I remember a conversation I had with one of my guy friends a few months ago. "Ugh", he said. "What's wrong?" I asked. "I need to DTR", he told me. "DTR? What's that mean?" I asked. "Determine the relationship. I need to find out if she's actually going to be my girlfriend or not." My poor friend was worried that he would likely get "friend-zoned" again and that having a conversation related to the direction of this potential relationship would be its downfall. No matter what you want to call it - making it official, putting labels on it, becoming exclusive, going steady, changing your status to "in a relationship" on facebook - DTR conversations eventually happen, for better or worse, when you are exploring potential relationships. They may go in your favor, as you discover that the person you've gone on a few dates with wants to take the next step into an official, exclusive relationship. Or it may go terribly awry, as my fri ...

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"Our culture has bred consumers and addicts. We eat too much, buy too much, and want too much. We set ourselves on the fruitless mission of filling the gaping hole within us with material things. Blindly, we consume more and more, believing we are hungry for more food, status, or money, yet really we are hungry for connection." - Vironika Tugaleva

We live in a culture of "more." We encounter examples of this every day. When we go to the grocery store, we have ten different kinds of mayonnaise to choose from. We can binge watch hundreds of shows on Netflix and record multiple shows at the same time on our TVs. Our phones do everything for us and long gone are the days of being limited to only a certain number of texts or minutes to talk on the phone per month. Portion sizes and screens at movie theaters are bigger. We think having more choices is a good thing but in many ways it's not. 

When I was shown this q ...

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When most people think about how they would like to describe their relationship, the word "routine" is often the last word they want to use. We often think of routines as boring and assume that if our relationship feels like a routine, it's a sign of trouble. Many people would prefer for their relationship to feel exciting, new and fresh instead. But I'm here to argue for the value of a routine. I'm a firm believer that if you have routines in your relationship it can actually lead to your relationship feeling less mundane and more alive. 

Routines serve many purposes in our life. For as much criticism as they can garner, we literally cannot and do not function well without them. As much as most of us don't like working a 9-5 job, imagine how it would feel if you never knew when you were expected to start work until the last minute and didn't know when your shift would end. Sure, it can feel like a grind, but routines are in place so tha ...

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