More Romantic Partners Means More Support, Say Polyamorous Couples

Polyamory is the act of engaging in multiple consensual, potentially long-term, romantic or sexual relationships at the same time.

Loving an insecure person can be frustrating. You always feel like you have to offer praise or reassurance.

Over the last four decades, Joyce and I have counseled many couples who are suffering with their sexual relationship. Most of these couples also feel disconnected from each other. They think they can improve their overall relationship by improving their sexual relationship. This is usually a mistake.

With sex on their minds, people are more likely to change their attitudes and engage in deceptive self-presentation, research on sexual priming finds.

Research across many years and many cultures has found around 35-40% of people say they feel insecure in their adult relationships. While 60-65% experience secure, loving and satisfying relationships.

Here's a stunner: 64 percent of all marriages that began in 1990 ended in divorce by the turn of the millennium.  70 percent of those failed marriages produced at least one child. Roughly half of all children born in this country over the past 15 years have ended up being children of divorce.

Tantra is well regarded within the yoga tradition as the fastest path to enlightenment. Eastern legend holds that an average human soul takes 100,000 lifetimes to achieve enlightenment, but that with tantra, any person truly committed to this path can gain enlightenment in as little as one lifetime. I soon discovered why this is true.

Is he or she the one? You know… the one to introduce to my parents, the one to move in with, the one to start a family with, the one to marry? At some point in every dating relationship, you ask yourself some version of these questions.

Few topics arouse as much interest and controversy as sex. This is hardly surprising. The biological continuance of the species hinges on it – if human beings stopped having sex, there would soon be no more human beings.

The paradox of vulnerability in relationships, the path to connection, is to allow yourself to be both strong and vulnerable at the same time. When you do, it allows your partner to get to see the real you with your defenses down. This means no hiding. Not from yourself, not from your partner and best of all no hiding from the truth.

In today's changing times, we are looking for a better way to be ourselves, not someone we were raised to be. In this time of intense self-discovery, all others serve as our mirrors.

It has long been clear that a person’s sexual preference – whether they prefer male or female sexual partners, or both – is influenced by his or her genetic makeup.

The claim that homosexual men share a “gay gene” created a furor in the 1990s. But new research two decades on supports this claim – and adds another candidate gene.

Sex robots made headlines after American comedian Whitney Cummings brought out her very own lookalike robot for her Netflix special called Can I Touch It? RealBotix

More heterosexual couples today meet online, research finds. In fact, matchmaking is now the primary job of online algorithms.

When love, lust and all things in between come calling, dating apps appear to be the only way to meet new people and experience romance in 2019.

Quietly, to yourself, think of the one thing you most want no one to know about you. Maybe you had an affair, or a nose job; maybe you stole something once, cheated on your income taxes or had an abortion. Sometimes the dirty deed seems absurd. I had a woman confess to me in tears that years ago she had...

Science fiction films such as Blade Runner (1982), Lars and the Real Girl (2007) and Her (2013) explore the advent of human-machine relationships. And in recent years, reality has met fiction.

If you listen to any number of love songs, dating “experts”, or plunge head first into a romance novel, you’re likely to think it’s in our destiny to find that special someone – your soul-mate.

As we write in The Shared Heart, "The real soulmate is a state of consciousness, not a person." That being said, there can also be an outer soulmate, or life partner, an ancient connection with another soul where the primary purpose is serving together, blessing the earth together, more than simply loving one another.

Humans have discovered an almost infinite amount of ways to have sex — and things to have sex with.

“Nice guys finish last” is one of the most widely believed maxims of dating.

There have been times in Hannah Adams’ life when she’d been confused about her body and birth control. Sex education in middle and high school in mountainous eastern Kentucky was severely lacking, she says.

Do you need to shave your pubic area before having sex?

Is it normal for girls to masturbate and are there any health consequences?

How often do you tell the special people in your life exactly what it is that you love most about them? How often do you identify what's good about your spouse, lover, children, sisters, brothers, dad, mother, uncles, aunts, friends, and colleagues -- and actually put it into words so there can be no doubt?

The topic of sexual consent seems to be in the news on a daily basis, especially since #MeToo went viral one year ago.

For couples who frequently use the drug, episodes of marijuana use increase the likelihood couples will experience “intimacy events,” according to new research.

The United States appears to be in a romantic slump. Marriage rates have plummeted over the last decade.

Sex has a strong influence on many aspects of well-being: it is one of our most basic physiological needs. Sex feeds our identity and is a core element of our social life.

Beyond all of the material gifts we share, the greatest gift we can offer each other is the truth of who we really are. While true love invites us to come out and stand naked in the sun, fearful "love" asks us to hide who we are for the sake of holding on to a person or relationship. When you think about it, how valuable can a relationship be if you have to live in the dark to keep it?

Teenagers have an overly simplistic understanding of consent that often ignores relevant non-verbal cues, a new study suggests.

The development of trust in a relationship is highly depen­dent upon two core concepts: empathy and attunement. Attunement is about being deeply aware of yourself and others. It is also about being receptive to information you get from others.

The picture of a dad with a toddler in his arms happily waving as mum heads off to work is attractive – it suggests a more equal, sharing and caring type of world.

Loved up and living together. But your relationship might not be as secure as you think it is.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, masturbation was thought of as a “disease”, capable of causing psychological or physical damage like blindness or insanity. This medical and moral panic surrounding masturbation can still shape beliefs today.

A number of years ago, I found myself at a public sex beach in southern France for research purposes. Unsurprisingly, I experienced some ethical dilemmas.

It’s not difficult to tell when a female chimpanzee is in heat. As she nears ovulation  — the point in her cycle when she’s most fertile  –  her bottom swells up like a balloon and turns bright pink. Humans are obviously different. We don’t make a show of how fertile we are. But does this mean that women have evolved to conceal ovulation?

Why do men send dick pics? Some research and popular commentary suggests it is for reasons of narcissism and over-confidence. Some men no doubt send them in the hopes of receiving a nude photo in kind, or because they genuinely believe that’s what women desire.

Instagram users have taken to issuing “weekiversary posts,” where they diligently mark the duration of their romances. This phenomenon makes some doubt the intensity of their own relationship.

In prenatal ultrasounds or at delivery, many new parents look between their baby’s legs: the presence of a penis is taken as a strong sign that it’s a boy.

Couples fight. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Sometimes these fights provide comic relief. At other times they threaten the very survival of the relationship.

How important is it to consider a romantic partner’s genetic profile before getting married?

We are already living through a new sexual revolution, thanks to technologies that have transformed the way we relate to each other in our intimate relationships.

Couples are getting the message that there’s a certain point at which they should start having sex again after having a baby, interviews show.

Sex helps initiate romantic relationships between potential partners, a new study finds.

Forget the red roses and teddy bears this Valentine’s Day – the best way for men to shore up their relationships is to run the vacuum over.

Studies show that women reach climax less often than men do during sexual encounters together.

What brings a person to consider celibacy for a few months or years cannot be easily explained. It will take some time to reap the results of greater tolerance for sexual feelings without needing to act on them in conventional ways. Sex will become more of a choice than a need.

The practice of looking into someone’s eyes and holding his or her gaze stimulates the sensations and presence of the body so strongly that it can almost be thought of as touch at a distance. The primary reason that many people find gazing into another’s eyes so challenging and daunting...

Humans are sexual beings. This urge does not stop when the clock strikes 60. Or even 90.Young adults may deny older relatives are having sex, but sexual activity is a strong indicator of healthy aging and vitality.

I feel that now is the time to take a completely different look at Homosexuality! With modern science suspecting the causes of same-sex orientation to be genetic, it is time to dispel the myths of choice. When people are born a certain way through no choice of their own -- such as race, or looks, or handicaps -- should they be penalized by society? Is that fair?... I think not.

December 21, 1968 was our wedding day. It was the happiest day for me. After four years of loving Barry and having people tell us that a Jewish/Christian marriage just cannot work, we were actually doing it. I was marrying the love of my life, the man foretold to me by an inner voice when I was nine years old...

One in 3 American adults do not get enough sleep. Sexual issues are also common, with as many as 45 percent of women and 31 percent of men having a concern about their sex life.

It may sound like a scene straight out of a horror movie, but statistically you are not that unlikely to end up on a date with a psychopath. It is estimated that about 1 in 100 people are psychopaths. The majority of psychopaths aren’t actually criminals, but live fairly ordinary lives in our midst. So how do you know if you happen to be dating a psychopath and what should you expect? Luckily, there’s research on the topic.

When it comes to socializing, is your philosophy "The more, the merrier?" If so, you definitely show qualities associated with the trait known as extroversion...

On 27 February 1907, at Berggasse 19 in Vienna, Sigmund Freud fell in love. The object of his affection was Carl Gustav Jung: 19 years younger than Freud, the young psychiatrist was already the clinical director of the prestigious Burghölzli Hospital and a professor at the University of Zurich.

In 2017, Australians were asked “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”. The answer was a resounding “yes” – more than 60% of those who expressed a view backed marriage equality.

Real appreciation is a gift of love straight from the heart, an acknowledgement of another’s greatness and beauty, and a way of showing your partner that you really care. Many women need specific kinds of appreciation. And many men don’t understand this.

Find out what kind of acknowledgment means most to the man in your life. How does he most need to be appreciated? You may be surprised. Please don’t get the idea that men don’t need appreciation for inner qualities of being.

A sense of humor is an attractive trait. There is abundant cross-cultural evidence that shows that being funny makes you more desirable as a mate, especially if you are a man. But once the initial flirting is over, and you are in a romantic relationship, how large a role does humor play?

Energy, like water, is the life-giving sustenance of the earth. Sexual energy is nourishment for the totality of ourselves -- the body, the mind, and the spirit. It is the water of life, replenishing the gardens of the human temple. Working with energy is a pivotal factor in our overall state of happiness.

A healthy relationship stimulates both partners' individual growth. A functional relationship is not a fairy-tale type 'they lived happily ever after' scenario; it is subject to the same stresses and challenges inherent in any human partnership.

A stressful event, such as the death of a loved one, really can break your heart. In medicine, the condition is known as broken heart syndrome or takotsubo syndrome.

Times are changing, and for the most part, the word 'crone' is now accurately being used as a synonym for a woman who not only embodies postmenopausal wisdom, but shares it with the world. It is the time when the wisdom and healing of a woman's menopausal journey quickens in her heart, and her desire to share all that she has learned drives her back to the outer world.

Two men regularly meet at a sex club, so that one (‘the top’) can fist the other (‘the bottom’). One night, the fisting duo stay until the club closes. The lights click on in their sobering glory, exposing the prosthetic hand that the top has been inserting into the anus of the bottom.

I pray that I no longer seek for the other one for I have found completion in me. And if in my solitary journey,  I happen to join with another soul, let our hearts merge because we have so much love to give... And if we find ourselves taking, let our receiving be based on...

Picture Morgan Freeman, Donald Trump or Margaret Thatcher. Most likely you can hear their voices in your mind, and the characteristic inflections that they put on certain words, as well as their tone and pitch.

There are several ways to restore most of one's sexual performance including a high tone of physical conditioning and mental attitude. The power of the mind to influence the relative efficiency of one's sexual performance cannot go unnoticed.

Love has to be understood, not as a biological infatuation — that is lust. That exists in all the animals; there is nothing special about it. Love is the fragrance of a silent, peaceful, meditative heart. Love has nothing to do with biology or chemistry or hormones...

Imagine your partner unexpectedly changes their Facebook status from “in a relationship” to “single” and then refuses to communicate with you. This sounds awfully cruel, completely robbing you of your right to find out why you have been dumped so that you can get some closure and move on.

When the King of Sweden asks Joan, the protagonist of the newly-released film The Wife, what she does for a living, she replies, ironically, “I am a king maker”. This poignant scene takes place towards the film’s end, as Joan (Glenn Close) takes part in the festive dinner celebrating her husband being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

We can only trace romantic love back to about a thousand years ago. Prior to that, there wasn't any romantic love. It's an idea that has been invented, like a philosophy or a religion. It has been made very special.

The image of the partner who is most attractive to you is buried deep within your unconscious mind. You began sketching this picture soon after your birth and before you were a teenager the composite was nearly complete. Your Imago has a dominant influence over the type of partner you seek, the way you relate to him, and how happy you will be together. The relationship script you wrote as a child is based on both the Imago you created and the childhood wounds you suffered.

Most children adjust well to parental separation and divorce, at least in the long term. A minority of children of separated parents have long-term problems, which can affect them through their childhood and into adult life. But it’s conflict between separated parents, and not the separation itself, which accounts for many of the problems children of separated parents experience.

For a lecture course I teach at Brown University called “Love Stories,” we begin at the beginning, with love at first sight. To its detractors, love at first sight must be an illusion – the wrong term for what is simply infatuation, or a way to sugarcoat lust. Buy into it, they say, and you’re a fool.

It’s been said that whatever brings us to face the essential truth of our lives may be called “grace.” Frequently, grace assumes a form that feels more like a curse than a blessing. It can be a life-threatening illness, the loss of a family member, being fired from a job, the kids leaving home (or coming back), divorce, a serious accident, or any number of possible crises that can be encountered in one’s life.

The most common sexual problem is low desire, according to a research study we recently published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Around 40 per cent of the women we asked, and 30 per cent of men, reported experiencing problems with low desire during the last six months.

Research shows we think young people have a lot more sex than they do in reality – and men have a particularly skewed view of the sex lives of young women.

When I tell people I’m studying women who like gay male porn I get some pretty mixed responses. Men tend to tilt their heads quizzically to one side. “Really?”

‘The world has always belonged to males,’ wrote Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949), ‘and none of the reasons given for this have ever seemed sufficient.’

Quite often, I spend time with people who are extremely critical of themselves for having multiple failed relationships. The truth is, they're missing the point: We can't fail, because there's no way to do these things wrong. A failed relationship, if you put it into its proper context, is a chance to...

As the TV series Westworld wraps up its second season, the show continues to spark discussion about a potential future that involves lifelike sex robots.

The old cliché tells us the most desirable men are “tall, dark, and handsome” – and scientific research confirms that heterosexual women tend to prefer partners who are taller than them.

Taking time apart from a loved one is often thought of as the end of the relationship. But after 53 years together, and helping to guide thousands of couples, Joyce and I view separation as a sometimes vital necessity in a relationship...

It was a well-kept secret among historians during the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the practice of magic was widespread in the ancient Mediterranean

Some couples seem blessed with everlasting love. Then, there’s the rest of us—who start running into trouble once the honeymoon is over. We encounter differences, disagreements, disappointments. Buttons get pushed. And communication breaks down as issues become increasingly hard to resolve.

When my husband Charlie and I conducted our study, Secrets of Great Marriages: Real Truths from Real Couples about Lasting Love, these are the practices that respondents told us had held them in good stead to grow their exemplary relationships.

Sharing your life with a loving partner is very rewarding and meaningful. Since we work with couples, we often ask them how they met. Often they will respond that they met online. Typically, they are somewhat embarrassed when they reveal this, thinking that it should have been a more natural and romantic way of meeting. But...

Lying about availability is a common deception online dating users tell potential partners, according to a new paper. “Until now, it has been relatively unclear how often mobile daters use deception in their messages before they meet the other person,” says Markowitz.

Housework is often understood as a gendered negotiation based on the traditional roles of homemaker (feminine) and breadwinner (masculine). While gender norms have shifted dramatically in the past few decades, theories of housework are still stuck on this 1950s model.

Our intimate live-in relationships offer us a constant reminder of the work we still have to do. If we are successful, we can transform an ordinary relationship into the precious gift of partnership.

Romantic couples with a large age gap often raise eyebrows. Studies have found partners with more than a ten-year gap in age experience social disapproval.

The statistics are terrifying: In Canada, one woman is killed every week by her partner; globally, one third of women will suffer violence at the hands of someone they love in their lifetime. But what if survivors like Susan are also dealing with the effects of a traumatic brain injury along with the fear and trauma of finally having escaped a long-term abusive relationship?

Most Americans who get married today believe they are choosing their own partners after falling in love with them. Arranged marriages, which remain common in some parts of the world, are a rarity here.

In a widely read blog post, Jennifer Willoughby wrote this phrase after each of the many reasons she gave for enduring what she described as her abusive marriage to former White House aide Rob Porter: “And so I stayed.”

We're programmed to have unrealistic expectations from movies and TV, from romance stories promising wonderful experiences with people who anticipate our every wish. We want someone to be always caring, always considerate, always loveable, always giving. But these romantic illusions too often leave us feeling cheated...

Infidelity highlights the potential fragility of our closest and most important of relationships. But despite the blunt belief infidelity is the result of immoral and over-sexed individuals wanting their cake and eating it too, the reality is far more nuanced.

Your most important decision may be figuring out your best romantic partner. Relationships matter – a lot. They have implications for your health, your reactions to stress and even how you look at the world. But how can you determine if your current romantic partner is the best of the best for you?

Your first sexual partner may have more to tell you about your spouse or current lover than you may think. Although this may sound surprising to you, studies have shown early experiences play a role in who we choose as a sexual partner.