Welcome to Vera’s Blog!

In my last post, I shared some of my favorite tips for communicating better with your partner or loved one. (In case you haven’t read it yet, these are 3 tips that most people don’t think about, but they can quickly improve communication in your relationship. You can find out what they are right here.)

When I was first training to be a therapist years ago, I shared some of these tips with a friend named Maria. She had been with her husband, David, for over a decade. But around the time that I was in grad school, Maria had started to realize that she often felt unheard in their relationship.

David was generally very loving toward Maria. He would make coffee for her to take to work, plan date nights for the two of them, and even buy her flowers for no reason at all. And so in many ways, their relationship seemed great—even like something straight out of a rom com.

But recently, Maria had realized that she had been losing her voice in the relationship because...

Do you ever walk away from a conversation with your partner thinking…

• “I never end up saying what I want to say”?
• “They just don’t get why this matters to me”?
• “Small things turn into a bigger deal than they need to be”?
• “We always have the same argument over and over again”?

If you do and it happens more than once in a blue moon, you might recognize that you could benefit from improving how you communicate with your partner.

It makes sense, right? If the way that you’ve been trying to communicate with your partner or loved one hasn’t been working, it’s only reasonable to try to switch things up.

But here’s what you might be thinking: “Yup. I know that I need to change the way that I communicate with my partner. But WHAT do I need to change? And WHAT should I do instead?”

That’s how I felt after every disagreement that my ex-husband and I had.

I knew that the way that we were...

Does it seem like you and your partner are always arguing about something these days?

If you do, you might be feeling emotionally exhausted and frustrated. But you might also be feeling a bit confused.

After all, if you and your partner care about each other and are in a committed relationship, why do you butt heads so much?

If you think you’re alone in wondering this, I want you to know right now that you most definitely are NOT.

Because when I work with couples in my practice, one of the most common issues they raise is that they argue or disagree ALL the time (and they’re sick of it).

As an example, let me tell you about one of my clients. For the sake of this blog post, we’ll call her Rachel.

Rachel came to me because she and her husband Marcus seemed to be fighting about everything lately.

One time, for example, she had gotten home from work late in the evening after an exhausting day during her company’s busy season. She was hoping to walk in the door...

You’ve probably heard time and time again that all relationships—whether they’re between romantic partners, family members, friends, or colleagues—are about compromise.

But what you might not know is that compromising isn’t always a good thing.

Yes, compromise is definitely important. After all, who wants to be in any kind of relationship with someone who thinks that the world revolves around them and their needs?

But when compromise happens too much or in the wrong way, it can actually cause relationships to break down.

Why?

Because when you compromise too much or when you really don’t want to, you actually end up sacrificing what’s important to you for the sake of pleasing the other person or avoiding conflict in the relationship.

And it’s only a matter of time before you start to feel resentful, unfulfilled, drained, unappreciated, lonely, and even disconnected from the person you’re supposed to be in a relationship with.

Did...

If you’re looking to reconnect with your partner or deepen the emotional intimacy, this blog post is for you.

My clients are usually surprised to learn that the secret to boosting intimacy in their relationship isn’t just going on a romantic vacation or spicing things up in the bedroom. It’s spending time with their partner and truly getting to know them.

But if you’ve read my posts before, you probably aren’t as surprised. Because as I’ve shared time and time again on my blog, the very definition of emotional intimacy in a relationship is to truly be seen by your partner and to truly see them in return. So you might already know that if you want to deepen your connection and enjoy more intimacy in your relationship, it’s important for you and your partner to share who you truly are.

But you might not know how to actually do this. After all, getting to know your partner on a deep level isn’t as simple as asking them what their favorite...

I’m often wondering if there is anyone on this planet that doesn’t want or long for a deeper connection with their loved ones?! I simply think that we are wired for connection whether we are fully aware of it or not.

Recently, in my other blogs, I’ve explained why emotional closeness is important if you want to have a deep, loving relationship with your partner. And I’ve revealed some of the key ingredients for having a strong emotional connection in your relationship.

But what if your relationship lacks emotional closeness right now?

Or what if you and your partner are somewhat close but not as connected as you want to be or know you could be?

Well, I’ve got good news for you.

There are steps you can take to deepen your emotional connection with your partner and feel more bonded to them—even if you didn’t develop a secure attachment style as a child (if you read my post from December 1st, you’ll know what I’m talking about).

And...

In my last couple of posts, I shared with you why emotional connection matters so much in relationships. And I explained how your attachment style shapes your ability to form close emotional bonds with romantic partners and loved ones.

However, it isn’t that secure attachment itself leads to more emotional closeness. In other words, just having a secure attachment style doesn’t guarantee more emotional closeness in your relationships.

Instead, it’s that having a secure attachment style allows you to do something that’s absolutely critical for becoming deeply emotionally connected to someone you love: being vulnerable.

These days, I see the word “vulnerability” get thrown around a lot in blog posts, magazines, and TV shows. And I bet you do too. So even though you might be very familiar with the term, you might not know what vulnerability actually is.

That’s why in this blog post, I’m going to clarify what it really means to...

In my last post on why being close is more important than sex, I talked about why we crave a deep emotional connection with our partner.

Like a lot of my clients, you might long for a deeper and more intimate bond with your partner. But you might have a hard time actually cultivating it in your relationship. And you might not know why.

If you’ve ever reflected on your desire for closeness and emotional connection, you might have realized that it isn’t just missing from your current relationship. You’ve struggled to create it in your past relationships too.

For example, maybe you’ve realized that you always end up in relationships where you seem to be more emotionally invested in the relationship than your partner is. Or perhaps you crave connection but any time that a relationship has gotten serious, you’ve panicked and pulled away.

If you notice that you keep running into the same problems with different partners and in different relationships, you...

Why do we usually call rom coms and romance novels “guilty pleasures”? Because even if we enjoy them, we tend to think that they’re silly or ridiculous—that they don’t show us what “real life” or a “real relationship” is like. After all, these movies and novels often feature couples taking long walks on the beach, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes, and texting love notes to one another all day long.

The honeymoon phase of a relationship may look something like that, we think. But in our eyes, a mature, long-term relationship just isn’t like that. A “real” relationship isn’t a passionate whirlwind of being deeply in love with your partner and feeling like you can’t bear to be separated from them. It’s more like being business partners with someone you hopefully like and have sex with from time to time, right?

You know what, though? That’s not really right.

Yes, it’s true...

It’s never fun when conflict arises in your relationship. It feels unpleasant, it can be uncomfortable, and it can make you worry about the future of your relationship or your bond with your partner.

Plus, as I shared in my last post, conflict can negatively affect you and your relationship in a number of ways.

That’s why you might try to avoid conflict in your relationship.

For example, instead of having a conversation with your partner after they forgot to do the laundry yet again, you might just keep your mouth shut and do it yourself.

Or when your partner asks if their friends can come over on Sunday for the fourth week in a row, you might agree even though you were really looking forward to enjoying some time just as a couple.

Initially, avoiding conflict can seem like a good strategy. Because on the surface, it might seem like everything is a-okay between you and your partner. After all, there are no overt arguments, disagreements, or emotionally charged...