Not all your relationships are supposed to last. Some are built to be temporary, and that's not a failure of the friendship, it is actually the design. I first came up with this idea on our long walks in Norwich, UK, during my PhD, talking with a fellow PhD friend, Jennie Robinson. I call it the Onion Theory. It is a working theory, not a finished one. I am sharing it half-formed because I think it is worth developing further. Picture your social world as an onion. Every laye

Loneliness has become one of the most talked-about topics in psychology and public health, yet it remains deeply misunderstood. Is loneliness simply the same as being alone? Does loneliness look different at 20 than it does at 70, or is the experience more universal than we think? And at what point does a normal human experience become something more concerning? In this edition of Conversations on Psychology, I spoke with Dr Eric Schoenmakers, a loneliness researcher whose wo

What Makes Us Open to Others, or Keep Our Distance? As human beings, we are wired for connection. When two people meet, something more than a simple interaction can happen. There is the possibility of change. As Carl Jung wrote: “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed". You meet someone. You talk. You spend time together. Maybe you become friends, partners, colleagues, something meaningf

We like to imagine we are rational creatures: clear-headed, practical, above all that “messy feelings” stuff. Emotions get treated like background noise. Efficiency is treated like virtue. So we learn to speak in plans and facts, even when what we are actually craving is comfort. Except… humans do not bond to efficiency. We bond to felt safety. And one of the most uncomfortable lessons in psychology, both influential and ethically controversial, came from baby monkeys who mad

The turn of the year is a cultural ritual, a collective pause where we reflect, reset, and, most importantly, hope. Some people embrace this ritual with colour-coded planners and vision boards. Others roll their eyes and mutter something accurate but incomplete like, “Nothing really changes on January 1st”. Psychological research suggests that hope is not about believing things will change, but about how the mind prepares for change. Hope is often dismissed as naive optimism,