Relationships & Society
Why classroom performance does not capture every kind of practical ability
There's a particular word that gets stapled to certain kids early and never fully peels off.
Relationships & Society
My dad has no close friends, and I’ve stopped trying to fix it because I finally…
My father is getting older and he has no close friends.
Relationships & Society
Why some older adults feel less visible in ageist cultures
I first watched my mother disappear at a dinner party about three years ago.
Relationships & Society
Thought by Hannah Arendt: “Loneliness is not solitude. Solitude requires being alone…
A packed room can be the loneliest place there is.
Relationships & Society
10 habits of grandparents who build strong bonds with their grandchildren
The bond between a grandparent and a grandchild can be one of the strongest a person ever has, and the curious part is that it rarely happens by accident.
Relationships & Society
My mother is 65 and has no close friends, and what gets me is that she used to have so…
My mum is sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold in front of her.
Relationships & Society
9 phrases that make people quietly pull away from you in conversation
Listen to any long conversation closely enough and you'll notice that certain phrases keep surfacing — small, throwaway constructions that seem harmless on the surface but quietly do a lot of work.
Relationships & Society
If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant or bar, you probably learned more about people in…
If you've ever worked in hospitality, you know things about people that most never have to learn, and you learned them fast.
Relationships & Society
I let my phone die for one entire weekend without telling anyone — and the strange thing…
I let my phone die one Friday evening and, on a whim, decided not to charge it again until Monday.
Relationships & Society
Thought of the day by Jane Fonda: “You can be really old at 60 and really young at 85.”
"You can be really old at 60 and really young at 85." She said it, as it happens, while cheerfully listing everything that had gone wrong with her body.
Relationships & Society
I was kind to everyone but kept close friendship at a safe distance
Someone at a party asks how your week has been, and you give them the warm, attentive, three-minute version that leaves them feeling like the most interesting person in the room.
Relationships & Society
There’s a particular kind of clarity that arrives in your 50s and 60s — not from…
A woman in her late fifties told me, not long ago, that she had recently noticed she did not actually dislike parties.