The Rules of Life

Yo u A re N o t i n C h a rg e Sorry if this comes as a shock, but you’re not in charge, no matter how much you want to be, no m ...

fires us up, makes us learn, and gives us a reason for living. If it was all good, it would be awfully fluffy and boring. A slig ...

Have Something in Your Life That Takes You Out of Yourself I have a friend who swears by her adopted greyhounds. No, I don’t mea ...

Whatever it is, make sure you have it, know it and use it. What’s the good of a piece of music that always lifts your mood if yo ...

Only the Good Feel Guilty Bad people don’t feel guilty. They are too busy being bad. Good people feel guilty because they are go ...

choice with that in mind. Not doing it and feeling guilty is not an option. If you do have cause to feel guilty, then if you can ...

If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, Don’t Say Anything at All It is very easy to moan, to complain, to criticize. It is much harder ...

who are upbeat, positive, happy, and confident. We need to bite our tongue more and say good things more often. Obviously, if yo ...

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PartII Partnership Rules ...

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We all need to love and to be loved. Most of us want the com- fort of a relationship and the closeness of companionship that suc ...

“Sugar and spice and all things nice...slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails”—isn’t that how the rhyme goes? So which are you? ...

combination or alternately—to really fire you both up and make the relationship special and successful. Look, you’re in this tog ...

Allow* Your Partner the Space to Be Themselves It’s a funny old thing, but we often fall in love with someone who is independent ...

unconsciously we do tend to rein our partners in a bit, and they do lose their sparkle. Yo u h a v e t o e n c o u r a g e y o u ...

Be Nice It is very easy in the busyness of modern life and the complex sparring of a day-to-day relationship to forget that we a ...

be the most important person in the world to us. It makes sense to show him this is true. Of course, if you already do all this, ...

Yo u Wa n t to D o W h a t? Just because we come together to be a couple for however long doesn’t mean we are joined at the hip ...

Ask yourself—if she does this, if she goes ahead, what’s the worst that can happen? She makes a mess of your floor, ruins part o ...