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Diplomacy is an art that evolved initially to deal with problems in the relationships between countries. The leaders of neighbouring states might be touchy on points of personal pride and quickly roused to anger; if they met head on, they might be liable to infuriate each other and start a…
Some of the reason why our lives are harder than they should be is that many of us wander the world with a hugely misleading notion in mind of what a…
At the root of many malfunctioning relationships and unhappy break ups lie two stories that run alongside one another but never manage to align or converge, about who has done what…
The most basic test of the viability of any modern relationship involves a criterion that would have appeared extremely odd to a French aristocrat in 1755 or to a Scottish crofter…
When a relationship ends, we expect it to be fairly easy to determine who ended it and who wished it to continue: the person who said they wanted out, who explicitly…
When it comes to relationships, our age has a firm belief in distributing practical tasks equally: both parties are meant to display comparable competence at, and enthusiasm for, earning money and…
Let us imagine that we know what we want – to leave a relationship – but that we are suffering from a problem which inhibits us from acting on our wishes:…
For most of human history, people didn’t stay in relationships for love. They stayed in them in order to protect their assets, ensure their status, pool their resources, synchronise farming implements…
On our way out of a relationship, we might be stopped by a highly unfamiliar and deeply perturbing thought: what if we were – somehow – a bit to blame as…
In the privacy of our minds, one thought – highly shameful by nature – may haunt us as we evaluate whether to stay in or leave an unsatisfactory relationship: what if…
When we contemplate leaving a relationship, it is usually because – in the privacy of our hearts – we harbour expectations of being able to meet another, and in key ways,…
After considerable agony, we’ve left a relationship. We’re on our own now – and, when we can bear to be honest, it’s a little harder than we expected. We aren’t going…
Over the years, it’s been so difficult with our partner. There’s been a long history of harsh words, accusations, insults, shouting, slammed doors, resentments and aggressive silences. It all culminated, sensibly…
Some of the reason why adult life can be greyer and more miserable than it should be is that our earliest years are generally made up of a prolonged and highly…
When we are little, one of the first, and most boring, lessons we ever receive is in the primordial importance of being – as adults put it – ‘kind’. It’s because…
There is perhaps no greater priority in childhood than to acquire an education: it’s in the early years that we have to push ourselves with special vigour to learn the lessons,…
We start our lives surrounded by people who know a great deal more than we ever could. To a four year old, a very average adult is a miracle of supreme…
We tend to begin our lives with a deeply unrepresentative experience: that of being surrounded by people who care to an extraordinary extent about us. We look up from the dreams…
When we first arrive on the earth, nothing is more alien to our minds than the idea of needing permission. We simply try to do whatever we want: when the carpet…