One great principle of happy relationships is to say “Yes” as much as possible. Couples who do this are happier, healthier, and have better sex. “Yes, I’ll remember to wipe …

An intimate love relationship is composed of a friendship, a love affair, and different abilities to repair problems when they arise. Relationships progress through attraction, to affiliation, to romantic infatuation, to intimate bonding, to better or worse in the long run.

Marriage is a garden: a couple’s friendship, love affair, and repair of injuries nurtures the marital garden Have you ever had a garden? You love it, tend it, water it, and shape it like the work of art it is. When you do, your garden becomes beautiful and fruitful, delivering whatever you desire—beauty, pleasure, rest, nourishment, purpose—a complex living system to love and cherish. People invest more time and money in gardening than any other hobby in America.

Conflict comes with the territory of any long-term relationship. It’s only natural that when you merge your life with another human being—someone with different tastes, opinions, habits, and worldviews—you will …

Why is it that you’re 35% happier if you live next door to a good friend, but only 8% happier when you live with a spouse? Why do most young …

Sexual compulsives can have wildly different kinds and degrees of obsessions. I’ve helped men and women who were absolutely “Sexually addicted.” They urgently craved self-destructive sex like compulsive philandering, prostitutes, …

Human nature corrupts all institutions. Any institution—bank, company, army, government, family, marriage, you name it—has been, is being, or will be corrupted. The institution of marriage has special significance, because …

James Grotstein is a famous psychoanalyst/author who lives and works in L.A. He’s brilliant, funny, and can make dry psychoanalytic giants like Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion sound hip and …

Some men have a more feminine sexual essence and some women a more masculine sexual essence. But there are also major genetic differences between men and women that start at conception and keep differentiating the male and female physiology, social networks, sexuality, morality, and general experience throughout life.

I love the holidays. I know people get stressed, and excess prevails around food and presents and stuff, but still, the holiday spirit of love is beautiful. The radio rings …

Ken and Doris are an athletic, attractive couple in their fifties, coming into my office for their fifteenth session. In the eighth year of a tumultuous relationship, both are active …

I love to watch mothers and babies. A rosy glow seems to light up the room when they’re connected and attuned to each other. A secure baby relaxes into a …

My friend Barbara Ligeti asked me about this a couple of months ago. It’s an important question, since such patterns are ubiquitous in human societies. Consciousness came to humans with …

Say you’re single and yearn for love. What’s the first step? “What do I do?” “How do I find someone where we’re both into each other?” “How can I tell …

What can you do to make your romantic/erotic relationship more fun for you and your partner? Are you willing to change what you think and do to create more love and pleasure? Are you willing to be more expressive about who you are sexually, and more accepting of who your partner is sexually?

I love online dating. I think online dating services like Chemistry.com, Eharmony, Jdate, plentyoffish, and Match.com are among the most wonderful outcomes of the linked-in information age. Computer dating has …

Cindy sinks down into the light brown armchair in my office on a sweet Santa Barbara Autumn day. The sun shines through the French doors, and a slight morning breeze …

I read an outstanding interview in the LA Times this week (Saturday, July 30), where Patt Morrison was asking high profile divorce lawyer Laura Wasser about the whole divorce process. …

Our emotional, reactive, defensive selves are programmed into our brains to react to threat instantly. Our mature, conscious, socially intelligent selves are based in the prefrontal cortex behind our eyes, and it takes up to a second and a half for conscious attention to catch up to the rest of us in a critical situation. That second and a half is huge.

Happy couples are interested in having as few checks as possible on their partner’s “I’ve had it!” lists. They figure out how to compromise and help each other gradually shrink their lists and cut way down on annoying behaviors over time. If you ask them how their marriage is doing, they’ll give you a variation of what I think is the ideal answer: “We’re not perfect, but we love each other and we’re both working at getting better at loving each other.”

Several years ago, I was working with a stay-at-home Mom named Cynthia. She had three small children and a hardworking husband named Jim who often arrived home tired and irritable. He’d waltz in, announce his presence, collapse on the couch in front of TV while Cynthia cooked dinner, served it, and gave the kids baths, stories, and put them down. When she asked Jim to help, he usually refused. “I’ve been working all day while all you’ve had to do is play with the kids,” he’d complain. Or, on the rare occasions when he roused himself from the couch to actually pitch in with homework, housework, or to play with the children, he’d make a big show of what a hands-on dad he was and how lucky Cynthia was to have him around. Being a particularly clueless kind of guy at this point, Jim had no idea that such whining was guaranteed to neutralize any pleasure his wife might feel from him lending a hand.

Once Eric and Camille got the message about not treating each other like objects, it marked a real break-through in their marriage, because they’d finally become conscious of each other’s humanity when they were upset. They could be distressed yet simultaneously see the other person as a real human being with fears and hurts. Their love and compassion for each other deepened over the years, and I’m happy to say that the man who could so easily insult his wife and the woman who attacked my wall are now entering the fourth decade of a pretty darn good marriage.

Remember: Privacy is good. Many of the private thoughts and feelings you keep to yourself are part of what makes you unique. They can make you happy, and can certainly help you get along better with everyone you know—and your spouse in particular. Secrecy, on the other hand, is almost always destructive, especially in intimate relationships.