Endings & Repair
Starting again, with what you know now
A short account of what the evidence across this whole subject actually supports, for anyone beginning again.
Martina Vogel
25 articles by Vogel
Endings & Repair
The conversation that ends it
Ending a long relationship in person is one of the harder things people do, and there is a form that reduces the damage.
Communication
Talking to a partner about their family
Among the most difficult conversations available, with a set of rules that make it survivable.
Endings & Repair
Grief in a couple
Two people grieving the same loss frequently do it differently, and the difference is experienced as a failure of the relationship.
Family & Parenting
Holidays, and why they produce so many arguments
A period of enforced proximity, high expectations and disrupted routine, which is a reliable formula.
Communication
Saying no to a partner
Refusal inside a close relationship is harder than in almost any other context, and avoiding it produces worse outcomes than doing it badly.
Attachment
Love languages: what the evidence says
An enormously popular framework with a weak evidential base and a genuinely useful idea buried inside it.
Family & Parenting
Two careers and one household
Whose job takes precedence is decided by default in most couples, and the default has consequences that compound.
Conflict
Apologising to a partner
The components of an effective apology are identifiable, and the domestic version fails in a small number of predictable ways.
Dating
Sex and the beginning of a relationship
A subject surrounded by rules with almost no evidence behind them, and a few things that genuinely matter.
Attachment
Commitment, and what it actually consists of
The research separates it into components that behave differently, and one of them is doing most of the work people attribute to love.
Family & Parenting
Blended families and the pace of them
The most common mistake is expecting the new arrangement to function as a family within a year, and the research suggests a longer horizon.
Communication
Criticism you did not ask for
Unsolicited advice and correction from a partner is a common friction point, and the underlying question is about standing.
Dating
Long distance, and what makes it work
The research is more encouraging than the folk wisdom, with a specific caveat about the reunion.
Endings & Repair
Deciding whether to stay
The decision resists the usual methods, and a few questions are more informative than any amount of listing pros and cons.
Conflict
Contempt, and why it is the one to watch
Of the corrosive conflict behaviours, one is consistently identified as the most damaging, and it is the easiest to slip into.
Communication
Bringing something up at the right moment
Timing accounts for more of a conversation’s outcome than wording does, and the good windows are narrow and identifiable.
Attachment
Independence inside a couple
Merging is presented as the goal and produces a specific set of problems that appear around the third year.
Endings & Repair
How relationships end without anyone deciding
Most long relationships do not end in a crisis. They end through a gradual withdrawal that neither person names until it is finished.
Family & Parenting
Money, and the conversations couples avoid
Financial disagreement is among the more commonly cited sources of conflict, and most of it comes from arrangements never explicitly agreed.
Communication
Text messages and the medium problem
Written messages strip out most of the information a conversation carries, and relationships route an increasing share of their content through them.
Dating
What people say they want and what they choose
Stated preferences and actual choices diverge sharply in the research, which explains a good deal of frustration with dating.
Family & Parenting
Living with someone for the first time
The difficulties are mostly logistical and mostly predictable, and almost nobody discusses them before moving in.
Conflict
The argument that is never about what it is about
Recurring disputes over trivial matters generally carry a second subject, and identifying it is more useful than resolving the trivial one.
Dating
Dating apps and what they do to judgement
The interface shapes the decisions, and several of its effects push against finding what people say they want.