If you have spent your whole life dreaming of getting married while wearing an ivory princess gown paired with a lacy cathedral bridal veil, surrounded by 500 of your nearest and dearest friends, this is not the blog for you. But if you like the idea of actually having a good time on your wedding day and in the period leading up to it, read on.

When you have babies and small kids, people give you so much advice — breast-feed, bottle-feed, co-sleep, use an infant straight-jacket, get an electric swing that achieves as much noise and velocity as a rocket — that you can't even remember it all. But one thing I do remember is that everyone insisted we make time for a "date night" at regular intervals.

The first important decision a married couple makes is ... how to get married. Black tie at the Ritz? Clambake at the shore? Backyard potluck? Research shows you might be better off with a cheap - but well-attended - wedding. Scott Stanley and Galena K. Rhoades, professors and researchers for the Institute of Family Studies, report that while the cost of weddings has been rising, the number of guests has been falling.

You have problems, I have advice. This advice isn't sugar-coated - in fact, it's sugar-free, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love.

You have problems, I have advice. This advice isn't sugar-coated - in fact, it's sugar-free, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love.

We don't like to admit it, but a marriage (or any long, cohabiting relationship) looks less like an early romance and more like a business partnership. As organisational psychologist Adam Grant and his wife Allison Sweet Grant explain in Redbook, married life involves a lot of compromise and negotiation. They offer four negotiation techniques for avoiding unhappy compromises.

You've got problems, I've got advice. This advice isn't sugar-coated -- in fact, it's sugar-free, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love.

Most of us make resolutions to improve only ourselves: We vow to cut out sugar, work out three days a week, dust off the resume and start the job hunt for real. In general, resolutions tend to be very me-focused -- willpower, weight loss, self-care.

Getting married is one of the biggest life decisions you'll ever make - especially if you're determined to stick it out through thick and thin. According to relationship psychologist and author Eli Finkel, it's important to assess long-term compatibility before tying the knot. These are the questions you should be asking.

You have problems, I have advice. This advice isn't sugar-coated - in fact, it's sugar-free, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love.

Have you ever had a moment of connection with a stranger? I'm not talking about a romantic or sexual connection (though those are nice too), but more of a quick smile as you pass on the street, or a one-off joke shared while waiting in the grocery-store line, or some other brief, shared experience that made you feel that stranger was actually special and could have, in other circumstances, been a friend? I love those moments, which are few and far between, because they make me feel like the universe of potential friends is bigger than I'd thought. I've always wondered why those moments happen - why they happen with one person and not another, or at one time and not another.

A mum of two, Rachel Rabkin Peachman realised that as she holds down the metaphorical fort in her family - she's the one who books dental appointments, remembers to pack jazz shoes, and knows exactly where the snow pants are stored if anyone asks - her husband gets to be the "fun parent", the one who builds literal forts with the kids. She unpacks the disparity in her essay "Sharing the Parenting Spotlight", explaining how easily mums and dads get locked into distinct (and often gendered) parenting roles, and how unfair that is for everyone.

In long-term, cohabitative relationships, there sometimes comes a point when your first reaction to receiving a text or email from your partner transitions from sweet giddiness to WHAT NOW. Your online messaging channels turn into a running list of schedule confirmations and daily task reminders - necessary, but highly unromantic.

Video: Nearly everyone has had run-ins with infidelity at some point, whether you were the guilt-ridden cheater, the devastated cheat-ee, or the unwitting (hopefully) third party in someone else's affair. (And if none of these things has ever happened to you, well, must be nice!)

You have problems, I have advice. This advice isn't sugar-coated - in fact, it's sugar-free, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love.

Statistician Nathan Yau recently examined data from the US Census Bureau's 5-Year American Community Survey from 2015 and calculated which professions have the highest and lowest divorce rates. Want a stable marriage? Marry an actuary, a field that has a 17 per cent divorce rate. Gaming managers and bartenders have a less-terrific marital track record, however, at almost 53 per cent and 52 per cent, respectively.

Video: In the first instalment of our four-part series on infidelity, relationship and sex expert Esther Perel takes on a thorny issue: Why people in happy relationships still sometimes wind up cheating.

At first, it sounds like a huge red flag: Oh, my husband and I have each other on Find My Friends, the crazy woman says cheerfully to her friends at the bar. I use it all the time. Let's see where he is now! Well, spoiler alert, the crazy woman is me and this is one of the least clingy things I do in my whole dang life.

I've been dating a wonderful woman for the last four years and in two weeks, we will be standing in front of our family and friends to commit to each other in marriage. We're not the first couple to do this. And, like many couples today, we are bringing more than ourselves together. We have five children from previous relationships that will be joining to form a new family. While blended families are common these days, making them work can be challenging.