Relationships
The latest from Relationships on Lifestyle Desires.
When every conversation starts to sound like therapy
Therapist-speak now shapes dating, friendship and work, but the cleaner the language gets, the harder ordinary honesty can be to hear.
Why the sex-rut conversation sounds so familiar now
Sex rut in marriage has become shorthand for burnout, mental load and the ache of not feeling wanted in long relationships.
Why Esther Perel still feels like a provocation
Esther Perel in 2026 still speaks to the part of modern relationships that dating apps, therapy-speak and tidy advice keep sanding flat.
What solo-maxxing says about the price of being coupled
Solo-maxxing is turning dating costs into a relationships question, with $200 date nights making single life feel less like failure.
What young Australians are asking sex ed to finally admit
Sex education in Australia still leaves teens learning consent, red flags and real intimacy from group chats instead of adults.
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Dating in white spaces can cost more than love
Dating in white spaces can make Black women pay in scrutiny, translation work and the exhaustion of being read as an experiment.
What free petrol says about dating now
Dating costs in 2026 now stretch from petrol to the dinner bill, turning romance into a budget decision before anyone even leaves home.
The bill comes due when you become the cycle-breaker
Cycle-breaker family trauma asks more than bravery: it can cost closeness, certainty and the old comfort of pretending nothing happened.
When privacy became the hot thing on dating apps
Dating app privacy is becoming part of the flirt. After years of screenshots, ads and data creep, discretion now reads as a kind of intimacy.
The relationship script now arrives by feed
Online relationships are being shaped years before a first date, as young Australians learn consent, intimacy and coercion from feeds, porn and peers.
The boyfriend application is funny until it isn't
Boyfriend application humour is exposing a dating app safety gap, with 264 responses showing how much unpaid screening women still do.
The dating app wants to play therapist now
AI dating apps are ditching the swipe and asking for more intimacy, more data and more trust than many burnt-out singles seem ready to give.
What a mortgage does to the men you date
Single women buying homes are outpacing solo men, and the dating fallout says more about old gender scripts than property prices.
What a mortgage reveals on a date
Single women homebuyers are outpacing solo men, and the uneasy dating reaction says a lot about money, independence and the script many men still expect.
The first-date bill keeps auditioning everyone
Who pays on a first date still carries more than dinner maths. In Australian dating, the bill signals effort, interest and old scripts.
When money stress stops being about money
Money stress in relationships can sound like an argument about groceries or rent, but the fight is often about fear, power and being heard.
When the first holiday starts to grade you
The so-called turbulence test turns a romantic getaway into an accelerated audit of money, planning and how two people behave when the wheels come off.
Disabled desire still gets treated like breaking news
A fresh ABC feature lands on an old Australian discomfort: disabled people are still asked to defend the most ordinary parts of adult intimacy.
The least interesting question about long-distance love
Distance does not reveal whether a relationship is real. It reveals who can absorb the cost, the waiting and the emotional admin of wanting a life in two places at once.
When friendship starts to outrank dating
For more women, especially in midlife, friendship is no longer romance's support act. It is the relationship carrying the emotional weight dating often refuses to share.
What is 'chalance'? The dating trend becoming a non-negotiable for singles
The word started on TikTok and hit the mainstream when Hinge searches for 'chalant' surged 217%. But chalance is more than a buzzword — it's a collective rejection of situationship culture in favour of clarity, effort, and saying what you mean.
What an Adelaide preschool worker reminded me about waiting
A 34-year-old Vietnamese single mother in Adelaide spent three years on dating apps before finding the partner she'd hoped for. The kind of dating story we never run, and the part I can't stop reading is the timeline.
I tried eleven dating apps. Here is what each one is for
Eleven apps tested over the year, including a regretted return to Tinder over Easter. Hinge, Bumble, Feeld, OkCupid, eHarmony, Coffee Meets Bagel, Happn, Thursday, Raya, Bristlr — what each is actually for, and why being on the wrong one is most of the fatigue.
Storybooking, and what Bumble got right about Australian dating
More than 80 per cent of single Australian women say they want more romance. They are not asking for grand gestures — they are asking for adult logistics. A columnist on the storybooking trend, what Bumble got right, and why women got bored before they got demanding.
Why Single Australians In Their Thirties Are Done Apologising
Dee Salmin's new book, a viral Bridget Jones essay and a cultural recalibration around solo living: how being single past thirty stopped being a problem to fix and started looking like a choice worth making.
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