Revealed: The 2 compliments you should NEVER say to your partner
However, if you want a happy relationship, there are two phrases you should steer clear of.
At a surface level, these phrases sound fairly harmless.
But, they may unintentionally serve to 'instruct' rather than 'affirm', an expert has warned.
Dr Mark Travers, an American psychologist with degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder, said people probably say them without realising the potential negative consequences.
'Compliments can be disarming. They make us feel chosen and understood in ways that other words rarely do,' he explained.
'But sometimes, the praise that feels the most flattering is also the praise that teaches us to edit ourselves.'
So, are you guilty of saying either compliment to your partner?
'HOW ARE YOU ALWAYS SO CALM?'
'This is a praise that can be used to reward emotional silence, not emotional strength,' Dr Travers wrote on Psychology Today.
He explained that while it might sound like a genuine compliment at first, it may be a reflection of how relieved you are that your partner did not have an emotional reaction.
As a result, a person could feel 'implicitly incentivised to perform that calmness' even when they are hurting, he said.
'When emotional suppression is praised in adult relationships, it reinforces the message that your worth lies in being agreeable and low-maintenance,' he said.
It could mean your partner may try to appear calm, even in moments of deep hurt, because that role has previously been rewarded, he added.
'YOU'RE THE ONLY PERSON I CAN TALK TO'
Saying this to your partner can make them feel responsible for your emotional regulation, Dr Travers warned.
While it may seem like the highest form of trust, it can be 'less about connection and more about emotional dependency'.
He referenced a previous study on 'emotionships' that found people experience better mental health when they turn to different individuals for different emotional needs.
For example, having one friend who can calm your anxiety while another friend is who you turn to if you need a vent.
'This diversity in emotional support leads to greater wellbeing, because no single relationship is overloaded with the task of holding it all,' Dr Travers said.
If you tell someone they're the only person you can talk to, it creates an 'unspoken pressure to be endlessly available' and a sense of 'emotional obligation', he added.
Dr Travers previously revealed three nicknames that could indicate your relationship is doomed to fail.
These include 'Babe', 'Sweetheart' and 'Angel', and can act as 'emotional wallpaper' for deeper issues.
Pet names can simulate intimacy before it's truly earned, can dismiss someone's worries rather than dealing with them, and deflect the real issue rather than resolve it.
WHEN YOU SHOULD BREAK UP WITH YOUR PARTNER
Kale Monk, assistant professor of human development and family science at University of Missouri says on-off relationships are associated with higher rates of abuse, poorer communication and lower levels of commitment.
People in these kinds of relationships should make informed decisions about either staying together once and for all or terminating their relationship.
Here are his top five tips to work out whether it's the right time to end your relationship –
1. When considering rekindling a relationship that ended or avoiding future breakups, partners should think about the reasons they broke up to determine if there are consistent or persistent issues impacting the relationship.
2. Having explicit conversations about issues that have led to break ups can be helpful, especially if the issues will likely reoccur. If there was ever violence in the relationship, however, or if having a conversation about relationship issues can lead to safety concerns, consider seeking support-services when it is safe to do so.
3. Similar to thinking about the reasons the relationship ended, spend time thinking about the reasons why reconciliation might be an option. Is the reason rooted in commitment and positive feelings, or more about obligations and convenience? The latter reasons are more likely to lead down a path of continual distress.
4. Remember that it is okay to end a toxic relationship. For example, if your relationship is beyond repair, do not feel guilty leaving for your mental or physical well-being.
5. Couples therapy or relationship counselling is not just for partners on the brink of divorce. Even happy dating and married couples can benefit from 'relationship check-ups' in order to strengthen the connection between partners and have additional support in approaching relationship transitions.
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The Guardian
9 minutes ago
- The Guardian
My daughter's health was a mystery. The answer was on the other side of the world
Right after my daughter, Maggie, was born in 2012, she held her hands clasped together against her chest. 'Like she's praying!' a nurse said in a singsong voice. But when the pediatrician walked in, the mood changed. 'Praying?' she asked, her voice tight. The nurse and I stepped back while the pediatrician gently moved Maggie's limbs, testing how much they could straighten or bend. While some tightness in the hips or knees can be normal for a newborn, Maggie's joints were unusually tight and her limbs could not straighten all the way. The pediatrician pointed out the rounded soles of Maggie's feet. 'A handful of genetic conditions can cause the shape of her feet. Most of them are fatal,' she said. I stared at her, unable to process the word 'fatal' in connection to the brand new, six pound person I'd brought into this world. Over the next seven days, I rarely slept. The children's hospital put me up in a Ronald McDonald house a mile away from the NICU, where Maggie had been transferred. Every three hours, I walked to the NICU to breastfeed and pump. I was anxious and scared, signing off on procedures and tests, and answering dozens of questions about my pregnancy, diet, lifestyle, and family history. By the time Maggie left the hospital, she'd been seen by neurology, genetics, internal medicine and orthopedics. Then the results came: she'd tested negative for the scary fatal conditions. The relief floored me. But she also tested negative for every other known diagnosis. 'Why are her joints stiff?' I asked her last doctor right before discharge. He shrugged and said, 'We can only get to know her as an individual. Sometimes it is not a bad thing to see how unique each person really is.' I agreed that accepting my daughter's differences was essential. But I worried that the physicians had missed something. For the next two months, I sat in front of the computer, flipping through Maggie's fifty-page medical chart and searching terms like 'multiple joint contractures,' 'vertical talus,' 'high arched palate' and 'micrognathia'. Eventually, I discovered pictures of children with similar limbs in medical journals and studies about arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, or AMC – an umbrella diagnosis describing infants born with multiple contracted joints. I showed Maggie's new pediatrician screenshots. The condition was incredibly rare, he said; in his 30-year career, he'd met only three babies who looked like my daughter, all during his time as a military physician overseas. He referred us to the closest specialty clinic, which was five states away in Philadelphia. 'She has a community. You just haven't met them yet,' he said. I knew the trip would be daunting with an infant and Maggie's two-year-old sibling in tow. But for the first time, I had some answers and knew where to look for more. Six months later, Maggie and I arrived for her first appointment at the clinic. We saw five specialists, which took nine hours. Some mysteries were solved. I learned the term for her feet: 'rocker bottom,' the soles curving like the bottoms of cartoon boats. Surgery could guide them to grow flatter and arched, so she could learn to bear weight and eventually walk. Since birth, Maggie's elbows had loosened, but her knees still didn't flex all the way. We would need to take annual weeks-long trips to Philadelphia so the doctors could slowly stretch Maggie's ankles and knees, wrap them in casts, saw off the casts a week later, stretch a little farther, and cast again. Still, we had no diagnosis. 'What caused all this?' I asked the doctors. I was afraid to voice my other questions: Will she walk or talk? How different will she be from her sibling? What decisions will I have to make? How will I know what is right? In the United States, parents of the one in 6 children with developmental delays ask such questions every day. For the approximately fifteen million children who have received a rare diagnosis, defined as one that affects fewer than 200,000 people, the future is unknowable. Some diagnoses, like Maggie's, are so rare that they aren't seen as profitable subjects for research funding. People with these 'orphan conditions' have to rely on themselves, their families, and grassroots endeavors to fund and discover treatments. Navigating the maze of anxiety and 'what ifs' felt relentless. Then I joined a Facebook group dedicated to the AMC specialist clinic we had visited, where parents shared pictures of their children, diagnoses, concerns, treatments, and contact information for specialists. I introduced myself and posted pictures of Maggie. Immediately, Alyssa Wolfe, a mother and nurse, messaged me. She pointed out that her daughter, Delaney, had the same rocker bottom feet as Maggie, a rarity in the group. Our daughters both had one middle finger stuck flexed at the joint, and similar faces: a small chin, and a broad nose bridge that makes their eyes look farther apart than most babies. Delaney was three years older than Maggie. For years, I tracked Alyssa and Delaney's progress through treatments, surgeries, and diagnoses. Having another parent to talk to about major decisions was a huge relief. Maureen Donohoe, a physical therapist, was also in the group, as she worked with many children with arthrogryposis. She had been gathering stories from patients like Maggie and Delaney because they 'were different from the others with AMC, but they had so many of the same characteristics, it was impossible to ignore', she said. Alyssa had met Maureen at an arthrogryposis conference before I joined the group. 'In an elevator, Maureen approached me, listing off Delaney's attributes. I asked her if she somehow read my child's medical chart. Maureen told me, 'No,' but she'd been hypothesizing with a geneticist about a syndrome, and she thought Delaney had it,' Alyssa said. After coming across six patients with these characteristics, Maureen had told Dr Judith Hall, a clinical geneticist and pediatrician, this might be a genetic anomaly worth studying. 'After Dr Hall looked at her own notes, she called me and said, 'I have ten,'' she said. Connecting with Alyssa and Maureen was the first major step in identifying Maggie's condition. But what was the next step? As Maggie grew, her development continued to be markedly different from that of other kids her age. By the time she was three, she could scoot but not yet crawl. Most kids her age with AMC had been mobile for at least a year. But one day, in physical therapy, she suddenly stood with the help of a toy shopping cart. Then she learned to use a walker. Over the years Maureen noticed a similar trend with kids like Maggie. 'They do their best weight-bearing and walking around preschool age,' she said. 'When they get older, they seem to have a harder time maintaining a center of gravity.' Sign up to Well Actually Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life after newsletter promotion There was another big difference. Maggie was talking constantly, but her sounds were disorganized. Nobody could understand her. Most children with AMC alone had no speech problems at all. It was hard to find resources, but our speech therapist helped us get an iPad program that Maggie could use to talk. She'd press a button on a grid of images and common words, and the iPad would say the word. Her first sentence blew me away. Maggie was sitting at the dining room table eating breakfast while I washed dishes. 'I need money,' her talker said in a mechanized child's voice. I paused, holding a bowl. Maggie pressed the 'talk' button again, and the sentence repeated. She pointed at my purse and threw her head back, guffawing. She'd made a joke. I said, 'You need money!' over and over, laughing, nearly sobbing, dripping soapy water everywhere. Within a year, Maggie was using her talker to ask for snacks and toys, to complain, to tell her new baby brother, 'You're cute!' At school, Maggie verbally repeated every word she or her friends pressed. By the end of the school year, the talker was gathering dust in our coat closet. Maggie's limitations and sudden moments of progress surprised even the doctors who specialized in arthrogryposis. At every turn, I wanted to celebrate her success, but the gap widened between her and the other kids with the condition. Isolating a genetic anomaly is a 'diagnostic odyssey' that many families embark on, said Dr Michael Bamshad, head of genetic medicine in pediatrics at the University of Washington. 'There's all this data that sits locked away in medical records. A physician in one state may know of three similar cases, a physician in another state may know about five,' said Bamshad, 'but there aren't many ways for those families to find each other.' Bamshad, his colleague Jessica X Chong, and their colleagues have researched the power of social media in genetic discovery. They launched a secure, free genetic information sharing site, MyGene2, in 2016. 'Families and clinicians can share their genetic information to help them find answers,' said Chong. Alyssa and I input our daughters' data and hoped for more information. But the waiting game was long, and we felt powerless. Alyssa recently described it to me as a three-part process: 'In the beginning, parents are typically very active on social media, trying to understand their kid and hoping to give them as normal of a life as possible,' she said. Then, 'sometime in elementary or middle school, their development stalls' and the focus shifts from 'fixing' the issue to maintenance through puberty. This can all be 'very isolating', she said. 'Parents with typically developing kids often stop hanging out with you.' But 'an acceptance stage' can come via social media groups like ours, which are 'sometimes the only place to find connection and friends who understand'. In 2017, Catherine Paul-Fijten, a mother and molecular biologist who lives in Dubai, used Facebook groups to connect with parents whose kids resembled her daughter, Milou. I didn't know about Milou yet, but she had the same physical traits as Maggie, who was five by then. Milou's doctors had located a difference on the ZC4H2 gene shortly after birth, and Catherine organized a meeting of doctors and geneticists – including Maureen and Dr Bamshad – to review the current, albeit limited, research. Maureen sat next to Bamshad, scrolling through pictures of Maggie, Delaney, and other children with rocker bottom feet and tiny chins. Bamshad suggested that we both report our daughter's symptoms on MyGene2 and apply for testing. Within a year, the diagnosis was confirmed: Maggie also had an anomaly of the ZC4H2 gene. At the time, fewer than 50 people with a similar genetic difference had ever been identified. Catherine used personal resources to start a foundation to research the impacts of this new genetic diagnosis, updating a new, dedicated Facebook group regularly with insights. The diagnosis gave us a sense of belonging through the shared goal of understanding our kids and learning how to help them grow. The dramatic impact of online support groups for children with rare diagnoses has been well documented for more than twenty years. Online information sharing among parents has been found to strengthen treatment and mental health support for families and children with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), neurologic disorders, and other rare genetic disorders as well as more common diagnoses like diabetes and childhood cancers. While the ZC4H2 gene difference is rare, research into rare conditions is crucial – 'not just for the people who have that diagnosis – but for humanity as a whole', Catherine said. That's because 'much of what we know about the function of the human genome comes from understanding the genetic basis of rare diseases', said Bamshad, citing examples including common heart conditions and vaccine research. 'What we've learned about rare diseases helps us understand the genetic and molecular basis of common conditions as well.' The ZC4H2 group has nearly 200 members, though nearly 250 people with this condition have now been identified globally. Because of their stories, I was prepared. In 2023, at the beginning of sixth grade, Maggie suddenly presented with severe scoliosis, and I knew she'd likely need a full spinal fusion because I'd heard about related complications from our ZC4H2 community. I shared this information with Maggie's spinal surgeon, as well as a list of other surgeons who'd had to manage these complications, and she formed a pre-emptive plan. During Maggie's spinal surgery, I let myself get lost in the labyrinthian halls of the hospital for hours, cell phone in one hand, operating room pager in the other. As with her previous 10-plus surgeries, I didn't allow myself to imagine what was happening or what could go wrong. As I stood in the hallway, I scrolled through encouraging comments and messages from Alyssa, Catherine and others. Despite our different jobs, family culture and background, we'd collaborated with doctors, scientists, physical and speech therapists – and each other – for more than a decade. Their support didn't guarantee a perfect future for my daughter, but their generosity was a profound gift. The operating room pager went off. My phone rang. The charge nurse told me my daughter was waking up, that surgery had been a breeze. I rushed to the recovery room, tapping the app to share the news while I waited for Maggie to be wheeled in. At the top of the feed, a new member had posted about her child's fresh diagnosis, her questions, her fears. I abandoned my own update to type the words that changed the course of my life and Maggie's childhood: Welcome! You are not alone. Asha Dore is a journalist, illustrator, and speech-language therapist.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Tourist hotspot named the ‘epicenter' of parasitic brain disease
Tourists visiting Hawaii are being warned the popular holiday destination has become the 'epicenter' of rat lungworm disease, a serious parasitic illness. Neuroangiostrongyliasis is contracted by consuming raw snails, slugs, or contaminated raw vegetables like kale and potatoes. Symptoms range from flu-like illness to severe, long-term neurological problems and disabilities, with diagnosis often difficult and requiring a spinal tap. Experts advise cooking all food thoroughly and meticulously washing and drying fresh produce to prevent infection, especially given the lack of awareness among visitors. While 80 laboratory-confirmed cases occurred between 2014 and 2023, the disease is largely underdiagnosed.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
I put my daughter on fat jabs aged 11 - it wasn't a difficult decision at all and saved her from the bullies
A woman who put her daughter on weight-loss jabs at the age of 11 has shared her family's experience with the medication. Ashley Hamilton appeared on Monday's instalment of This Morning and revealed to Dermot O'Leary and Alison Hammond via video call from Idaho, America about why her young daughter is on the medication. Both Ashley and her daughter Sophia have taken weight loss jabs to help them with their health. The young girl opened up about her personal experience with her weight and bullying at school that led her to approach her mum for help. She said: 'The bullying was definitely not ideal at all, it was just very hard to deal with because I used to think I was pretty and now I can't look at myself in the mirror without hating myself.' Dermot asked: 'Ashley it's important to stress here because people can probably see a headline, you have always instilled exercise, you've always instilled a good diet and it was just very, very difficult to keep the weight off. The young girl opened up about her personal experience with her weight and bullying at school that led her to approach her mum for help 'How hard was it for you to make that decision for Sophia to take the weight loss jabs?' Ashley admitted it 'wasn't hard at all'. She added: 'When she came to me and asked if this would work for her I told her yes, but we have to get your blood work done and your labs done to make sure there is an underlying problem, because if there was nothing showing right then that is something that we would've said, 'Okay, this is diet and exercise type of thing'. 'But it wasn't hard at all for me to decide that.' The mother shared how she had done research on the medications and went on: 'I knew that if she needed it this is what we were going to do'. When Sophia began to take the jabs, she soon noticed her mum had to remind her 'constantly' to eat. 'And then I started to lose weight and then I started to realise I actually had a lot of inflammation in my face and arms and in my hands... now I can wear normal sizes for my age,' she added. Alison asked Ashley if she had received any backlash for her decision take weight loss injections herself. She admitted: 'A lot of people deal with backlash on social media from people but for me it's actually been more in my real life, dealing with people who I can tell are judging me but it doesn't bother me it's a way for me to educate more people on what the reason is that I started.' Sophia is no longer on the injections and during the conversation, This Morning's resident GP Dr Zoe Williams shared her take. 'The thing to consider, Sophia's a perfect example of this, Sophie already had insulin resistance and her blood work was showing that she had pre-diabetes,' Dr Zoe said. 'What you always have to consider is the risks and potential risks of a medication but weigh that against the risks and potential risks of doing nothing, when you've tried all the sensible things, the exercise, the changes to eating, the psychological approach, for some people like Sophia and her mum it's a genetic thing. 'Your genes predispose you to having problems with your weight..' She added: 'In Sophia's case it seems it's been really helpful for her.'
