In 1967, in order to study the relationship between stress and physical health, researchers Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe examined medical records of more than 5,000 patients. In order to determine whether stressful life events could cause illness, they developed a stress scale or “social readjustment scale” which assigned numerical scores of 1-100 to stressful… Read more »
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June is the most popular month for weddings. The questions overwhelming many soon-to-be newlyweds tend to involve dresses, cakes, guests and venues. When you think about it, although the price tag and party planning committee tend to be larger, the concerns of the engaged couple are not so different from the concerns we held as… Read more »
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Do you remember the children’s book, The Missing Piece, by the beloved author Shel Silverstein? In this sweet, abstractly illustrated tale, a circle-shaped protagonist, complete but for one pie-shaped slice of himself, rolls along looking for his missing piece. Some pieces are too big, others too small. The quest continues until, finally, he finds that perfect… Read more »
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Whether it’s those lurking peak wedding months or the daily talk of royal nuptials, marriage is a subject we’re hearing a lot about lately. Feelings about this trend seem to range from wild enthusiasm to mild resentment. Forgetting for a minute the adversity surrounding the institution of marriage and setting all ceremony aside, stripped down… Read more »
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Initial chemistry is the spark that fuels a relationship, but that spark doesn’t always ignite for all the right reasons. Attraction is, to many of us, a mystery. How is it that qualities that led us to a person in the first place, can later repel us so strongly and lead to problems down the… Read more »
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If we were asked, as an exercise, to craft a personal ad detailing what we were looking for in a partner, it may read something like this: Seeking someone who is kind and patient, independent yet loving, laid back, yet energetic. Someone who is confident, but isn’t afraid to laugh at him- or herself. Someone… Read more »
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As children, we often form a fantasy of what real love looks like. Though we may paint a pretty picture in our minds, this fantasy isn’t necessarily built on the admirable qualities we truly desire in a partner. Instead, it may be based on gaps we hope to one day fill, mistakes we aim to… Read more »
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Typical relationship scenario: You start out feeling like the very best version of yourself that you have ever been and before you know it, you are digging around in the relationship looking for some remnant of that person you were when you fell in love. “Where did I put that person? Where is that “Me”?… Read more »
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Anyone who’s done their share of dating has probably been on one side or the other of the It’s not you, it’s me routine. These five common words, which strive for compassion, in reality just leave our exes confused and puzzling over what went wrong. No one buys this explanation. And why should they? After… Read more »
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Long have poets and scholars, romantics and intellects, teenagers and grandparents pondered the question: What is love? Yet, as we repeatedly find ourselves in the same relationship pitfalls, broken-hearted or fervently re-seeking that initial spark, perhaps a more beneficial question is, what isn’t love? As much as we as a species are capable of involuntarily… Read more »
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