When we communicate with someone we will be doing so on a number of levels, not just the words that we use - tone of voice and body language are also important factors in non-verbal communication.

Eye contact - is one of the most powerful means of communication after words. It can be direct or indirect, long-lasting or short and more usually intermittent when talking to someone in normal conversation. Staring or holding eye contact for too long can make people feel uncomfortable and is unsettling. Appropriate eye contact is important for effective communication.

People who like or feel comfortable with each other engage in eye contact more frequently. People who avoid eye contact are likely to be feeling uncomfortable, guilty or embarrassed.

Have you ever heard the phrase “You are what you eat”? This catchy slogan from the fitness industry reminds us that how we “spend” our calories determines our health. Want to be fat? Then eat lots of fat. Want to be healthy? Well, you get the idea.

When it comes to your marriage,”YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO.” In other words, how you and your spouse SPEND YOUR TIME determines the strength of your marriage. Spend it together and you’ll feel connected. Do your own thing too often and you might sleep in the same bed, but you’ll feel worlds apart.

At the beginning of your relationship, you probably had no trouble spending lots of time together doing just about anything. And, in fact, SHARING TIME was exactly what CREATED CLOSENESS between you. But as the years went by, you probably took up separate interests, and began to spend more and more time apart.

Parenting teenagers is full of extremes. There are great joys while parenting teenagers and also great disappointments. The teen years are a time when the child is slowly separating themselves from their parent’s tight hold and parents need to realize this.

Each child needs to gradually be weaned off the total parental control into a world of adulthood. This can be a difficult experience but also an exciting one. As a parent, one has been working to prepare his child for adulthood and now the goal is about to be achieved. A parent needs to celebrate the teenagers step towards independence while continuing to provide a safety net.  

Fear of intimacy blocks real love

Ideally, husbands and wives are best friends as well as lovers — sharing dreams, interests, fears, and hopes. But according to Stacey Oliker, a sociologist and marriage expert, obstacles such as a fear of intimacy can mean that only a small minority of couples experience genuine closeness.

He claims that marriage partners often seek to fill this gap by being more intimate with close friends than they are with their mates. Does this mean married people shouldn’t have close friends? Absolutely not. But it does mean that rather than fearing intimacy, we need to take special care to cultivate intimacy within our marriages.

Every young man or woman has a mental picture of the kind of spouse he or she would want to have in the future. And interestingly, these images are very secular in nature. Almost everybody I spoke to used words like handsome, pretty, kind, understanding, fair, dark etc. But no one used words like Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Buddhist. From this it is clear that as human beings when we are looking out for a spouse religion or faith of the person concerned does not seem so important.

Yet, in the practical world this sometimes becomes a huge issue. Let’s take the case of Shivani. She fell in love with Attaullah when she was barely eighteen years old. Her parents were absolutely against the whole idea. So, Shivani  (who did not want to disappoint her parents) decided to wait till her parents agreed.