Cosmopolitan

Are We Into This?-Podcast

With just two days to go until Halloween, we thought we’d trick or treat you to a scary episode this week – and what’s scarier than your ex sliding in your DMs?!

Ahead of their fave season of the year, Millie and Clare are talking ghosts, ghouls, and zombie exes, and asking: Why do exes always come back to haunt you? And is it ever a good idea to resurrect them?

Aoife Drury answers questions regarding getting back with ex’s and why that might continue happening, when might it be a bad OR good decision.

Irish Independent

The One Thing I have Learned

As a sex therapist, here is the one thing I would never do in a relationship.

In this new series, we talk to a variety of professionals, to find out what one thing they believe could make a huge difference to people’s lives. This week, a psychosexual and relationship therapist shares her advice.

Discussing how sex is not just purely physical-we need to think about context.

Marie Claire

Protecting Boundaries

We’re living through something of a therapy-speak moment. Words that once frequented the therapist’s office - boundaries, triggers, attachment styles, capacity - are now part of the everyday vocabulary of friendship. With TikTok and social media offering an endless stream of opinions on how we should communicate, feel and behave, it can sometimes feel as though there’s a therapeutic diagnosis for everything.

Honestly - this is a good thing! Having the language to say this hurts me, I need something different, or this doesn’t feel healthy, is powerful. When I talk to my own mother about boundaries, she often responds with genuine awe: “Wow. I would never have thought to say that.” And she’s right. Previous generations didn’t quite have the same vocabulary for emotional needs as we do.

But what happens when the language designed to help us build healthier relationships starts to make friendship feel like something we need to constantly manage?

Cosmopolitan

Inside Couple Therapy

Once the reserve of relationship Hail Marys for decades-long spouses, in 2026 couples therapy has become practically par for the course among couples of all ages and relationships of all durations. And data proves it works, with the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy reporting that 70% of couples seeing a therapist felt it had positively impacted the relationship.

Of course, sometimes breaking up is the best thing for both people involved, and that doesn’t mean the relationship or the attempts to repair it were a failure — but when it does work, there are usually specific reasons why. “Couples therapy works best when people come with some sense of partnership and shared motivation to understand each other,” says Dr Aoife Drury, a COSRT-accredited psychosexual and relationship therapist. “Even when things feel very difficult, therapy can create a structured space to slow those patterns down and help each partner feel heard. Sometimes that leads to repair and reconnection; other times it helps couples make thoughtful decisions about their

Irish Examiner

The Importance of Consent in Intimacy

Sex in Ireland has long been a topic few of us openly discuss. Many of us remember the contentious, day-long debate on RTÉ Radio 1’s Liveline in 2020 about the explicit nature of Normal People. We can laugh about comments comparing it to “a porno movie” now, but what we may not have realised at the time is just how pioneering popular culture can be in shaping and normalising conversations about sex, intimacy, and indeed, consent. Since then, we’ve had many series  which have pushed those conversations further, but few as successfully as Bridgerton, Netflix’s hit Regency-era show known for its scandalous storylines and steamy romances.

Just Between Us Podcast

The Quiet Reason Couples Stop having Sex and how to Fix it.

If you’re in a long-term relationship, you might know that dreaded feeling of starting to feel more like housemates than partners. The love is there. The commitment is there. But the spark? The excitement, the sex drive, the anticipation? Somewhere between work stress, kids, tiredness and Netflix, it can quietly drift off.

This week on Just Between Us, Jennifer is joined by psychosexual and relationship therapist Aoife Drury to unpack what really happens beyond the honeymoon phase. They talk about why desire changes, how intimacy gets lost in the noise of everyday life, and why so many couples struggle to even begin the conversation when sex starts to feel different.

Aoife explains why intimacy is about much more than what happens in the bedroom, how digital distraction affects connection, and why foreplay can sometimes become a loaded, pressurised word instead of something playful and enjoyable. They also explore the common dynamic of one partner becoming the pursuer and the other the distancer, and why that can leave couples stuck in a cycle of pressure, avoidance and hurt.

The episode also gets into feeling “touched out,” love languages, how to start difficult conversations without blame, and why sexual problems are rarely just one person’s issue to fix. From hand-holding and back rubs to date nights, breathwork and yes, even scheduling sex, this is a grounded, reassuring conversation about rebuilding intimacy in real life.

RTE Radio

Bird Theory

“Bird Theory” is a simplified relationship idea circulating on social media. The premise is that when someone points out something small and neutral , like a bird, their partner’s response supposedly reveals the health of the relationship.
If the partner engages, it’s framed as emotional attunement; if they don’t, it’s often interpreted online as emotional neglect or a red flag.

This is discussed on the Laura Fox show.

Irish Examiner

Dating Burnout

Much has changed in the dating scene in recent years. It’s a different beast now, for a few reasons.

Firstly, we are no longer living in a time where a potential suitor might amble up to you in a function room and ask you for a dance. We have even moved beyond the era of people approaching one another in bars, cafes or other social spots. Secondly, we are living in a post-lockdown era, with even fewer real-life dating rules in place. Thirdly, the dating scene exists in a world where the internet is relied on more than ever before. Dating apps and ‘sliding into DMs’ are a normal way to ignite a potential relationship, but the internet is also where many people’s expectations of love are shaped, whether that be from couples’ social media accounts, porn, AI deepfakes, or certain extreme agitators.

Irish Examiner

Tweaks to Improve your Life

Experts share some tiny tweaks that can be made in order to improve your life. This includes relationship and sex tips that will help make life easier.

Irish Independent

Tips to Improve your Life from Experts.

You don’t need to fork out a fortune to make positive impacts to your life. We asked the experts, from health to finance, psychology and beauty, for free and effective methods. For many of us, January signals the beginning of a new you, and that often means investing in the tools to achieve your ambitious resolutions, from costly gym memberships and swanky kitchen gadgets to shiny new storage bins and elaborate skincare regimes. There are, however, plenty of actions you can take that won’t cost a thing but can benefit you in all kinds of ways, whether it’s improving your diet, fitness, money management, productivity or mental wellbeing.

Irish Examiner

Can A Sexless Relationship Last?

Sexless relationships appear to be a preoccupation: we type the words into Google 21,000 times a month. Finding accurate statistics is difficult, because of people’s reluctance to be frank about being in a sexless relationship. Even the standard therapeutic definition — sex 10 times a year or less — is problematic.

Children, work, stress, age, and incompatible libidos can put an end to the sex lives of long-term couples. However, the spark can be reignited through open communication and, in some cases, psychosexual therapy

RTE

Is Social Media Impacting our Relationships?

TikTok is a cesspit for bizarrely therapised language. It’s often the creators who lack any actual counselling psychology credentials who concoct these terms in a very unscientific lab.

When I started diving into the "high value husband vs low effort boyfriend" trending videos - because I love masochism or something - an immediate sense of doom pervaded me. No wonder nobody feels like they have the energy to date anymore. It’s like Squid Game for us OG yearners.

Speaking to Dr Aoife Drury, a Dublin-based Psychosexual and Relationship Therapist, about the impact of viewing relationships of others on social media (whether they be celebrities, influencers or people you know IRL), it’s clear that the internet is fuelling a lot of the difficulties of modern dating.

Stellar Magazine

Forget What You Know About Foreplay: The Importance Of Everyday Intimacies

No matter how we get the ball rolling on a personal level, our notions about foreplay are generally the same across the board. It’s considered the precursor to sex; the prologue; the starter.

At least, this is what we’ve been taught. There’s been a discourse for some time on improving sex for women by focussing on foreplay, because we tend to ‘warm up’ to sex in a different way than men.

Irish Independent

The Allure of Threesomes

Team Hailey or Team Selena? Mr Big or Aidan? Edward or Jacob? The list goes on and on — whether in celebrity news, film or fiction, we simply can’t get enough of love triangles. These complex scenarios recur throughout history, from Greek mythology to Cleopatra’s relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony to King Henry VIII’s fatal love triangles, and even the biblical story of Jacob and the sisters Leah and Rachel.

The romantic tug-of-war has a timeless appeal that we revisit again and again, whether in the plays of Shakespeare, the novels of Jane Austen or in modern cinema. This week sees another addition to the canon with the release of new romcom Materialists, about a New York City matchmaker played by Dakota Johnson, who is torn between a wealthy client (Pedro Pascal) and her broke ex-boyfriend (Chris Evans).

The Sunday Independent

100 Ways to Improve your Life for Free

For many of us, January signals the beginning of a new you, and that often means investing in the tools to achieve your ambitious resolutions, from costly gym memberships and swanky kitchen gadgets to shiny new storage bins and elaborate skincare regimes. There are, however, plenty of actions you can take that won’t cost a thing but can benefit you in all kinds of ways, whether it’s improving your diet, fitness, money management, productivity or mental wellbeing. We’ve rounded up the experts to share 100 ways to change your life without spending any money.

The Telegraph

How to Have Great Sex

As we get older, any number of things – from illness to medication, body confidence, relationship worries and family dynamics – can impact our sex lives. Here is some insight from ‘experts’ that may help you learn how to navigate these experiences.

Irish Examiner

Tweaks to Improve your Daily Life

Simple tips to help create a new way of engaging in your life. Experts weigh in.

Introduce something new into the bedroom

Bring a toy into your sex life, one that you and your partner feel comfortable using. It could be as simple as massage oil, a vibrator, or a blindfold.  (Aoife Drury, psychosexual and relationship therapist)

Cosmopolitan Magazine

The Young couples who (happily!) Sleep in Separate Beds

Not to state the obvious, but moving in with a partner is a big deal. As well as having to see them all the time, you also become privy to things you wish you’d never known, like their idiosyncratic – aka gross – bathroom habits or the fact they don’t ‘notice’ when the bins need taking out (it’s called weaponised incompetence!). But it’s also a big deal because you suddenly lose the safe haven that’s been around for your whole life: your bedroom.

Stylist

Talking about Fertility Struggles

Whether it’s panicking about an irregular cycle, queuing up for an emergency morning after pill or actively beginning to try for a baby, at some point, most of us will be confronted with our reproductive health status. ‘Reproductive health’ covers everything from STIs and sexual satisfaction to hormonal imbalances and fertility. But while it’s standard decency to tell a partner if you’ve got a sexually transmitted disease, we don’t really have a disclosure framework when it comes to things like endometriosis or polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).

Irish Independent

The Pressure Trying to get Pregnant can have on Relationships

The journey towards becoming pregnant is far from smooth for some couples and when it takes a long time, the strain on the relationship can be immense, but there is hope. Kirsty spoke to professionals and those struggling alike.