Relationships

What couples counselling is good at and what it is not, how Relate and private therapists work in the UK and what they cost, and when it is the wrong move.

The first year of marriage is often harder than anyone at the wedding admitted. What changes, the arguments that arrive, and when a hard year is a warning.

Practical advice for couples living apart. A rhythm instead of constant contact, visits that feel like life, fair money, an end date, and checking in not up.

You are not unhappy, just never in the same room with your mind on each other. How closeness drains away a minute at a time and the small things that keep it.

Offshore, on the road, on shifts where you pass in the hallway. What working away does to a relationship, why homecoming is hardest, when distance is avoidance.

Couples who last still argue. They argue differently. The four habits that predict a relationship running out, what repair looks like and how to take a break.

The conversation you have been putting off is usually worse in your head than in the room. How to choose the moment, what to say first and how to stay on it.

The money conversation to have before the van arrives, what a joint tenancy commits you to, and why cohabiting couples have fewer rights than they think.

The row is about the dentist appointment. What the mental load is, why 'just tell me' makes it worse and how to hand over jobs.

Cheap and free things to do with your partner at the weekend in the UK, better than another trip to a retail park, with a word for anyone who dreads Saturdays.

Most people have a clearer picture of a bad relationship than a good one. The ordinary signs of one that is working, and why none of them involve never arguing.

Wanting different amounts of sex is the most common sexual problem couples have. What sits underneath it, and when mismatch becomes pressure.

One of you wants to talk and the other goes quiet. Why some people shut down when asked how they feel, what opens the door, and when silence is used.

Why the in-law problem is almost always a couple problem in disguise, how to agree a united line and hold it, and the one version that is about something else.

Almost every couple's sex life changes after a baby. What tends to happen, why it is rarely about attraction and how to talk about it without scoring.

Why rows about money are rarely about money, how spenders and savers end up in the same bed, a system that stops the weekly row and where free debt help is.

There is no right way to share money as a couple, but a few work and some quietly do not. The common set-ups, splitting costs fairly and where control begins.

Trust comes back through evidence, slowly, and mostly through the work of the person who broke it. What a breach does, what they must do and how long it takes.

You are in a relationship and you look forward to Mondays for the wrong reason. What a crush at work usually means, what to do about it and what it tells you.

You think your partner might be cheating. What to notice, why going through their phone is the wrong move even if you are right, and how to raise it.