Somewhere along the way, we took the word intimate for a long walk. We led it out of philosophy, psychology, and human experience, and ended up folding it neatly in a drawer, labelled - " Reserved - Date Night"... But why even take this subject on, when we seem quite happy for it to describe what we take off? Is intimacy all about the bodies beneath the clothes, or the self beneath the surface?

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance". Oscar Wilde When asked why I did not write about relationships, I thought, but I do. Everything I write is about ‘relationships.’ Not in the traditional sense of couples or coupleship, but every interaction is related to something or someone. So I pondered, and here’s what emerged. We are connected to all things: friends, family, coworkers, animals, nature, the world, and ourselves. Being a part of a

There is a particular kind of lonely discomfort that comes with one-sided friendship maintenance. I mean it's certainly better on paper than having "no one at all" - hopefully none of us know the depths of that sorry pit. It comes more from actually having people - important friendships with

In the world of romantic relationships, grasping the concept of attachment can truly transform how couples connect. Attachment theory, proposed by John Bowlby and further expanded by Mary Ainsworth, illustrates how our early caregiver relationships shape our emotional connections as adults. Let's explore together some ideas around attachment.. We are going to examine four main attachment styles—secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized—and how these styles affect couples, i

I'm tired... Not from having stayed up late or not had enough sleep. Not that kind of surface-tired. A sort of "inner fatigue" that I am feeling on a deeper level. We recently said goodbye to some "interesting" house guests. We sort of knew they would be, and we both felt fore-warned. We seemed to start "managing oursleves" before they had even got out of the car...

The impact of Technology, Social Media and Screen Time on Mental Health - Dr. Stephanie Burchell

We say “thank you” a lot. Often with great sincerity, sometimes as a polite acknowledgement of a door held open or receiving a handful of change. Silence would just feel rude. It's a nice thing to hear and a good thing to say. We also, on occasions, use a clippy catch-all in the form of a neat little phrase: "Thanks for everything." It's a generous sentence, at face value. Broad, inclusive, hard to argue with. And yet it can leave behind the fantest whiff of disssatisfaction

Way before "stories = letters forming words", they would be carried from the mouths of our elders to the eager ears of a younger generation of listeners. Tales of fire and creation - of seas, lakes and mountains. The wonderful animations around the family tree of all things starry and celestial. These ancient tales were not fixed things, back then. There were no documented points of reference, or scrolls unfurled in proclamation. The stories moved from firelight to shadow, a

"Did you have a good Christmas and New Year?".. I mean, that is about as soft, low risk enquiry as we could possibly be asked at this time of year. It's almost so seasonal, that we could wear it as a sign around our necks so we can avoid even saying the actual words.. It's a verbal handshake. No sharp edges. Not a trick question. At all. "Yes, thanks..we didn't do much; long, lovely dog walks, too much to eat and some catch-ups with a few dear friends... You?".. The answer is

Somewhere around the two-week mark, January starts to itch. The pristine list of resolutions is still magnet-fast on the door of our fridge, exactly as we wrote it. The intentions are still there, yet you perhaps suspect that enthusisam might be trying to call a cab. New Year confidence - " this time will be different" - has been replaced by something more familiar: realism.

The word surrender did not always carry the white flag with which we associate its use today. It comes into English from the Old French " surrendre" - formed from sur (over) and rendre (to give back). Its Latin root, reddere , means to return, to restore, to hand back what was borrowed .

I used to love that day in school, when we were given a brand new writing book. It was a thing of mint, undefiled beauty - filling us with a quiet, focused determination to write really nicely. To do really well. I mean, OK, we were easily pleased back then, but there was still an undeniable thrill which - to this day - draws me helplessly to the pen and ink of the stationery shop. New books, new beginnings, New Years. They are all versions of a familiar and robust re-set. T

Mirrors aren’t always about what we need to fix — sometimes they show us how far we’ve come. I have used mirrors as a decorating accessory for years, to bounce light around a room, to open up a space or bring the outside in. But it wasn't until I began using them for personal growth that they took on a different meaning. We’ve all had that moment when we look into a mirror and find that new line, that little dot that no one else would every notice, but seems enormous to us. S

Out of the 65,000 thoughts we have a day, 95% are largely sub-conscious. How many of those are kind reflections, and how many are deeply critical? Well, that is difficult to know, simply because of the very nature of the “sub” conscious. Pause for a moment… What are you thinking right now? What little tiny flash did you just have? Was it gentle and loving or carry a hint of judgement?

Each year, we leap forward with enthusiasm, believing obstacles will vanish with the turn of the calendar page. We think that with the change of date, the obstacles in our paths will miraculously disappear; life will be different. And you know what? It is, and it isn’t. Today is different than yesterday. Even if invisible, the planet has shifted; the sun rises earlier and sets later, and our cells regenerate. However, our challenges may remain the same because we haven’t chan

I have always thought of exhaustion as a physical thing. The outer limit of fatigue. An elevated, adult sense of tiredness that comes from our own sense of just doing too much. It's personal, of course, because we each have our own sliding scale of feeling "sapped", which varies with age, fitness and foibles. But let's take a minute to look at exhaustion through a different lens. As a cause rather than an effect - the result of something much deeper than that old chestnut

Vanessa and I are currently in the quiet throws of the annual gift search. For us, being in the beautiful depths of rural France, it is all about Amazon. Most of our pressies are UK bound anyway, and life is easier, cheaper and so much more convenient without the need to manage postal deadlines or their astronimical, associated costs.

A year-end inventory around who I’m keeping, who I’m releasing, and why clarity is a kind form of courage. "Well that's not very " Happy New Year of you"... No, perhaps not. But we are only a fortnight from 2026, and our New Years resolutions - the biggest, most bombastic, annual re-set tale we tell oursleves. People talk a lot about New Year, New Me - but the truth is, these delusional decisions don't generally fall into the silo of "real change". Resolutions are more-than

Christmas...the great revealer of who people really are. There is something about the holidays where grinches and gaslighters find their normal camouflage difficult to don. Perhaps because the festive season is ostensibly about the core values of love, tradition and unadulterated joy, toxic personality types in particular, find themselves sorely lacking the opportunity to grab the kind of attention, admiration and entitlement they so desperately crave.

Perhaps the greatest barrier to worthwhile communication is that we no longer listen to understand. We listen only to reply. Our ears twitch, our tongues prepare their retorts, and before the sentence has even ended, we are already halfway into our counterpoint. What passes for dialogue is often little more than a polite duel to get one’s point across and be heard. But what if listening was something else? If we approached each other’s words with kinder curiosity, the intent