In any long-term relationship, there are going to be difficult conversations—the times when you feel polarized about an issue, when your partner’s point of view threatens yours, when you feel defensive, angry, or frightened of what they are bringing up or when your point of view has changed. Megan and Matt agreed in the beginning that they didn’t want kids because travel and freedom meant more to them. But one day, Matt realized he had changed his mind....

Luckily, diet and lifestyle are often to blame, which means small and consistent changes can make a big difference in the health of your stool. Here, we’ve outlined a number of strategies you can try out to help promote regularity and teach your body how to poop better and easier. “Fiber helps promote digestive regularity, which is good for the gut. Soluble fiber, in particular, helps build stool bulk, while insoluble fiber helps speed up transit time,”* explains registered dietitian and mbg Collective member Jess Cording, M....

I recently discovered one of the most powerful and admittedly terrifying learning methods for this endeavor that I’ve heard in a while. In the pages of her new dating workbook The Game of Desire, popular sexologist Shan Boodram suggests the unthinkable: Reach out to your ex and get their honest opinion of you as a lover. Here’s how it works: Boodram recommends reaching out to an ex-partner to have a sincere, honest, peaceful conversation....

But armed with the right information, pro tips, and products, you’ll be on the right track. Here, our guide for caring for curly hair. So as we dive into the nuances of how to care for curly hair, it’s important to know the fundamentals of your hair. While it’d be simpler for curls to be categorically exclusive and stagnant, most people have several patterns on their head—and they may even change depending on the environment or with time....

Hearing our parents make racist comments can be particularly upsetting, especially if you’re close to them and talk to them regularly. But the good news is, our family members are the people we’re likely to have the biggest effect on because of our close personal relationships with them. “Keep in mind the generational differences and the conditioning that was bestowed onto them. Remind yourself that you have more access to information that they may not have had access to growing up, due to the whitewashing of history books and absence of social media and internet use during their times,” she explains....

Contrary to (gendered) popular belief, it’s not true that men are always down and ready for sex. While foreplay is often seen as a crucial element for women to fully enjoy intimacy, that sort of thoughtful seduction is rarely applied to men and how their partners can also make them feel special, sexy, and wanted. No matter the genders involved, turning each other on is essential to prime intimacy with the emotional readiness needed to access deeper, feverish states of desire....

Now for the good news: Acupuncture and Chinese medicine have effectively treated anxiety for centuries due to its ability to individualize treatment and address the “Shen” (the Chinese word for “spirit”), which is a large part of the puzzle Western medicine often misses. In Chinese medicine, anxiety can be due to a number of different factors, like blood deficiency (think dizziness and anemia), stagnation in your liver or blood (think about when you’re so angry you could cry), or a deficiency in the chi of your heart (think heart palpitations, nothing serious but still ruins your day)—just to name a few....