Articles by The School of Life 

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The Psychology of Anxious Attachment image

Relationships

The Psychology of Anxious Attachment

If the anxious can accept that their condition isn’t a sign of random sickness but is the result of a very identifiable sort of upbringing, they may develop the courage one day to explain their fears to a partner.

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The Psychology of Avoidance image

Relationships

The Psychology of Avoidance

One of the most perplexing of all our behaviours is our tendency – in relationships – to flee from the warmth and affection it is so natural for us to want.

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Changing Yourself Rather Than Trying to Change Your Partner image

Relationships

Changing Yourself Rather Than Trying to Change Your Partner

Here are seven ways in which we can improve our relationships – not so much by asking them to evolve as by altering the mindset we approach them with.

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A Chance to Be Bad in Relationships image

Relationships

A Chance to Be Bad in Relationships

To love is not to confront someone with the full might of moral judgement at all times. It is to be able to bear something less than ideal at points.

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Four Kinds of Sexual Deviancy and What They Really Mean image

Relationships

Four Kinds of Sexual Deviancy and What They Really Mean

We don’t typically imagine that sexual deviants have very much to teach us about anything. But this is to miss out on a disquieting reality: these deviants are manifesting in an extreme form proclivities in which we are all to some extent implicated.

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Keep Going image

Calm

Keep Going

Here is humanity as we seldom allow ourselves to see it: neither triumphant nor defeated, but doggedly persisting – despite so many arguments against it.

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When One Person Has to Be Needy so the Other Can Feel Invulnerable image

Relationships

When One Person Has to Be Needy so the Other Can Feel Invulnerable

Vulnerability is so much less of a burden when, finally, two people can be brave enough to own up to their share of it.

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Offering Love to Someone Who Is Not Convinced of Their Loveability image

Relationships

Offering Love to Someone Who Is Not Convinced of Their Loveability

There are distinct challenges around trying to offer love to someone who isn’t convinced that they are, deep down, worthy of such a thing.

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Using AI to Have Better Relationships image

Relationships

Using AI to Have Better Relationships

For too long, we have thought of love as an emotion, it is in fact a skill – and there is no reason why, as with so many other tools, we wouldn’t allow one of our AI machines to lend us a hand with one of the great challenges of our lives.

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The Letter You May Need to Send to Save Your Life image

Calm

The Letter You May Need to Send to Save Your Life

If we are to survive (and there truly may be nothing less at stake), we are going to need to be very brave indeed. We’re going to need to break the isolated habits of a lifetime – and take someone into our confidence.

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Ideal Questions to Ask at Parties image

Sociability

Ideal Questions to Ask at Parties

There are – let’s suggest – very few truly boring people on earth, but a great many who end up seeming as much for a simple, touching and highly avoidable reason: because they are asking one another the wrong questions.

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An Interesting Life Rather Than a Happy One image

Leisure

An Interesting Life Rather Than a Happy One

We may be destined to have interesting lives rather than calm ones, lives marked by a high degree of exploration, psychological understanding, and striving rather than settled certainty and equilibrium. What we lack in terms of contentment, we may make up for in terms of insight and experience.

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The Wisdom of Liming image

Leisure

The Wisdom of Liming

To know how to lime isn’t just one more low-key leisure activity, it’s evidence that one has understood some extremely significant things about oneself and one’s place in society and the cosmos.

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Reasons Not to Give Up image

Leisure

Reasons Not to Give Up

We can sometimes wonder what art is for. Kølle’s picture offers us one possible answer: art is there to refocus our attention on what matters most deeply.

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The Need – Sometimes – Not to Complain image

Sociability

The Need – Sometimes – Not to Complain

We may choose not to complain not because we are weak, but for a more fundamental and clear-eyed reason: because we are up against something we know we cannot change.

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The Pleasures of the Underground image

Leisure

The Pleasures of the Underground

There are moods – of dissatisfaction and loneliness, panic and despair – when the very best counsel we might be offered is to go and take a ride on the underground.

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Is There Something Wrong – or Am I Just a Miserable Person? image

Self-Knowledge

Is There Something Wrong – or Am I Just a Miserable Person?

Hope can spring from an initially hugely difficult thought: we don’t live in an unbearably miserable world, we may just have grown up (for extremely forgivable reasons) to be very miserable people.

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Why Small Pleasures Become a Bigger, Not a Smaller Deal, the More We Suffer and Age image

Relationships

Why Small Pleasures Become a Bigger, Not a Smaller Deal, the More We Suffer and Age

The more challenging existence as a whole becomes, the more we may appreciate what remains pure and hopeful, despite its modest appearance or lack of obvious glamour.

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A Crucial Sign That Someone is Worth Going Out With image

Relationships

A Crucial Sign That Someone is Worth Going Out With

There is one sign that more than any other indicates that someone may well be a rewarding and trustworthy person to go out with: that they are prepared to go to therapy.

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There Are No Small Issues in Love image

Relationships

There Are No Small Issues in Love

The only way to prevent the largest problems is to focus exhaustively and with dark good humour on the very smallest ones.

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On Not Being Very Good at Love image

Relationships

On Not Being Very Good at Love

Our romantic fiascos can get a little less arduous the more we can bring ourselves to shrug our shoulders and confess: I really can’t do this thing called love.

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When One Partner Feels Controlled; And the Other Feels Abandoned image

Relationships

When One Partner Feels Controlled; And the Other Feels Abandoned

A thread has come out of the seam of the relationship. If it keeps being pulled, a whole hem may unspool.

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The Sorrows of Anxiously Attached People image

Relationships

The Sorrows of Anxiously Attached People

For all their professed faith in love, the anxiously attached find it extremely hard to trust that love could eventually go right for them. And therefore they discover that it seldom does so.

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Our Longing to Avoid Love image

Relationships

Our Longing to Avoid Love

We’re avoiding love now because somewhere in the past, it proved intolerably distressing in a way that we have not understood – and therefore cannot overcome.

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Five Ways to Handle an Avoidant Partner image

Relationships

Five Ways to Handle an Avoidant Partner

Part of the difficulty of handling an avoidant person lies in being clear exactly what the issue with them might be.

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The Pleasures of Talking Nonsense With Someone We Love image

Relationships

The Pleasures of Talking Nonsense With Someone We Love

People who know and love each other deeply do not sit together discussing philosophy or economics: rather, they talk nonsense.

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The 9 Most Common Mistakes We Make When Choosing a Partner image

Relationships

The 9 Most Common Mistakes We Make When Choosing a Partner

Choosing a long-term partner may be the single most consequential decision any of us ever has to make. What then are some of the most weighty mistakes we make when attempting to find a lover?

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How We Can Feel Misunderstood – Without Ever Explaining Who We Are image

Self-Knowledge

How We Can Feel Misunderstood – Without Ever Explaining Who We Are

Did you ever explain yourself properly to the person who is meant to have ignored you? Did you work hard to make yourself known before surrendering to a sense of being unnoticed?

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The Challenges of Male Friendships image

Sociability

The Challenges of Male Friendships

Men are lonely because of an inherent conflict between what is required of being a man on the one hand, and what is involved in being a friend on the other.

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What Does the Child in You Need Today? image

Self-Knowledge

What Does the Child in You Need Today?

We’ll accede to a fairer, kinder adulthood once we accept how close we remain always to the delicate, sensitive, tear-prone little person we once were.

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Why We Can so Quickly End up Feeling Hated image

Self-Knowledge

Why We Can so Quickly End up Feeling Hated

We may be far more loved than we thought – once we remember the scale of the reservations that true love can encompass.

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Why We Sometimes Need to Be Tied to a Mast image

Self-Knowledge

Why We Sometimes Need to Be Tied to a Mast

There are situations in which we have to concede that only the blunt removal of temptation can save us.

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Good Endings in Love image

Relationships

Good Endings in Love

Many relationships cannot be resurrected; all relationships deserve dignified and thoughtful burials.

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On Castration Anxiety image

Relationships

On Castration Anxiety

If sex is going wrong, we may need to look beyond physical interventions and take an audit of the mutual suspicions that each side can be unconsciously carrying with them into the bedroom.

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How to Find Out What Might Happen With a New Partner image

Relationships

How to Find Out What Might Happen With a New Partner

When a new relationship is on the cards, we might greatly expand our sense of what could subsequently happen with our date by turning to one subject in particular…

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Trust What You Knew Then, Not What You Feel Now image

Self-Knowledge

Trust What You Knew Then, Not What You Feel Now

The further away we stand from the moment when we took a decision, the more our judgement is likely to be clouded and corrupted.

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Four Explanations for Self-Sabotage image

Self-Knowledge

Four Explanations for Self-Sabotage

One of the most curious and dispiriting of all psychological behaviours goes under the title of self-sabotage. In our search for answers, we can identify at least four explanations…

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Giuseppe de Nittis, Winter Landscape, 1880 It’s early morning in the middle of winter and we’re in a northern suburb…
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