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CNA
12-08-2025
- CNA
NEL, LRT disruptions: SBS Transit, LTA engineers to work overnight to restore power supply
Train operator SBS Transit says its engineers and those from the Land Transport Authority will be working overnight to restore power supply to the North East Line depot substation. This is after a power fault led to disruptions on Aug 12 across several stops along the North East Line, plus the entire Sengkang-Punggol LRT service. Earlier in the day, CNA's Rachel Teng and Muhammad Bahajjaj went out to three affected stations.
CNA
10-08-2025
- CNA
8 relationship lessons couples counsellors want every partner to know
Every relationship is unique – a delicate ecosystem influenced by partners' pasts, preferences and particular foibles. And yet therapists who spend their days talking to couples say they tend to see and hear the same issues come up again and again: Partners who struggle to reconnect after arguments; lose their sense of levity and play; or fall into patterns, without taking the time to understand them. We reached out to several couples therapists, with that in mind, to ask: What's one piece of advice you find yourself repeating? What's one relationship lesson you swear by? What's one truism you wish more couples understood? Here's what they told us.) 1. MANAGING YOUR DIFFERENCES IS CRUCIAL Many factors determine whether a partnership is a happy one, but the central task of a relationship is learning to manage differences, according to Anthony Chambers, a psychologist and the chief academic officer of the Family Institute at Northwestern University. Dr Chambers believes that getting good at managing differences – whether over daily annoyances, or bigger expectations, desires and communication preferences – boils down to three things: Flexibility, curiosity and humility. Flexible couples 'approach interactions not with the perspective of trying to prove that they are right and their partner is wrong, but rather with the mind set of realising there are multiple ways we can address our differences,' Dr Chambers said, adding that partners 'need to keep in mind that there is a low correlation between being right and being happy!' Couples who are good at managing their inevitable differences tend to experience higher relationship satisfaction, he said. Couples who aren't, struggle. It's not the stuff of Hallmark cards, but it is foundational. 2. BOUNCING BACK IS A SKILL Couples that argue can still be quite happy and connected if they are good at 'repair,' or reconnecting after conflict, said Lauren Fogel Mersy, a psychologist and sex therapist based in Minnesota, and co-author of Desire: An Inclusive Guide to Navigating Libido Differences In Relationships. Repair is all about processing what happened and coming back from it in healthy, effective ways, she said. Her clients often take for granted that they are good at repair, but it is actually a skill people need to learn. Partners have different ways they like to regroup after a disagreement. For instance, do you generally like to take a cool-down break? Does physical touch tend to help or make things worse? Are your apologies genuine and effective? You and your partner might not necessarily need the same repair, but talking about your preferences in calmer moments can help foster understanding when conflict inevitably arises. 3. FEELINGS > FACTS Proving that you're right might feel like a worthy and satisfying goal in the midst of a disagreement. But couples who get overly focused on facts can easily get stuck in an attack-defend pattern, said Alexandra Solomon, a psychologist in Illinois and the author of Loving Bravely. It ultimately serves the relationship more to try to get curious about what your partner is feeling and why they might be viewing a particular situation so differently from you, she said. 'When we focus on the facts, we are primed for debate, it's me versus you,' Dr Solomon explained. 'When we focus on the feelings, we're primed for dialogue.' 4. TAKING TURNS IS AN OVERLOOKED SKILL Parents and teachers spend a lot of time teaching young children how to take turns during playtime and conversation, but couples often forget that very basic skill, said Julie Menanno, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Bozeman, Montana, and the author of Secure Love. It sounds simple, but couples who neglect to take turns have a tendency to start talking over each other, Menanno said. 'Nobody's being heard. Nobody's listening. Everybody's taking the mic,' she said, adding that couples 'get stuck in whose needs matter more and who gets to hurt the most.' Every couple she works with has to learn or relearn how to take turns, Menanno said. Some basics: Look to have conversations when you're feeling calm and regulated, listen when your partner is speaking and paraphrase what you heard, asking if they want to elaborate. 5. SLIDING AND DECIDING ARE NOT THE SAME THING Galena Rhoades, a psychologist and research professor at the University of Denver and co-author of Fighting For Your Marriage, often reminds couples that there is a big difference between passively 'sliding' into circumstances – everything from how often you have sex to where you want to live – and proactively deciding what is right for the relationship. Dr Rhoades has found that understanding the difference can be empowering to couples – a reminder that they can be more deliberate about issues big and small, even if they have been doing things a certain way for years. 'You don't have to stay on that kind of coasting trajectory where you're just sliding through things together,' she said. 'You can change your approach and be more intentional.' 6. HAPPY COUPLES NEVER STOP PLAYING TOGETHER Play and laughter can soothe the nervous system, helping you cope with stress and bring your best self to the relationship. Those activities can sometimes fizzle out over time between couples, said Stephen Mitchell, a psychotherapist in Denver and co-author of Too Tired To Fight. 'People underestimate the power of humour in terms of helping couples feel connected and helping them work through challenging moments,' Dr Mitchell said. He often urges his clients to look diligently for opportunities to have fun together. Small things can suffice: Send a silly text, cultivate inside jokes or plan a surprise date. 7. YOU PROBABLY ALREADY KNOW WHAT TO DO If you can get in touch with your genuine wants and needs, you may find the keys to improving your relationship, though it can take real courage to act on them. Jeff Guenther, a licensed professional counsellorin Portland, Oregon, who runs the popular social media account Therapy Jeff, said that sometimes his job as a therapist is simply to reassure people searching for answers in a relationship that they already know the solution. 'You know if it's working or it's not working,' he said. 'You know what conversations you've been avoiding. You know what you're settling for.' It can help to ask yourself something like: If my best friend or son or daughter was in the situation I'm in now, what advice would I give? (Sometimes, he said, the answer might be: See a couples therapist.) 8. WORKING ON YOUR OWN STRESS IS A BOON FOR YOUR PARTNER Going through a rocky stretch in your relationship likely adds stress to your life. But consider the flip side – if you're not managing the stress in your life, it is likely spilling over into your relationship. Elizabeth Earnshaw, a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Philadelphia and the author of the book 'Til Stress Do Us Part, said that when partners don't work to mitigate their own stress, it can cause a relationship disconnect. You become irritable, withdrawn, short with each other. That can lead to more arguments or cause you each to retreat, creating greater emotional distance. Earnshaw teaches couples a system she calls the stress spillover system. Together, they make a list of stressors, then put them into three baskets: Those they can shed (stressors they can and likely should eliminate), those they can prevent (usually with more planning) and those they can neither avoid nor plan for better, and therefore simply must adapt to. 'When people are mismanaging their stress they are also more likely to become 'self focused,' which means they will think of their own needs and agenda more than their partner's,' she said.
CNA
09-08-2025
- CNA
Emotional toll of 'mankeeping': Why women feel strained as men's social circles shrink
Justin Lioi is a licensed clinical social worker in Brooklyn who specialises in therapy for men. When he sees a new client, one of the first things he asks is: Who can you talk to about what's going on in your life? Much of the time, Lioi said, his straight male clients tell him that they rarely open up to anyone but their girlfriends or wives. Their partners have become their unofficial therapists, he said, 'doing all the emotional labour.' That particular role now has a name: 'Mankeeping.' The term, coined by Angelica Puzio Ferrara, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has taken off online. It describes the work women do to meet the social and emotional needs of the men in their lives, from supporting their partners through daily challenges and inner turmoil, to encouraging them to meet up with their friends. 'What I have been seeing in my research is how women have been asked or expected to take on more work to be a central – if not the central – piece of a man's social support system,' Ferrara said, taking care to note that the dynamic isn't experienced by all couples. The concept has taken on a bit of a life of its own, with some articles going so far as to claim that mankeeping has 'ruined' dating and driven women to celibacy. We talked to Ferrara and other experts about what mankeeping is and isn't, and how to tell if it has seeped into your relationship. MANKEEPING ISN'T JUST EMOTIONAL INTIMACY Ferrara, who researches male friendship at Stanford's Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and Dylan Vergara, a research assistant, published a paper on mankeeping in 2024, after investigating why some men struggle to form close bonds – a growing and well-documented issue. In a 2021 survey, 15 per cent of men said they didn't have any close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990. The same report showed that in 1990, nearly half of young men said they would reach out to friends when facing a personal issue; two decades later, just over 20 percent said the same. Ferrara found that 'women tended to have all of these nodes of support they were going to for problems, whereas men were more likely to be going to just them,' she said. She sees 'mankeeping' as an important extension of the concept of 'kinkeeping' – the work of keeping families together that researchers have found tends to fall disproportionately on women. Eve Tilley-Colson, 37, was relieved to stumble upon the concept of 'mankeeping' on social media. Tilley-Colson, who lives in Los Angeles, is happy in her relationship with her boyfriend of nearly seven months, and described him as emotionally mature, funny and caring. They make a good team, but Tilley-Colson finds herself offering him a fair amount of social and emotional scaffolding, she said. They're both busy attorneys, but she tends to take charge of their social plans. Tilley-Colson has hung out with her boyfriend's close friends a handful of times; he hangs out with hers several times a week. Her role as the de facto social director of the relationship includes more serious concerns, too. 'When are we going to meet each other's parents? When are we going to go on our first vacation together?' she said. 'And if all of that onus is on me to kind of plan, then I also feel all of the responsibility if something goes wrong.' 'Mankeeping' put a word to her feelings of imbalance. 'I feel responsible for bringing the light to the relationship,' she said. Her partner, Glenn, 37, who agreed to speak to The New York Times but asked to use his first name only, said his gut reaction when his girlfriend first described mankeeping to him was that it seemed consistent with what he'd seen play out in many heterosexual relationships. He wondered, 'Okay, but is that bad?' 'We're in a moment where more women are speaking up about how drained they are by this dynamic,' said Justin Pere, who runs a therapy practice in Seattle that focuses on relationships and men's issues. Tilley-Colson, who is also a content creator, even made a post on TikTok about it. MALE SOCIAL DISCONNECTION IS A LARGER PROBLEM Rather than viewing 'mankeeping' as an internet-approved bit of therapy-speak used to dump on straight men, experts said they see it as a term that can help sound the alarm about the need for men to invest emotionally in friendships. 'The reality is, no one person can meet all of another's emotional needs,' said Tracy Dalgleish, a psychologist and couples therapist based in Ottawa. 'Men need those outlets as well. Men need social connection. Men need to be vulnerable with other men.' Pere said finding additional sources for emotional support does not require going from 'zero to 60,' adding that deepening friendships 'can happen in these smaller steps that are more manageable.' He might encourage a client to share something new about himself with a friend he already has, for instance. Or invite a friend he normally sees in only one context to do something new (a friendship-building concept sometimes referred to as 'repotting '). If his male clients are reluctant to put themselves out there in that way, he tells them that developing relationships is not about replacing their romantic relationship, but strengthening it by 'widening the emotional foundation underneath your life by investing in friendships.' But some of the challenges men face in making strong connections are societal, said Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, a think tank, and author of Of Boys And Men. Many of the institutions and spaces where men used to organically make friends have eroded, he said, like houses of worship, civic groups and even the simple workplace. 'Men used to be able to put themselves in these institutional settings and it kind of happened around them,' he added. 'That's just not happening so much anymore. Men do have to do more, be more assertive. I'm finding that even in my own life.' For Tilley-Colson and Glenn, talking about mankeeping explicitly has helped ease her burden. Glenn admitted that partly he thought his girlfriend just liked taking the reins socially. But when she explained how it felt to act as the default emotional manager in the relationship, he began to see how things could feel lopsided, he said. 'I've put more effort in to try and even things out,' he said.
