It took more than 20 break-ups for Melissa Meagher to realise her six-year on-and-off relationship with her ex had to end for good. With each make-up and break-up, the pair would go through the same dips and troughs, the same tangled transition from honeymoon period to war zone. Only it was causing the 47-year-old Brisbane mother-of-two increasing amounts of angst – the friends abandoning her, the instability, and that throbbing sense of loneliness that envelopes you when you

With love being a battlefield, how important is the size of the mental guns you bring? Is intelligence just a number, or is it the root equation that will multiply your issues? Well… As a relationship counsellor, I am very privileged to be allowed access to the intimate minutiae of different lives. As a result, I have spent time with a vast array of people who fall into different places on the spectrum of intelligence. I’ve discovered that the level of intelligence often diff

There is a kiss that holds the potential to strengthen your relationship! Dr. John Gottman recommends that couples share a kiss that lasts for 6 seconds each day. A six second kiss releases a powerful chemical cocktail of oxytocin, norepinephrine, epinephrine and dopamine. These are the love chemicals that make us feel so good! Kissing also has many health benefits, such as, helping to reduce stress, lower your blood pressure, relive headaches and tone your facial muscles! Ma

Your phone use may be slowly destroying your relationship. An increasing number of couples are reporting that they are dissatisfied in their relationships. The reason for this is their partner’s iPhone or smartphone habits. Couples are ignoring their partners in favour of scrolling through social media or chatting to their friends online. Sound familiar? I am seeing almost all of my clients expressing their disdain for their partner’s phone habits. So here are some rules of p

Hailee Walker encourages you to review your relationships in the new year because, let’s face it, you can’t soar with the eagles if you hang around with turkeys. As we close the chapter on 2014 and begin to set goals and New Year’s resolutions for 2015, can I suggest to you that your success and failings for the coming year are greatly affected by the company you keep. When making plans for 2015, it should be high on your list of priorities to evaluate the relationships clos

For my money, Channel 9's juggernaut reality show "Married at First Sight" is equal to Tinder in damaging our perception of what love actually is. Many Australians can simply not look away from the Nine Networks' trainwreck reality drama, Married At First Sight. For those of unaware, the premise is thus: two hopeful and expectant strangers meet for the first time at the altar and participate in a commitment ceremony. They spend their wedding night in a hotel room together and

A whole bevvy of revamped statistics has made the idea of finding love on a date all the more unlikely, but also rather more interesting. J’accuse, sex interview! Dating is confusing. It always has been an emotional minefield, however it just got a whole lot more complicated. According to the annual Singles in America survey, there are some major new trends in the dating world that you may not be aware of. Gone are the days where there were some guidelines for how dating and

A Harvard University study declared job loss the biggest factor in divorce. Here's what our resident relationship counsellor makes of the findings. According to the findings of a recent study, the kiss of death for your marriage is job loss. Harvard researcher Alexandra Killewald set out to discover the link between work, money and marital stability and in tabulating 45 years’ worth of data on spouses’ division of household labour, their overall financial resources and a wife

Couples who are having great sex do these simple things! Raise your hand if you want to have great sex! Okay, put your hand down, people are staring at you! 70,000 people in 24 countries completed and online survey conducted by Chrisanna Northrup, Pepper Schwartz and James White. This survey helped shine a spotlight onto the sex lives of couples that reported that they had a great sex life. What were they doing that couples unsatisfied with their sex lives were not? Couples a

The read receipt: the function that allows others to see that you've seen their messages. The next great (read: destructive mind-game) tactic in the dating world. We live in a world where we are ever-connected. Communication in 2017 is really a sight to behold, yet we are becoming more anxious around our communications than ever before. How did the communication waters become so muddy? You can thank the read receipt for a large part of this. If you are unsure of what a read r