The Reality of Modern Parenting Fatigue If you were to write down a list of every chore completed in your house today, it might look relatively balanced on paper. Perhaps one person cooked dinner while the other loaded the dishwasher. Perhaps you split the afternoon pick-ups and weekend drop-offs evenly. Yet, despite this seemingly fair division of daily labour, one of you likely feels completely, utterly drained, while the other feels unappreciated and defensively on guard.

When you get engaged, your calendar suddenly fills up with an overwhelming checklist of logistics. There are venues to tour, guest lists to cross-reference, menus to taste, and seating arrangements to map out. It is an incredibly exciting season of life, but it is also one dominated by preparing for a single, landmark day. But what happens when the flowers fade, the celebrations wind down, and the everyday reality of marriage begins? Many couples spend months planning the per

For many couples, the working week is a blur of logistics, school runs, deadlines, and exhaustion. You survive on autopilot. But when Friday evening rolls around and the hectic pace of the week finally slows down, the unspoken tension in the home becomes impossible to ignore. Suddenly, you have the time to look at each other, and instead of finding closeness, you find friction. It is incredibly common for major relationship arguments to erupt on Saturdays and Sundays. When yo

Emotions are not necessarily good or bad. They do point us in the direction of paying attention to the events which created them. Our emotions are sending us a message - if we choose to listen. First let's talk about feeling strong emotions where we become emotionally dysregulated or start getting flooded (aka diffuse physiological arousal which is your body's in-built alarm system to instinctively prepare you for fight/flight). If this happens, we first need to be able to so

Tips for defusing defensiveness and owning your part in the argument

Fairy tales, Hollywood movies and shows, as well as countless of romantic songs are filled with myths about relationships - particularly...

As the year starts to wind down, it is time to start pulling together the threads of the year, make sense of what we've learned,...

Conflict about money is a very common problem in couples - research from the 2014 APA Stress Survey shows that over a third of couples...

In long term relationships we know that working on your relationship is important and normal - it doesn't just magically happen by...

February has a long association with being the month of celebrating love, and in particular on the 14th of February, Valentine's Day,...

Here is a collection of resources which point to some things which blended families might find helpful in considering. Depending on what...

For great relationship health you need to invest in your relationship often. Grand gestures are good and fine, and certainly important on...

Listening is an underrated art. Get it right, and our partner feels heard and understood. Get it wrong, and we run our responses on...

Weighing up whether to stay or go in your relationship is often filled with ambivalence and uncertainty. This often results because you are simultaneously experiencing a desire to stay AND leave the relationship, which can be very confusing, frustrating, and leave people feeling torn, frozen and caught in limbo. And while ending a romantic relationship is one of the most stressful things that people go through, the ambivalence is not always necessarily resolved when one does

Disclaimer: This post is for informational and educational purposes only. It should not be taken as counselling/therapy advice or used as...

One of the most important aspects of maintaining a long term relationship, is our ability to remain curious about our partner. What makes...

There are some clear patterns which couples exhibit in happy relationships. The Gottman Institute identifies that intentionally...

Trust is foundational to our intimate relationships. When we trust each other we have confidence that our partner will be there for us, that they have our back. We build trust through small moments in our relationship - the obvious ways in which trust are built are by being honest, not lying, keeping promises and being transparent. But we also build trust by tuning in to our partner, showing our partner that they come first and by listening when our partner is upset - in the

We can be very harsh with ourselves - often much harsher than we might be with a friend or a loved one. Self-compassion is an important...

Disclaimer: This post is for informational and educational purposes only. It should not be taken as counselling/therapy advice or used as...