Have you ever heard of endometriosis? Do you know anything about this chronic illness or have you just heard about it for the first time in your life? As March is the Endometriosis Awareness Month, I want to share my endo story with you. While this topic may seem to be far away from the love and relationships scope of this podcast, it really is not. Endometriosis often heavily affects romantic, sex, and family life of those that have been diagnosed, and I do not mean only women but their partners or husbands as well. Every 1 in 10 women of reproductive age in the UK—and these numbers are similar worldwide—is diagnosed with endometriosis. It is usually a long way to get this diagnosis confirmed, as on average it takes between 7 and 9 years. Endometriosis is a chronic condition in which endometrial-like tissue implants itself outside of the uterus, most commonly in diffeent parts of the reproductive system, but not only. Each case of endometriosis is different in terms of the symptoms that are present and their severity. However, the most typical symptoms of this illness include: • Painful and heavy periods; • Chronic pelvic pain, that lasts between periods; • Painful bowel movements, painful urination, and blood in urine; • Deep pain during sex; and • Chronic fatigue. If you want to learn more about endometriosis, and my story of being diagnosed and what this diagnosis changed in my life, this episode is for you!

Gaslightning is one of the most common manipulation techniques that is used mainly by narcissists, though not only, to gain power over and control their partners or spouses, and be in charge of the dynamics of the whole relationship. The term comes from a stage play “Gas light” by Patrick Hamilton and the movie that was subsequently made (in the US, known as "Angel Street"). In the movie, the devious husband manipulates and torments his wife to convince her that she’s going mad. 

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person or group, makes another individual question their memories, sanity, and their perception of reality. It does not occur only in romantic relationships or marriages, but can take place in any relationship, including friendships, parent-child relationships, or employer-employee relationships.

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone that made you doubt in what you were experiencing on a daily basis? Have you been confused to that extent that at some point you started question yourself and your sanity, and thought that you were losing touch with reality? - If you have ever had that strange feeling that you were or are living in an alternate reality to what you have been registering with your own senses, than it is more than likely that you have experienced gaslightning.

Want to know more about gaslightning? Take a seat and and enjoy this episode!

The interest in tantric sex is now on the rise in the Western World. Originating in the ancient Indian and Chinese practices and philosophy, tantric sex is slow and meditative, with its end goal not being orgasm but the enjoyment coming from the sexual act and the sensations that this sexual journey brings to the body. The movement of the sexual energy that takes place during the act brings healing, transformation, and enlightenment.

Tantric sex, however, requires intimacy between the partners. Without intimacy, sex hardly ever goes beyond being a physical, often barely mechanical, act that brings instant gratification. So how to prepare yourself and your partner for the deeper experience of tantric sex? My guest Anne Bland, the founder of SelfishlyHappyWoman.com and international love, relationship, and sex coach, and I will try to answer this and other questions related to tantra and sex in the today's episode. 

How you communicate with your partner or spouse is of key importance for the happiness of your relationship or marriage. Superficial communication; blockages in communication; not enough open (or overly open) communication in a relationship are the most common problems that copules struggle with. Such challanging and inadequate communication in a relationship or marriage have further casualties, one of them being intimacy.

In this episode of the Love Talks, me and my guest Anne Bland, the founder of SelfishlyHappyWoman.com and international love, relationship, and sex coach, discuss what partners can do to improve their communication and, henceforth, deepen intimacy between them. 

This is part 1 of my talk with Anne, so stay tuned for another part coming out next week! In part 2 of our conversation, we will talk about intimacy in the context of tantra and sex. 

Talking about intimacy with a partner or spouse is not easy for everyone. For some, it may even be a taboo topic. But intimacy, and talking about it with your partner or spouse when needed, is very important for the wellbeing of your relationship and marriage. Intimacy between two people that are married or in a committed relationship takes many forms, with physical and emotional intimacy being those that come to our minds first.

What is physical and emotional intimacy then? What happens with a relationship when either one or both are gone? Is sex the same as physical intimacy?

If you want to learn more about intimacy, why we struggle to bring this very important topic up in conversations with our partners or spouses, and what the most common reasons for having problems with intimacy in a relationship or marriage are, this episode will address all these questions for you!

Ghosting happens when someone that you have dated with or have had a committed relationship with, ends this relationship by cutting off all sort of communication with you, without giving you any explanation or closure. It is like receiving an ultimate silent treatment. While ghosting is usually chosen as the means for ending a rather new relation, it can be used to end even a long-term, committed relationship. These days this is not that unusual anymore and no-one can be really sure that they are save from being ghosted. So, who ghosts others? Some would say that ghosting is done by people that are bad and mean. But this would be a simplification. In fact, ghosting reflects the very core traits of the narcissistic personality disorder that is be characterised by: 👉🏼 A long-term pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance; 👉🏼 An excessive need for admiration; and 👉🏼 A lack of empathy for other people. If you recognise any of these in your boyfriend's or girlfriend's behaviour, you can be pretty much sure that you are dealing with the narcissist. And this also means that you have much higher chances to be ghosted by him or her than if you were dating a person who is not a narcissist. If you want to learn more about what ghosting is, why narcissists ghost others so easily, and what ghosting leaves behing, this episode will answer all your questions!

Marriages and comitted long-term relationships in which each partner comes from a different country and culture are these days not uncommon. With people easily moving around the world (well, at least before the COVID-19 outbreak) for work and study purposes, meeting a love of our life somewhere far away from our home country has become much more likely in the last 10-15 years than ever before. The expansion of the internet and a variety of different communication apps allow us stay in instant touch with our partner on a daily basis, even if we are thousands of miles apart from each other. The COVID-19 pandemic, although restricted our physical movement around the globe, has brought people together in the virtual space. Many of them would have never met otherwise, as they live in different countries or even on different continents, yet some have found their soulmates this way, amidst the outbreak and lockdown. But are the cross-cultural relationships that easy and carefree as they seem to be? How is it to have a partner or spouse whose cultural and often religious background differs from what we are used to and what is familiar (and predictable) to us? In this episode of the Love Talks, Ashish Parekh and I talked about the challanges and benefits of cross-cultural marriages with Melanie Goel from Germany 🇩🇪 , whose husband comes from India 🇮🇳. Melanie shared with us her insights and perspective on how to get well along as a couple regardless of the cultural and religious differences, and what mindset to adopt to make your cross-cultural relationship or marriage happy and fulfilling for both partners. She also offered some great tips on how to deal with some of the challanges that are pretty inevitable when people from different cultures fall in love with each other but which are possible to overcome and make the relationship even stronger in the long run.

What to do if no amount of work that we have dedicated to fixing our relationship or marriage seems to be enough? How to recognise that we have reached the point of no return and admitting that our relationship or marriage is not going to work no matter what is the most reasonable thing to do at that point? When should we let go and part with our partner or spouse? When enough is really enough? Making a decision about getting a divorce or breaking up a long-term relationship is never easy. In fact, this is the last resort that many of us would think of, even if we strongly feel and are aware that our relationship or marriage has been bringing to us (and our partner) more pain than joy for quite a long time. Giving up on a relationship or marriage is always a difficult decision that changes our lives and leaves a bitter aftertaste. It is always a loss that leaves deep marks on our souls. But, at the same time, a divorce or break up is not the end of the world and many divorced men and women alike still find a new romantic partner that they can have a happy life with. Many would say that for a man, it is much easier to make a decision about getting a divorce than for a women. It is commonly believed that women, especially when there are children involved, are less willing to think about divorcing their husbands or leaving a long-term partners, because of a variety of reasons. But is that really so? Are men really so much more ready to give up on a relationship or marriage easily? In this episode of the Love Talks, Ashish Parekh and I hosted Eric Chasen from the US 🇺🇸 and Sibin Varghese from India 🇮🇳 who shared with us their stories and described the process of getting to the point when they both realised that their marriages had ended and divorce was inevitable.  We discussed: 🎯 How we can try to fix our marriage or long-term relationship beforestarting to  consider a divorce or break up;  🎯 What are the common signs that a marriage or relationship is irreversibly broken and a divorce or break up is likely the most reasonable step to take;   🎯 How to handle emotionally a divorce and where to look for support;  🎯 What are the practicalities of the divorce process that one should take care of and how to do that;  🎯 How to achieve an agreement on the issues related to the custody of minor children;  🎯 How to co-parent with your ex-spouse or ex-partner for the benefit of your children.

Regardless of the culture that you were brought up in and part of the world that you live in, hitting 40 and being still single and childless is very often considered to be a life tragedy by others, like friends, family members, or even colleagues of the person that is single. This is true especially for women, for whom due to the biological reasons, becoming a mother is, on average, much more difficult at or after 40 than when they are in their 20s and 30s. While being single at or after 40 is also more stigmatising for women than men because of the cultral reasons, both men and women face lots of wrongful assumptions regarding why they are still single and they are being labelled accordingly. To add, they have often been reminded by those around them that it is the high time to settle down and start a family, and stop wasting life on unimportant (whatever is meant by that) whims.  But the reality is that not every single person at this age, a man or woman alike, is anymore interested in starting a family or getting married. Well, at least not for the sake of getting married or meeting the expectations of others or society that they live in. So, how people that are single at or after 40 see themselves and their situation? - Let's debunk some of the most common myths about being single after 40. In this episode of the Love Talks, I discussed with Deepak Saibaba from India 🇮🇳 how we, single 40-year-old people perceive our situation and whether being single and having no kids at this age is really a life tragedy, as often viewed by others, or not. We talked about: 🎯 How it feels to be single after 40; 🎯 How dating at this age looks like (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic); 🎯 What are the chances of finding a partner that will be a good match for us and where to find them; 🎯 What are the expactations regarding the relationship and partner when you are 40; 🎯 Does being single after 40 equals having a boring life and what do single people at that age do with their free time; and finally 🎯 What are the actual chances of getting married after 40 and is it, in  fact, a goal that is still important for us to to achieve at this point of our lives.

Long distance relationships (LDR) has always been controversial and raised mixed feelings among those that are involved in them and third-party observers alike. As both partners involved in a LDR are physically miles apart, often located in different states/countries or even on different continents, and see each other face-to-face rarely, many ask how these kind of arrangements work, do they in fact work, and what is the sense of engaging in and then maitaining such a relationship (?). These questions are even more timely now, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic that does not seem to go away anytime soon.  While living under the lockdown rules, it is extremely difficult or virtually impossible to meet new romantic partners in person, let alone date them in the traditional way. While many men and women have put their romantic life on hold with the onset of the pandemic and decided to wait with dating until the lockdown is over, others has moved their romantic life online. With the lockdown being recently extended and the pandemic taking a wrong turn, even those who did not want to engage themselves in online dating and prefered to wait, started considering this as a valid option. In the end of the day, we cannot put our (romantic) life on hold for who knows for how long, especially if we are in our 30s or older. As the result, many people that have met the right person online after the outbreak of COVID-19, found themselves in a LDR, even if they had not ever considered a LDR as an option for themselves. In this episode of the Love Talks, Ahish Parekh and I taled about LDR with our guest, Pawel Komarnicki, a software engineer and IT entrepreneur, whose relationship was at some point in the past long distance. As Pawel and his partner lived for quite a while in different countries and rarely had the time to visit each other, he shared with us his experience on how to manage your LDR and make it thrive into a serious and commited relationship over time. We discussed the common and most daunting challanges of LDRs such as: 🎯 communication between the partners, including the technicalities like the secureness of different communication apps ;   🎯 nourishing closeness and intimacy when being miles apart;  🎯 managing each other's expectations about the relationship and its future; and  🎯 dealing with temptations.

Psychological manipulation in relationships takes different forms. The most common ones are gaslightning, triangulation, and silent treatment. No matter its form, manipulation is always ABUSE. At its core, there is a need to exercise undue influence through mental distortion and emotional exploitation on a partner/spouse or other family member/s. Those who manipulate, intent to seize power and control, and receive various benefits and privileges at the expenses of the manipulated partner/family member. Once successful, the manipulative partner (usually a narcissist or a person with another cluster B personality disorder) will repeat their abusive behaviour over and over again, as they lack empathy, have no remorse, and deny taking responsibility for their own actions. 

In this episode, Ashish Parekh and I talk about toxic relationships and psychological manipulation with our guest, Sibin Varghese. We share more light on how manipulation in toxic relationships looks like,  how this type of abuse affects other areas of our lives, and what can we do if we realise that our relationship has been harming our wellbeing and mental health for a long time. 

If you have ever been in a long-term relationship or married, it is quite likely that some people around you, at one point of time or another, very willingly and enthusiastically gave you and your partner/spouse advice on how to run your relationship. These could have been parents, in-laws, siblings, members of the extended family, or even friends or co-workers. If being given "good advice" happens not too often, we can always decide whether it is something to ponder on or something that we should let in with one ear and let out with the other. However, sometimes giving "good advice" takes a very wrong turn and becomes a chronic intrusiveness that greatly disturbs or threatens the existence of your relationship/marriage in the long run.  

In this episode, Ashish Parekh and I talk about external influences and interference with relationships/marriages with our guest Prasanna Shivashankaraswamy. We learn how these influences look like in the US, Europe, and India, and discuss what to do if we become a regular recipient of "good advice" from the outside sources more often that we would like.