Dear Neil: I am 24 years old, single and alone. I have found myself withdrawing from other people because I feel this profound sense of aloneness and loneliness, and I can’t shake this feeling of isolation. Is there a cure for loneliness? Lonely in New Mexico Dear New Mexico: Loneliness begins with you feeling alienated […]
Dear Neil: My wife has decided that she is going to get pregnant. She didn’t ask me how I felt about having a child, she told me that she has made a decision to get pregnant. What do you think about this? Feeling Forced in San Antonio, Texas Dear San Antonio: On first blush I […]
It’s plastered all over recent news reports. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund—and a married man with children—arrested for alleged attempted forcible rape of a hotel chambermaid. Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor and recent Governor of California, and also a married man with children, admitted that he fathered a child with one of […]
Dear Neil: I am very bored and lonely. This is a problem—because I am in a relationship. We have been together 10 years, and we share the same house. He says it’s not fair for me to expect him to spend time with me. He has things to do and can’t get them done if […]
Dear Neil: I’m a 21 year old college student going into my final year. I have been in a relationship for almost two years with my first serious boyfriend. I am not going to get married for another year at least. My parents are pushing me away from the relationship because they believe I should […]
Dear Neil: I have recently been involved with a 29 year old man. We got along really well. Although he doesn’t live in the same city as I do, he visited frequently, we talked on the phone every couple of days and we maintained something of a relationship over a couple of months. Suddenly, however, […]
Essential Skills that Intimate Relationships Require of Us Note: This is the second of a two-part series. Click here for part one This is a continuation of the skills required in order to keep a relationship close and romantic over time: Taking an active interest in the other person. Being interested in his/her feelings, thoughts, […]
Over the course of my career, I have come across thousands of stories about intimate relationships that have gone wrong. About a parent who drops out of a child’s life, about children rejecting their parents, about spouses or lovers who turn mean—or who reject or betray each other—about siblings having a falling out and never […]
Dear Neil: I was an emotionally absent mother, just like my mother was to me. Now my children are adults with their own children, and I would like to mend the past with them. My son shows the scars of his past and often rejects me by words or actions. My greatest wish is that […]
Dear Neil: Regarding your recent column on the confusing message “I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” does it matter that my husband of many years says he no longer loves me, but is still the same caring man he has always been? Don’t actions mean more than words? Puzzled in Wellington, […]