Quite often, teen girls struggle to effectively communicate with their romantic partners, while teen boys have not yet acquired the proper skills to listen and accept the personal boundaries outlined by their romantic counterparts.  → Read More

An engagement dinner for my daughter is winding down. Family members embrace each other before heading forth exuberantly into the night air, lifted by the tangible evidence of true love. An elderly aunt turns to me, the mother of the future bride, hugs me tightly, and whispers in my ear, “I’m sure there’s another ring in your future, and that your own day will come again.” “God,” I blurt out with a chuckle, “I hope not!”  → Read More

I was very young, already mother to a toddler and felt as though I was “used goods.” I thought no man would want me, and so when someone asked me to marry him, decided that I had better say yes before he changed his mind. During the marriage ceremony, my soul gave one last ditch effort, hurling the equivalent of a mental “Hail Mary Pass” across my brain, shrieking, “What are you doing?!”  → Read More

The bar is set dangerously low for our daughters when they rarely see relationships between men and women in which both parties hold equal value and power. Worse yet, as they move through adolescence they are facing plummeting self-esteem and constant bombardment with messages that their value is defined largely by their desirability to males. All of this raises the stakes significantly for us as parents.  → Read More

My husband and I were friends before we started dating. At one point, during a retelling of a weekend of weird Match.com coffee dates and awkward singles events, he asked me what I was really looking for in a husband. I told him that was the problem. I wasn’t looking for a husband; I wanted a partner. We each had a failed marriage behind us, and those initial conversations blossomed into a dating relationship.As we were talking about a work problem one day, we came upon the idea of treating our relationship more like a performance contract between partners, one where you can choose to renew, renegotiate, or cancel on an annual basis. We weren’t sure if we were brilliant or insane.  → Read More

While we celebrate the advances women are making and ponder the conflicts society’s changes pose, men and women cannot lose track of the things each of us truly seeks from our relationships—regardless of the division of labor and which partner is earning the most money.  → Read More