Whether you're in the honeymoon phase or feeling like you've lost the spark, these relationship stories offer expert advice to keep things on the right track. Photo / 123rf
From conflict to sex to communication, this collection of stories offers the best expert advice to help improve your closest relationships.
Pay a compliment, focus on the things you can control and, for goodness’ sake, put down your phone.
It can be challenging to recognise that people you have known for years, including siblings, have evolved and may be entirely different than they once were. But doing so can help you maintain genuine closeness over time. Periodically, consider asking questions that get at who your loved one has become. Whitney Goodman, a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Miami, Florida, recommends prompts such as “What are you into now?” or “What is going on in your life that I don’t know about?”
Sienna Miller says it’s all about respect, while online trends show notable age gaps are on the increase – so what are the pros and cons?
Is it really so strange these days to see a midlife woman with a good-looking man in his 20s? Women in relationships with men significantly younger than them have long been maligned as “cougars” and “cradle-snatchers”, assumed to be “sugar mommas” or on the hunt for a post-divorce toy-boy. But all that seems to be changing, with many well-known women now openly dating within this once taboo arrangement.
There is more at play than fashion and status. Many famous women with boyfriends 15 or even 20 years their junior – among them Cher, Heidi Klum and Mariah Carey – say their younger partners simply have a level of emotional intelligence and maturity not seen in their own generation.
It’s common knowledge men should be getting off the couch and working up a sweat for at least 30 minutes a day, going to the GP for a check-up at least once a year and opening up about their mental health with their mates instead of staying silent when they’re feeling down and out.
But research has found another area that can seriously impact men’s wellness - living the now-reformed George Clooney-style bachelor life.
New US research indicates single men experience abnormally high rates of loneliness, causing them to feel alienated and isolated. This loneliness is also a risk factor for a range of mental health issues, including depression. The findings also indicate divorced men have a higher rate of mental health issues compared to never-married, separated and widowed men.
Therapist Alexander Terblanche says recognising relationships as a key part of our broader health is crucial.
Conflicts are inevitable even in the most loving of relationships.
Goals, needs and interests will differ on matters great and small - parenting styles, delegation of chores, whether the toilet seat should be up.
Contrary to popular belief, though, conflicts in and of themselves are not a sign there’s something wrong with the relationship, experts say.
If managed well, conflicts provide “the opportunity to enhance and grow in our relationships”, said Nickola Overall, a professor of psychology at the University of Auckland specialising in the science of relationships.
Some couples are using professional project-management software to maintain their relationships. Why does it bother other people?
Ben Lang didn’t expect to get so much hate just for being organised. For the past three years, he and his wife, Karen-Lynn Amouyal, have been using Notion, a popular software tool, to optimise their household and relationship. His version of the tool, commonly used by businesses to manage complex projects, functions like a souped-up Google Docs, with sections for a grocery list, to-do lists and details of upcoming trips.
More unusual is a section Lang, a venture capital investor who previously worked at Notion, created about principles (“what’s important to us as a couple”). Another section, called “Learnings”, outlines things the couple have discovered about each other, such as their love languages and Myers-Briggs test results. There’s a list of friends they want to set up on dates. They also maintain a log of memories from their date nights. Lang, 30, was so proud of the creation that last month he started promoting a template of the set-up to others. “My wife and I use Notion religiously to manage our day-to-day life,” he wrote on social platform X. “I turned this into a template, let me know if you’d like to see it!”
The distancing happens slowly, imperceptibly ... but the problems aren’t always down to compatibility.
“Looking back, there were a few years of unhappiness in our marriage before we hit rock bottom,” says Clio Wood, the author of Get Your Mojo Back: Sex, Pleasure and Intimacy After Birth.
“We had been drifting apart and disengaging from each other but neither of us ever addressed it. It got to the stage where I think we forgot about why we ever got together in the first place.”
While some relationships implode amid high conflict and drama, many more follow the pattern of Wood’s: a slow, almost imperceptible distancing between two people who don’t quite hate each other, might still love each other but have just stopped … liking each other very much.
Mismatched drinking habits in a relationship can be a source of great frustration, so how can you get out of the rut?
To Chris*, it’s a deserved bottle of beer after a long day at work – but when his wife, Leanne*, catches sight of it, her shoulders draw together in annoyance. She’s spent the past two hours helping their children with their homework and getting them through bath time; when Chris, picking up on her irritation, offers to pour her a glass of wine, she shakes her head and returns to reading their 3-year-old a story.
Chris and Leanne, like many couples, fell in love over cocktails and bottles of wine but now in their early 40s and parents to three children, their drinking habits are out of kilter. Chris drinks more or less the same as he always did, rewarding himself with beers after work, large glasses of red at the weekends and as much as is available when he’s at a wedding or on a rare night out with his friends.
Meanwhile Leanne, much to Chris’ disappointment, has become a cautious drinker. Even when they’re out for dinner in her favourite pub, the brakes slam on after one and a half glasses; she dreads the insomnia and hangovers that come from over-indulgence and likes to feel she’s living healthily now she’s a mother. She can’t understand why the first thing Chris does when he walks in after work is to crack open a beer.
Four Kiwi women tell Sinead Corcoran Dye the truth about hanging on to love when it seems the spark has died.
“I miss feeling like a desirable woman,” says Holly, 44, an interior decorator.
“My husband and I have been together for five years. We share his daughter from a previous marriage and we have a toddler and a baby together.
“When we first started dating we had sex every time we met up and went on a date – so two or three times a week - which felt like a ‘normal’ amount to me, though I wanted it more. When we moved in together a few months later however, we had shared custody of his daughter - and as all parents know the exhaustion that comes with parenting can often affect your sex life.
“My husband is also 10 years older than me, in his mid-50s – so I’ve always wondered if his age could play a part in his having a lower libido with me.”
Adultery has been around for as long as marriage, but the effects can be devastating and unpredictable. A relationship counsellor explains how affairs happen, and how couples can face the fallout.
In reality, the number of people who have committed adultery is probably higher than the one in five people who admit to it. It’s one of the most common reasons couples attend therapy sessions, formerly known as marriage guidance.
Affairs begin for all sorts of reasons, and they may not even be out in the open when a couple attend a meeting, but then one person will admit it in an individual session. Sometimes the fling has fizzled out and sometimes it’s ongoing. Normally, I can tell within minutes of meeting couples whether they’re likely to patch things. Relate isn’t in the business of trying to make couples for the sake of it. If one person no longer wants to be in the marriage it would be wrong to try to convince them otherwise. Often our work is about helping them separate well.
What happens when your better half is worse in the kitchen?
When Marta Hurgin first met Lisa Wolford, she loved Wolford’s sharp legal mind, her sense of humour and her empathy toward animals. And Hurgin even accepted that Wolford’s favourite food was chicken, though, as a vegetarian, she couldn’t quite understand it. The two lawyers began to date, and soon, in pursuit of domestic bliss, they moved in together in rural New Hampshire.
And blissful it was — until Wolford began to volunteer for dinner duty. “It always had to be a really complicated recipe,” Hurgin, 37, said. “Like when she makes lasagna, somehow it involves individually boiling every lasagna sheet and laying them all over the countertop. I really do have to leave the kitchen.”
While Hurgin, who made most of the couple’s meals, was an efficient and intuitive cook who cleaned as she went, Wolford, 59, cooked as if she were being held at knifepoint. She would embark on harried trips to the store for ingredients she’d never use again, nervously adhere to each step of every recipe and dirty most of the pots and pans in the kitchen. Soon, it became clear: Hurgin loved her partner. But the way her partner cooked? Not so much.
Picture this: your relationship is over. Now what? You probably let your close friends and family know, as well as your therapist, who will shepherd your healing journey. You might even turn to Spotify, Shakespeare or the StairMaster to cope.
Eventually, you’ll delete or hide away (“archive” to use Instagram’s preferred term) every trace of your ex on your Instagram and other social media profiles. Or you won’t, choosing instead to leave the photos and videos of your past lover on your page. What do you do with the footprints of your relationship on Instagram once it’s over? There’s no right or wrong move. It really depends on whom you ask.
Three Kiwi women tell Sinead Corcoran Dye what it’s really like getting back out there after a marriage ends.
“We split shortly after the nationwide lockdown ended in August 2021,” says Colette, 34. “With my partner back at work and three kids under 5 it became clear that we would never be an equal parenting partnership - and it didn’t feel fair. By that point I’d also realised I was lonely in my marriage, I couldn’t keep trying anymore and I didn’t want to model an unhealthy relationship for my kids.
“A few months later I joined Hinge, and I loved it. The fact I was separated always came up easily and naturally in conversation, and I enjoyed meeting new people over a drink and hearing their stories. And as dating apps hadn’t been around when I was last single it was a real novelty.”
How easy is it to start a relationship after being bereaved? Three widows tell Sinead Corcoran Dye their stories.
“When your spouse dies, you don’t automatically feel single,” says Janelle Brunton-Rennie, 41, a public relations director. “In fact, the use of that word was offensive at the deepest level.
“I felt like I was still married and, if I’m honest, right up until I started dating my partner Max and our relationship started to feel safe again. I was still married but my husband was dead. I wasn’t single, nor was I emotionally available – and I had immense guilt and shame at even trying to move forward.”
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