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.
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.
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.
Irish Independent
Irish Therapists on the Eight most Common Questions Couples ask.
Girl meets boy. They fall in love, and live happily ever after. Or so the fairy tales tell us. In reality, relationships are a lot more complicated, a lot less defined by gender or sexuality, and many of us don’t really know what we are doing due to a lack of decent sex education and realistic role models.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. For a relationship to work, we need skills around dealing with conflict, setting boundaries, and what happens when things don’t go as planned in the bedroom. To address this gap, we asked therapists in Ireland for their advice for couples experiencing some of the most common relationship issues.
Irish Examiner
How to Best Navigate Intimacy after Having Children
The demands of newborns and young children can have a dramatic effect on a couple’s sex life. Relationship experts say it takes trust and openness for parents to discover new ways of being intimate with each other. “People are unique, and everyone responds differently,” she says. “However, if you’re the one who has given birth, you may be experiencing an overhaul of your hormones as well as all sorts of physiological changes and, more often than not, desire discrepancy will arise. In heterosexual couples, it’s not unusual for men to feel rejected in this scenario and women to feel they are not understood,” says Drury. “Pressure can start to mount, and communication becomes fraught.”
Stellar Magazine
Forget what you know about Foreplay
When you hear the word foreplay, a familiar scenario probably springs to mind. Maybe your idea of heating up for sex is ten minutes of kissing and touching, maybe it’s a lengthy oral session, or maybe it’s thirty seconds of fingering (no judgement here!).
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 Times
Sex Therapy
Sex. It’s a complex experience influenced by a myriad of psychological, physical, cultural and social factors – but it is also a source of joy and pleasure. Sex offers us ways to connect with our own bodies and pleasure as well as that of our partner’s, can strengthen and deepen bonds, and helps sustain fulfilling romantic relationships. So why, when it comes to something so important, are we still so reluctant to ask for help when issues arise?
Irish Independent
The Joy of Group Sex
The group sex scene has exploded in Ireland in the past five years, with social media opening up a world of information to those looking to explore ethical non-monogamy. We talk to experts and enthusiasts about stigma, consent and what it’s really like to take part in an orgy.
iNews
Fertility Anxiety
The NHS says one in seven couples will have fertility issues, but 84% will conceive naturally within a year. Why do so many drive themselves to despair presuming it will be an impossible feat?
Millennials aren’t getting any younger and the WhatsApp baby announcements are picking up at a ferocious pace (I’ve had eight in five months). For some, these are hard-won, exhausting journeys that have finally borne fruit. For others, it has all been – well – much simpler than they feared. The NHS says that one in seven couples will have fertility issues – a number that is rising, and is undoubtedly awful for those who go through it – but 84 per cent of couples will conceive naturally within a year of regular, unprotected sex. Why then, do so many drive themselves to despair presuming it will be an impossible feat?
Catch Up with Louise McSharry
Boundaries vs Coercive Control
Our interview this week is at the end of the episode rather than the middle where it usually is because I thought it would be good to get some expert advice from a professional on boundaries, therapy speak and healthy relationships. Aoife Drury, pyschosexual and relationship psychotherapist did just that.