's the broken ideas that produce your communication. Ten sentences that fix them.

Read the article → § 17 · Overthinking & Decisions

Everything was going so well. Then came the unconscious.

You think you're in full control of your thoughts and wants? Try commanding yourself to sleep by ten for one week. Then we'll talk.

Read the article → § 16 · Relationships & Attraction

A relationship is hard work — and we hate working

Stop thinking of finding love as entering an amusement park. Think of it as a serious promotion — more interesting, and much more work.

Read the article → § 15 · Overthinking & Decisions

Mild depression is anything but "mild"

Plenty of people function excellently while carrying a quiet, daily heaviness. On "high-functioning depression" — and the expectation trap that feeds it.

Read the article → § 14 · Work & Power

Advanced empathy: "If I were in her place, how would I feel?"

Empathy isn't a feeling you force — it's a camera technique. A few minutes a day inside someone else's point of view, and everything changes. Clients included.

Read the article → § 13 · Relationships & Attraction

There are no "red lines" in a relationship. There is one red line.

In a world with 22 red lines, no line is red. The internet's checklist culture is shaming good couples — and hiding the one danger that's real.

Read the article → § 12 · Overthinking & Decisions

Ten things young people don't understand about life (probably)

If you don't understand the game, you can't play it. A condescending list — and mostly a correct one.

Read the article → § 11 · Relationships & Attraction

In a relationship — speak simply

Half the couple stories I hear could have gone so much better if people stopped playing clever. Four rules for simple speech, plus one loaded truth.

Read the article → § 10 · Boundaries & Conflict

Compassion is the perfect filter

If there's compassion in you, come sit at our table. If not — keep your distance. And real compassion is more practical than you think.

Read the article → § 09 · Boundaries & Conflict

Ignore it (a long post that saves relationships)

One of the most important abilities you can develop — in love, in parenting, even in your career — is the ability not to see.

Read the article → § 08 · Overthinking & Decisions

Don't believe your loneliness. Please don't.

Loneliness is a determined, skilled dealer with one goal: keeping its customers weak, hungry, and alone. It runs on three specific lies.

Read the article → § 07 · Parenting

Parents, this will not be news. Read it anyway.

The thing that contributes most to your child's development beats every other factor by a mile — and it isn't the prestigious school.

Read the article → § 06 · Parenting

"If you're not a good girl, we won't love you"

The everyday tragedy nobody talks about: the people locked forever inside the pleasing pattern, who lost themselves on the way.

Read the article → § 05 · Boundaries & Conflict

Turning your back on your family

Rarely — very rarely — a person must walk away from the family they came from in order to save themselves. On the costliest boundary there is.

Read the article → § 04 · Parenting

"Mom didn't love me, so I don't love you"

Our romantic relationships re-stage our earliest relationships with our parents. On the expectations ledger written in the diaper years.

Read the article → § 03 · Work & Power

Cheer up, kid — no one is coming to save you

You have exactly two options in this world: be alone, or be lonely. The difference between them is the whole game.

Read the article → § 02 · Parenting

Children need boundaries — but not for the reason you think

We set boundaries so a child won't meet the monster inside himself too early. Yes, you read that right.

Read the article →