No romance without finance? This week I talk to a woman whose relationship in facing challenges due to finances. Read the full story

I always told myself that I would never fall in love with a man who has been divorced, let alone one with children. It’s too much of a hassle trying to perform for everyone and you are always left feeling like the “other woman”. You have to be extra nice to the child because you really want him/her to like you even though their mother tells them that you are their competition and that they do not need to listen or respect you. And, the ex-wife? I had nightmares of receiving calls at all hours of the night, supposedly an emergency with the child, just to find out that she was trying to get my man to her apartment for a “reconciliation”. But, you cannot tell your heart who to love and you can’t always contain a bad situation. Read the full story

When we say we’re committed to someone what does that mean? For most of us, we believe that once we enter into a commitment, a promise is made that requires follow-through on an agreement between two people. Once we establish this agreement, we can plan our future based upon this certainty. We take the “sweet whisperings” of love and all of its hopeful promises and attach it to some future fantasy that has yet to happen. But, the expectation that someone else’s emotions, beliefs or behaviors will remain unchanged is unrealistic at best. Read the full story

My mom always dreamt of a big wedding for me. But, never in her wildest dreams did she think things would turn out the way they did. I have always had issues with commitment. They stemmed from watching how my parents interacted with each other —my father was mean, spiteful and unfaithful. Although my mom tried to hide this from me, I always saw through everyone’s façade. My father’s infidelities taught me a debilitating lesson—the only person I could trust was myself and no one else. Observing him was a great tutorial on human behavior and I credit him with my amazing ability to dissect people as quickly as within the first five minutes of meeting them. My instincts have yet to be wrong. Read the full story

This week I tackle whether tying the knot should be part of all of our futures. Read the full story

Recently in a meeting, someone said that married couples who meet at work are the least likely to divorce. Citing factors such as similar educational and professional backgrounds, work conditions, and like temperament, these couples are reportedly less likely to divorce than other couples. While there probably is some truth to this theory, I think shared experiences that are often dramatic, exciting, tragic, or exhilarating in nature also play a role in longer lasting marriages. Read the full story

Have you spent hours trying on different outfits preparing to meet her? Have you listened intently, feverishly trying to project your sincere interest and appreciation for her unsolicited advice; as you think to yourself, “this is my wedding and I’m planning it how I want to?” When the phone rings and you see her name come up on the caller ID, do you cringe hoping your husband will pick up the phone? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, then you have encountered The Other Woman. The Other Woman is your husband’s mother. Read the full story

One of the most common questions I receive from men and women who’ve been in a relationship for a while and are considering marriage is: Should we live together before we get married?

The idea of living together before getting married seems to be growing more and more in popularity. Proponents of the idea list the numerous benefits to cohabitating – most of the time revolving around the theory that by living together before you get married, you get the opportunity to get a 360 degree view of your mate, thereby giving you the means to make an accurate assessment of whether or not this is someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. Read the full story

Over the past couple of years, more and more of my personal friends have taken the step to either get married or get engaged.  When I first began to notice the trend, I thought it was just something that happens when you hit your mid-twenties - your peers start getting married.  As the numbers of engagement parties, wedding showers, and bachelor parties I was attending continued to grow, I realized, it’s not just my peers, but friends of varying ages and at varying stages of their lives have also started to take that step. I’ve had friends who are still in college get engaged, I’ve had friends fresh out of college set wedding dates, I’ve attended the weddings of people I went to college with.
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Recently, a good friend of mine asked me following: 
How do you know when it’s time to let go of a long-term relationship? 
She’s been with her guy on and off for a number of years. They’ve been through a lot; vast physical separation, infidelity, in between loves, times of extreme joy and times of equally extreme pain. Through it all they’ve managed to spend the last two years in relative peace. No states or countries separating them, no other men or women distracting them and, having both moved to a city far from their hometown, no family or friends to fall back on–for the first time in their relationship, it’s just them, and they have all the time in the world to just be. But in what should be the most wonderful time in their entire relationship, she cannot reconcile their seemingly miraculous survival of past tumultuousness against this unshakeable sense of unhappiness and dissatisfaction she now feels. And that is where her question was born. Read the full story