Plenty of relationship advice says that conflict in a relationship is inevitable and healthy. We disagree on both counts. It may just be a matter of semantics. If it amounts to a statement that people shouldn’t suppress their feelings,

PHIL: This relationship is unlike any other I have been in. It was obvious within a year, and nothing has changed. We’re not the only couple with a peaceful relationship, but it is so powerful that we feel that we are driven to describe it.

PHIL: It was New Year’s Eve when Maude mentioned the idea of a short phrase to carry throughout the year. Instantly, the word BREATHE appeared before me, almost as if lit by light-bulbs like an old roadside sign. I think I know why it came to me.

Two events stand out this week. The new year is a time to declare our intentions for the following 12 months, and it’s also a new decade and an invitation to look further ahead, both personally and as a society.

Here we are in a season where women and men all over the world are celebrating, each in their respective ways, the desire for unity, peace, joy and love to spread and be manifest on our world between all peoples. Simultaneously,

PHIL: We’ve written before about how we each feel complete, and being together adds to us. This is in contrast to having a sense of neediness and wanting a partner to complete you. But in returning to this subject,

We hold that for two people to be in harmony, they have to have matching core values. They have to have the same approach to people and the world. We introduced this idea in a workshop we did recently by giving out a list of suggested core values,

The common wisdom about relationships is that there will be times of conflict. You will find writer after writer advising you to handle this by talking, being kind, communicating, compromising, making lists,

The direct experience of mutuality is a critical aspect of a peaceful and conflict-free relationship. It is the sense of being in the relationship, rather than just being our individual selves. In fact, “rather than” is the wrong connector here; it’s r...

Last year we went to a talk by Anne Lamott. The venue holds a couple of thousand people and the place was filled to the rafters. Anne gave a wonderful talk filled with personal revelations, sharing of her journey and lots of great humor,