Effective immediately, men will be able to start conversations with women on the dating app, the company said in a press release. All users will also have the ability to respond to first messages within 72 hours, up from 24 hours, the company said.

“While women making the first move was a radical idea, being women-first was never about prescribing just one way to connect. It was about designing an experience with women’s needs in mind to create better outcomes for everyone,” Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble, said in a statement. “Today, our community is asking for more flexibility, less pressure, and more opportunities to create real, meaningful connections and that is what this new experience provides.”

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The new changes for the dating app, which launched in 2014, come amid slow growth in the online dating sector and reports that the company is exploring a sale. The company also laid off 30% of its global workforce last year.

Bumble and competitor Tinder, owned by Match Group, have reported consecutive declining rates of paying users, revenue and stock slumps in recent years.

Bumble did not immediately return a request for comment on whether the new changes were related to the wider business.

In the press release, the company said that nearly two-thirds of women surveyed on Bumble say they prefer men to send the first message.

“This evolution reflects a continued commitment to creating an experience that alleviates pressure and delivers greater confidence and better outcomes for our community informed by years of member feedback, product testing, and behavioral insights,” the company said.

Gay men and lesbians have always been able to send first messages on the app without restrictions.

Bumble added that more than half of the people the company surveyed preferred having more time to respond to first messages.

“This evolution also addresses a growing reality of modern dating as people are busier than ever and meaningful opportunities to connect are often lost due to timing, not lack of interest,” the company said.

Three in ten Americans report having used an online dating website or app, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Why are you here?” I ask gently.

There’s a pause.

“Well,” one of them finally says, glancing over, “We love each other.”

Love.

Is it enough to save this relationship? Sustain any relationship?

My answer is pretty typical for a therapist: It depends.

On what you might ask? Your definition of love.

Love is often defined by feelings: exhilaration and excitement, deep connection and attraction. Yet both ancient wisdom and decades of psychological research tell us that feelings fluctuate based on your age and where you are in your relationship. They’re influenced by hormones, stress, kids, work, friendships and time itself. What feels magnetic at 28 may evolve into a quieter, steadier closeness at 48.

Researchers who study long-term relationships often describe love as it changes through stages. Early romantic love is driven heavily by novelty and dopamine — intense, consuming and biologically designed to bond us. Over time, that intensity naturally shifts into a more companionable form of love that’s rooted in attachment, shared history and emotional safety.

The problem isn’t that feelings change; it’s that many couples expect them not to. When the intensity softens and the novelty fades, the disagreements begin. We assume something is wrong, but this progression is normal.

The Greek language offers words to describe love, each with different meanings: eros, romantic or passionate love, philia, deep friendship or loyalty, agape, unconditional, spiritual love, and philautia, self-love. The Greeks knew that love isn’t one dimensional; it’s multifaceted and ever-changing. There is one last and really important word: pragma, an enduring and committed love that’s built over time.

If we envision our feelings as a vast and unpredictable ocean, pragma is the lighthouse. It’s steady, intentional and built to withstand the elements. If your idea of love includes pragma — and the willingness to work through the changing seasons of a relationship — then, yes, love may very well be enough.

The Five Secrets of Long Term Love

Here’s the truth: You can deeply love someone and still be unable to communicate or connect effectively. In my work and in my almost 23 years of marriage, I have found five qualities that are essential to a healthy, long term relationship.

1. Safety

According to Harvard Medical School, safety is essential to feeling loved. More than affection, emotional regulation in a relationship results in feelings of warmth and connectedness. When strong, negative emotions are directed at someone you love, they go into fight or flight mode, making connection impossible. When an environment is emotionally regulated, connection becomes possible, oxytocin, our bonding neurochemical, increases and our responses become more predictable.

Rituals like long, shared meals, slow mornings and quiet check-ins at bedtime help ensure more emotional regulation in relationships.

2. Mutual Respect

Can you disagree respectfully? Disagreements are inevitable in any relationship, but when arguments become too personal or when the goal shifts from solving a problem to winning or wounding, we have an issue to address.

You can be angry, hurt and frustrated, but in healthy relationships, there’s a line you don’t cross. You protect the person you love even when you don’t like them in the moment.

How do we do this? Once again, it’s all about regulating emotions. Breathe, take a walk, shift your perspective and remember what drew you to this person. Then you’ll be able to respond rather than react. Dialectal Behavioral Therapy can also help you develop powerful skills to help regulate emotions and reactivity.

3. Curiosity

Do you realize your partner is going to grow and change over the course of your relationship perhaps in different ways than you? Are you willing to get to know them again and again?

Curiosity is what allows long-term love to stay alive. I once heard an elderly man, who was married to his wife for over forty years, refer to her as his “girlfriend.” At the time, it struck me as sweet. Now I understand it more deeply. In the early stages of dating, we ask questions, we lean in and really study the person in front of us.

That posture doesn’t have to disappear once we say “I do.”

Curiosity also is essential in conflict. We need to approach our partners with the desire to learn more about why they think and feel differently, rather than assume. Curiosity will always lead us to a productive solution faster than assumption.

In fact, relationships thrive when we continue discovering each other over a lifetime. Asking questions as simple as “How are you feeling these days about me, yourself and our relationship?” or “Is there anything you are feeling that you want to talk about?” Curiosity keeps love dynamic instead of static.

4. Shared Values

Shared values serve as the compass of a relationship. Without them, we can lose direction during the darker seasons of life.

When I got engaged at 26, my husband Ed and I didn’t appear to have much in common. He’s Puerto Rican; I’m Sri Lankan. He grew up in a family of factory and construction workers. My parents immigrated to this country as physicians. On paper, our worlds looked very different.

But beneath the surface, we shared something deeper. We shared faith. We shared a commitment to family. We shared a belief in hard work, generosity and perseverance. Our values aligned, even when our backgrounds did not.

Over the years that alignment has mattered far more than surface similarities. When life is stressful — raising children, navigating career changes and caring for aging parents — our shared values have become the stabilizing force. These values help guide decisions, move in the same direction and even the terrain when the road seems uncertain.

Attraction may bring two people together, but shared values help them stay aligned over time.

5. Commitment to Growth

Are you both willing to do the work? The relationship can’t improve if only one person is willing to do the work.

Before we got married I made my husband promise that if we ever needed to go to couples therapy, he would agree. I’ve held him to that promise and he has honored it.

We needed couples therapy, not because our marriage was failing, but because we wanted it to succeed. Recognizing the need for help is not a weakness, it is a testimony to the strength of a relationship.

Growth doesn’t always mean therapy. It can mean breaking unhealthy patterns, encouraging your partner to pursue a dream that makes you anxious, or standing beside someone during a difficult transition.

The couples who last are the ones willing to grow, both individually and together.

Research shows that in some couples married more than 20 years, brain scans still reveal dopamine activity similar to early romantic love when they see their partner. The spark can return not because the relationship is new, but because the attachment is strong.

Perhaps if you’ve made it this far, you’ve experienced this yourself. You’ve worked through hard seasons, remembered why you respect each other and created new experiences together.

Love may begin as chemistry, but lasting love is a choice reinforced by daily actions, repaired through conflict and strengthened through shared commitment.

So is love enough?

If your love is rooted in commitment and given room to grow, yes, love is more than enough.

Niro Feliciano is a mom, author and therapist with a master of science in social work. She’s a TODAY show contributor and author of the TODAY.com column “Is This Normal?”

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A “baconaholic,” according to her father, Annie spied the last remaining strips of the intoxicating salty meat on a plate. She could easily have inhaled them all. But incoming was Annie’s sister, Murphy, 16, another bacon devotee. Annie paused and decided to offer one strip of crispy goodness to her sister. “Dad,” she declared, ““I just laid down my life for Murphy.”

Perhaps, Greg Smalley reminded his daughter, the pig had sacrificed more. But what struck him was the choice. The sisters had a history of generosity toward each other, but Annie had given up something important — a massive understatement for any bacon lover — for Murphy’s delight. “Love,” Smalley said by email, “is built on small, daily sacrifices that quietly say, ‘You matter.’”

In doing so, Annie arguably had gotten the love part right — a universal goal that’s been sought and debated across borders, politics and religions for as long as people have been writing things down.

Ahead of Valentine’s Day 2026, with the card and chocolate industries eager to help, loving someone well — a romantic partner, a parent, a child, a pet and especially yourself — can seem as perplexing as ever. It depends on what you want, and don’t, as well as what others want from you — now and in five minutes, relentlessly.

Love stinks, love bites, love hurts: What history says about loving well

Across traditions and philosophies, love is generally defined as an ongoing moral choice that requires truthfulness and accountability. What it’s not, those texts widely say: controlling, unconditional or abusive.

Aristotle wrote that to love, a person “wishes and does what is good, or seems to, for the sake of his friend.” St. Thomas Aquinas taught that, “to love is to will the good of the other.” The Old Testament includes a famous directive, translated roughly: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“Love,” wrote the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, “can be defined as a wish that others be happy.”

It’s all pretty lofty-sounding, so The Associated Press asked people around the world how they got love part right in real, contemporary life. Here’s what they said.

Las Vegas: Knowing each other well enough to give the right gifts

“Personally, I love gift-giving,” said Ally Fernandez of Las Vegas, a seamstress. “I make a lot of my items, and I love making something special and like custom to my person, and I do that for pretty much everybody.”

For her husband, Fernandez said she did “some really cool, patchwork…It’s just so unexpected when you get something that’s handmade like that.”

Her husband, meanwhile, has paid close enough attention to know she loves surprises. One recent date night, he took her to Area15, an immersive entertainment experience in Las Vegas.

“You walk through it…and you can interact with all the things around you,” she recalled. “I love things like that, like just things that are different and artsy.”

Budapest, Hungary: Suffering through Sephora with your makeup-loving lover

Back home in Budapest, Hungary, there are no Sephora stores. But there are multiples in Paris. So on a recent visit to the French capital, Lili Henzel, 25, couldn’t stay away from the cosmetics giant — and her husband, Bulcsu Alkay, 23, went along for the ride. Again. And again.

“Yesterday, we went to Sephora for five times,” Henzel said in an interview. “It’s not fun for him, obviously, so I appreciate that a lot.”

Alkay took it with good humor. “I guess it’s my second home, I would say,” he said. Turning to his wife, he empathized. “Because you have so much at Sephora and we don’t have it at home.”

They displayed admirable honesty, appreciation and clear communication.

“I love makeup, so we had to buy a lot of it,” Henzel explained.

“I’m not really interested in that kind of shopping,” Alkay said.

Replied Henzel: “Thanks again for that.”

Los Angeles: Spending enough time together to know when your person, or pet, feels down

Luis Mitre of Los Angeles says that “love is the most wonderful thing.” He tries to express how he feels to people, but his dogs seem to know automatically.

That might be because he takes them wherever he goes, even on travel. “They sense when you’re sad, when you’re happy, even when people don’t,” said Mitre, who also lives in Las Vegas, where he spoke to the AP. “I think they show their love in unexpected ways every single day.”

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Colmar, France: Rooting for each other every day

Claudia Verdun and Francarlos Betancourt, French visitors to Rome’s romantic Trevi Fountain, took a quick selfie and kissed — then talked about love.

“For me, it is a daily test,” Verdun said. “Little attentions, respect, care for the other, to believe in the other pushing, for the best for him. I think that is important.”

Added Betancourt, love is “to help each other with some things, to always be together, starting with your differences — you have to love each other.

Beijing: Accepting yourself

Yi Yi, a Beijing resident, thinks “no relationship is closer than that with oneself.”

“I think for many people, the most important is that you should really love yourself, fully accept yourself and accept your own vulnerability and shortcomings,” Yi said. “I think these are the most important aspects of love for oneself.”

Brussels: Choosing to keep talking

“What we do,” said Joel Stimpfig, 18, who visited Paris from Madrid, “is that we always have good communication and when we’re having a bad day, we always have a little moment to talk and discuss the relationship.”

Anke Verbeek, 40, and Jari Jacobs, 39, from Brussels, Belgium, “have difficult jobs.”

“She works late. I work early,” said Verbeek. “So communication is key for being together, for doing things together and keep the relationship alive.”

Brazil: Fighting to stand up a healthy family

Rafael Almeida thinks love has to do with solid planning for the future.

“We have already married, and to have children was our big dream together, and we are planning to expand our family,” he said in Rome, on a visit from his home in Brazil.. “We are planning and fighting for that.”

But love is also the daily practice of showing “the respect and admiration we have for each other every day.”

Colorado Springs, Colorado: Making the bed just because it’s that important to her

Erin Smalley wanted the bed made. Her husband, Greg Smalley (Annie’s dad), didn’t see why when he’d just have to climb back under the covers in a few hours. Decades of marriage, several children and co-hosting a podcast did little to resolve this ongoing dispute. Until, that is, Greg watched Erin hobble around with a recent foot injury as she made the bed herself.

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you,” Erin explained, “But I really like our bed made. It makes me feel good.”

“I finally got it,” Greg Smalley, a vice president at Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based Christian nonprofit, wrote in his email. “I realized that this was an opportunity to sacrifice a little bit of my time in the morning for my wife.”

These days, he says, he makes the bed every day.

___

Contributing to this story were AP journalists Zheng Liu and Wayne Zhang in Beijing, Trisha Thomas and Silvia Stellacci in Rome, Alex Turnbull in Paris and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas.

In fact, therapists encourage couples craving intimacy and a deeper connection to focus less on grand gestures and more on expressing love with mundane acts that recognize what matters to their partner.

Romance is not one size fits all. For some people, it means holding hands, opening a car door or drawing a bath for their lover. Others respond to receiving a hilarious text, coffee in bed or an offer to run a nagging errand. Either way, demonstrating kindness and care in small ways over time helps to support relationships as they evolve, says Traci Lee, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Dallas.

“The more that early on, you as a couple are able to establish good habits of whatever romance is going to look like for you, the better it is,” Lee said.

Couples counselors and people in relationships share ideas for showing a romantic partner love throughout the year:

Romance is constantly evolving

Early in a relationship, it doesn’t take much to show romantic intentions, but that changes as couples learn more about each other as individuals, discover what their partner needs for emotional and physical well-being, and experience life together.

“Depending on what stage of the relationship you’re in, romance can mean different things,” Lee said. For example, couples with parenting and caregiving responsibilities have less time to devote to each other than they did during the honeymoon phases right after they started dating or got married.

Gabrielle Gambrell, who lives in New York with her husband of seven years and their two children, thinks romance “should be an evolution” and therefore takes work. One piece of advice she received before getting married stuck with her: Never stop dating.

“You keep romance alive by continuously dating,” Gambrell said. “No matter how busy or what happens in the world, me and my husband have a mandatory date night. And every single date night, we leave the date energized and happy and grateful, and reminded what means the most to us.”

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Taking the pressure off Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day carries a heavy burden of social pressures, fantasies from movies and books, and individual desires and expectations that often go unexpressed. All can be managed with planning and communication, experts say.

“Some people will say, ‘If I have to tell my partner what to do, then it won’t be romantic.’ But I have to remind people that their partner is not a mind reader,” Lee said. “I try to blow up the myth that romance can only happen if it’s created spontaneously out of thin air.”

Gambrell, who describes herself as a planner by nature, says she typically starts asking her husband questions about their plans for Feb. 14 days before. Making assumptions about the best way to celebrate Valentine’s Day and comparisons with other couple’s relationships are likely to lead to disappointment, she said.

“Love is not perfect. Romance is not perfect. Relationships, there’s nothing perfect about them, but they are beautiful,” she said.

Clarence Smith IV, a 29-year-old middle school teacher and video content creator in Phoenix, remains a big believer in using traditional acts of chivalry to communicate respect and care for his girlfriend, such as positioning himself closer to the curb when they are walking together on a street.

“Romance today involves more seen gestures – let this be seen, let this be shown, let this be big,” Smith said, adding that in his dating experience some people see his gentlemanly behavior as old-fashioned. “I do little things like that, and they’re looked at as superbly impactful. We don’t do this anymore. But to me, baby, this is basics.”

Express love beyond February

While some relationship experts recommend establishing traditions around meaningful holidays, anniversaries and birthdays, others say that creating rituals to mark new seasons or weekends are equally valuable as part of the foundation for merging lifestyles and routines.

Lee says she often explains to her clients a popular analogy in the counseling industry: If you get in a fight with your partner and apologize with a dozen roses, that would be great, but bringing one rose every day for 12 days would communicate consistency and dedication.

She asks patients, “What are some small things that you can do that are going to be a way for you to show up for your partner in the way that they need it?”

Gambrell says gift-giving is the way she prefers to receive and show love. As a result, it touches her deeply and comes across as a romantic gesture when her husband buys her a scratch-off lottery ticket or stationery item, like a pen or notebook, at the store.

“It’s knowing that you’re thinking about me, that I’m on your mind, that you stop what you’re doing to think of me,” she said.

Smith encourages people to not be afraid of expressing love regardless of how experienced a dating life or how long a relationship they have.

“Do not be afraid to love in your own way,” he said. “It’s always worth it. You always win in the end.”

This Valentine’s Day, Angry Orchard is offering a way to finally reclaim that space and turn it into something far more satisfying.

The brand has launched the Angry Orchard Ex-Change, a limited-time program that invites people to ship their ex’s forgotten belongings to the Angry Orchard Cider House in exchange for cash toward a fresh case of hard cider.

Happening now through Valentine’s Day, fans can visit angryorchardex-change.com to register for a free Ex-Change Kit. Each kit comes with packaging materials and a prepaid shipping label, making it easy to box up whatever an ex left behind.

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Once Angry Orchard receives the items, participants are sent cash to put toward a case of cider. The exchange turns lingering reminders of a past relationship into something celebratory, swapping frustration for a small but satisfying upgrade.

The idea taps into a common post-breakup dilemma. Many people hang onto their ex’s belongings not because they want to, but because throwing them away feels harsh and returning them feels exhausting. Angry Orchard’s approach leans into humor, offering closure without confrontation and relief without awkward conversations.

According to the brand, the items will not go to waste. All accepted belongings will be sorted and donated where appropriate, giving them a second life beyond the breakup.

There are a few guidelines to keep in mind. Items must truly be abandoned, small enough to ship, and of minimal value. Anything dangerous, inappropriate, or containing personal information is not eligible, and Angry Orchard ultimately decides what it can accept. Once items are sent, they will not be returned.

“Valentine’s Day has a way of stirring up plenty of frustrations, and at Angry Orchard, we love helping our drinkers find the fun in all of it,” said Matt Withington, senior director of marketing at Angry Orchard. “The Ex-Change program lets our fans turn their breakup baggage into something they actually want: a fridge stocked with cider.”

But there’s always been gray areas around the other fashion no-nos you might be committing while attending someone’s special day. For instance, dress length and the amount of skin you show at a wedding are often up for debate.

Recently, one color conundrum has some social media users in a tizzy: Can you wear red to a wedding?

Below, we’re sharing what TikTok users are saying and breaking down etiquette expert Elaine Swann’s tips.

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Why do people think you can’t wear red to a wedding?

The idea that you shouldn’t wear white to a wedding makes plenty of sense since the bride typically wears white in many cultures. But some social media users are convinced that the color red can send the wrong message, too.

In a video posted to the @meangirlpod TikTok account, podcast hosts Jordyn Woodruff and Alex Bennett debated the meaning of the supposed rule that you shouldn’t wear red to a wedding.

“I think it’s supposed to mean that you have been like a past lover of the groom, which I could totally be making up in my head, but I think it’s supposed to be like the scarlet letter, like the red A,” Woodruff said in the clip.

“I was thinking you don’t wear red because it’s like a bold color and it could be perceived as upstaging the bride, but also so is pink and all of those colors,” Bennett replied.

Meanwhile, TikTok user @katieaustin posted a video of herself wearing a red dress at a wedding along with the following caption: “POV it’s your 33rd wedding and you’re finally ditching the ‘you can’t wear red to a wedding’ etiquette myth.”

What does an etiquette expert say?

Swann says red is perfectly acceptable to wear at weddings, and called the rule is “another internet fable.”

“Especially here in the U.S., red denotes the color of love,” she says.

In other words, don’t believe everything you hear on social media.

“Wear what looks great on you,” Swann says.

Of course, there’s always an exception. For instance, Swann notes that red is a go-to bridal color in some areas of the world, including Indian and Chinese cultures, so it’s best to avoid wearing it in those instances.

The etiquette pro also says there’s an exception to the whole “don’t wear white to a wedding” rule.

“Any shades of white, that color is still reserved for the bride. However, white is acceptable when the bride and groom ask you to wear it,” Swann says.

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Couples who spend money on time-saving services — like getting takeout, hiring a housecleaner or calling a dog walker — report greater relationship satisfaction, especially during stressful periods, says Ashley Whillans, a behavioral scientist and professor at Harvard Business School.

Whillans studies the “tradeoffs people make between time and money.”

“When you spend money to save time — hiring an accountant, a babysitter, a cleaner — you feel more control over your life,” she said. “That sense of autonomy boosts well-being.”

Not everyone can afford to outsource bigger household chores. But Whillans says even a little bit can help. She advises couples to take a “time audit” — examining how they spend their hours and what small changes could reclaim even a few moments.

“People underestimate how much these choices matter,” she said. “It’s not about luxury — it’s about freeing up time to connect.”

Whillans’ team tracked busy, dual-income couples — partners working full-time who often report feeling time-starved — and found consistent patterns. In one six-week diary study, couples who made “time-saving purchases” on a given day were happier and more satisfied with their relationships.

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Use that saved time for connecting

Simply outsourcing chores isn’t a magic fix, however.

“It’s about being intentional with the time you get back — using it to spend quality time together, to reconnect,” Whillans said.

“Think of that half hour not as an opportunity to send more emails, but as a chance to spend time with your partner.”

Targol Hasankhani, a Chicago-based marriage and family therapist, stressed that while outsourcing domestic labor can ease daily stress, it doesn’t replace communication. Juggling careers and kids takes a toll on families, and housework is often freighted with resentments over who is doing it.

“If conflict around chores is rooted in something deeper — like inequity or not feeling heard — hiring a cleaner won’t solve that,” she said.

Couples must dig deeper to address problems with many layers.

“It opens up time and space, but couples still have to know how to show up for each other in that space,” Hasankhani said.

Casey Mulligan Walsh, 71, a former speech pathologist and author in upstate New York, said the best part about hiring a housecleaner once a week was that it freed up time for her and her husband to spend together.

“My favorite day of the week was coming home to a clean house,” she said. “We’d go get coffee together instead of arguing about who should vacuum.”

A Valentine’s Day gift that stuck

Getting started on delegating household tasks isn’t easy for some couples, Whillans said. Besides the cost, “it takes time to find someone and coordinate — but the long-term payoff is real.”

And making such decisions together can deepen trust and a sense of teamwork.

For one Colorado couple, outsourcing started as an act of love.

“When I started dating, my now-husband noticed how hard I was working — at my job, at home and as a single mom,” said Melissa Jones, a 45-year-old teacher in Pueblo.

His Valentine’s Day gift? A deep housecleaning.

“It was truly amazing,” Jones said. “After that, I kept it up on my own for years. When my husband and I moved in together, we decided to continue.”

“We’re able to make memories with each other, our kids and our families instead of spending weekends scrubbing floors,” she said.

Dinnertime can be a stress point

In Miami, Elizabeth Willard, 59, runs The Pickled Beet, a culinary service preparing customized meals.

“Most of the people I cook for are trying to invest in their health but don’t have the time,” she said, noting that families often juggle mixed dietary needs. “Sometimes the husband’s a carnivore and the wife’s vegetarian, one child’s celiac. They’re exhausted trying to make everyone happy.”

Her clients, often families with children and two working parents, are “not fighting over what’s for dinner. It’s one less daily decision.”

Whether ordering a pizza, paying a teenager to mow the lawn, or calling a car service to save 20 minutes, the outcome can be the same: Buying back time can buy peace.

With their families’ help, he’d come up with an idea to make it a complete surprise for her.

And he always knew he wanted to get down on one knee.

“I wanted to make it traditional but also picture perfect for her because I know it’s something that we’re going to remember for the rest of our lives,” Wicklund, 25, tells TODAY.com.

But days before the happy moment was supposed to happen in July, he ended up in the hospital with a frightening and unexpected health crisis.

Wicklund’s legs suddenly gave out on him while he was at his home in Indianapolis, Indiana, and they became so weak that he couldn’t stand or walk.

“It was terrifying,” Caetano, 24, recalls. “It’s the person you love and you just want them to be healthy, but it’s a really helpless feeling because you really can’t do anything.”

As the medical mystery unfolded, Wicklund entered physical therapy at Indiana University Health and had a precise goal: He wanted to be able to get down on one knee to propose.

It was the first time a patient had ever asked the team for physical therapy specific to kneeling for a marriage proposal.

“I thought he was very ambitious,” Maddie Barkow, physical therapist at IU Health, tells TODAY.com. “Kyle was not able to walk yet when he mentioned this goal to me.”

He was on a tight deadline as the date set for the surprise proposal was quickly approaching.

Love story, then sudden health crisis

Wicklund and Caetano met in 2023 when they were both out with friends at a restaurant in their native New Jersey. He works in finance; she wants to become a doctor.

They struck up a conversation and spent the rest of the evening talking. He calls her “super brilliant” and the most beautiful girl he’s ever met. She likes that he’s charming, funny and “incredibly handsome.”

The couple began dating, and when Wicklund moved to Indianapolis for a job promotion, Caetano followed.

Wicklund says he’s always been very healthy, but an unexpected diagnosis set off a cascade of health problems.

In the fall of 2024, he started having stomach problems that led doctors to discover a pituitary adenoma — a benign tumor on his pituitary gland at the base of his brain.

That tumor disrupted his hormone production and led to a life-threatening lack of cortisol — a hormone that helps break down fats, proteins and carbohydrates in the body — known as an adrenal crisis.

Wicklund couldn’t keep down food, vomited for months and lost weight. He also developed enteritis, inflammation of the small intestine.

His doctors don’t know for sure, but it’s possible the infection that caused the enteritis may have also spread to his spine, causing inflammation there known as transverse myelitis. But in many cases, the exact cause of transverse myelitis is unknown.

The symptoms: sudden weakness in the legs that can lead to paralysis, exactly what Wicklund experienced in early July.

“I was in my kitchen and then my legs pretty much just gave out on me. Then I was lying on the floor, and Victoria said, ‘We should probably go to the hospital’ because I couldn’t really feel anything,” Wicklund recalls.

His surprise proposal was set for July 19, less than two weeks away.

Practicing proposal in physical therapy

In the hospital, Wicklund told himself he was going to propose on one knee no matter what. “I’m a very driven person,” he says.

“Kyle was very determined,” Barkow, the physical therapist, confirms. “It isn’t a conventional goal we typically work on.”

Steroids helped treat the transverse myelitis, which led to improvements in his legs.

Once Wicklund was able to walk with a rolling walker, Barkow focused the physical therapy sessions on kneeling on one leg and getting back up using his arms on the walker for stability.

The plan was for Wicklund to kneel down onto his weaker left leg so that his stronger right side could be in control. Another person was on standby in case he got stuck on the floor.

They did multiple repetitions so he’d ready for his big day.

“I could probably get down one knee better than I could walk 100 feet, but that’s what I wanted to focus on and that’s what we practiced,” Wicklund says.

“It was for her, but also it was for me as well. … No matter what gets in my way, I’m going to be able to push through it.”

Caetano had no idea about this aspect of her boyfriend’s physical therapy, but knew what it was like to lose the use of the legs.

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She was born with spina bifida and underwent three spinal surgeries, two of which left her temporarily paralyzed as a teen.

“I went through my own medical struggles,” Caetano says. “What he was going through was so incredibly difficult and would probably be so traumatizing and depressing for a lot of people. But Kyle never acted that way.”

The crisis brought them closer together, the couple says.

‘Perfect’ moment

Wicklund was released from the hospital days before his surprise proposal. He told Caetano they needed to fly to New Jersey for his sister-in-law’s baby gender reveal party, but both their families knew he was planning to propose.

Caetano was surprised at how intensely he wanted to attend the gender reveal in person so soon after his health problems and advised him to cancel the flight, but he was adamant.

Walking toward Sea Bright beach in New Jersey during their trip, Caetano saw Wicklund standing in the sand in a linen suit with a big bouquet of pink peonies.

When she ran to him, he got down on one knee and proposed. She said yes, calling it a “truly perfect” moment.

“He made it look very effortless, but I know how much strength it took,” Caetano says. “He had the perfect 90-degree knee.”

“Getting down was tough,” Wicklund says. “But once I got down on one knee and then proposed to her and she said yes, she kind of grabbed me and helped me get up and hugged me. I had a lot of adrenaline going through so I was OK.”

Doctors don’t know when Wicklund’s legs will be 100% back to normal, but his mobility is getting better and he can walk short distances without a walker. His next goal is to be able to run a 5K.

The couple plans to marry in the spring of 2027, perhaps in Brazil, where Caetano’s family is from.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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Whether it’s paying for hotels and flights to attend a destination wedding or different outfits and gifts for multiple pre-wedding events, friends and extended family often feel pressure to spend a large amount of money before the couple gets married.

A sense of obligation and budget constraints can create resentment, hurt feelings and misunderstandings among friends and family. Future spouses who are trying to plan their dream wedding and are worried about their own expenses might want to factor in their guests’ potential costs.

“Money is part of how we show up for one another,” Christine Hargrove, a licensed therapist who serves as assistant director of the Love and Money Center at the University of Georgia. “But don’t let finances get in the way of lifelong friendships or family relationships that are healthy and supportive.”

Hargrove often sees budgeting issues becoming friendship issues for couples and members of their wedding party. While asking someone to be a groomsman or a bridesmaid usually is intended to show appreciation, sometimes left unacknowledged is the possible financial burden of being part of a bachelor or bachelorette party, as well as the big day itself.

“If somebody says ‘I care about you, I really want to come to your wedding but I absolutely cannot afford five days in the Caribbean on top of already going to a wedding,’ don’t take it personally,” Hargrove advises.

Conversations surrounding money can be very emotional, but everyone involved will benefit if they approach the topic with understanding, recommended Hargrove.

“Couples have to keep in mind that people do have different budgets, different backgrounds. People have different work responsibilities and capabilities of taking PTO,” said Sarah Schreiber, a former magazine weddings editor turned wedding consultant.

Here are some recommendations for ways engaged couples can reduce costs for their wedding guests and how guests can participate without going into debt.

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For couples

Book different hotel options

It’s customary for the couple getting married to reserve a block of rooms at a discounted rate for their out-of-town guests. Schreiber recommends having at least a couple hotel options at different price ranges.

Offer to pay for some services

Covering the cost of transportation to and from the wedding venue, paying for childcare if kids are not invited to the celebration, and hosting a morning-after breakfast are other ways couples can make their wedding less expensive for guests, according to Cassie Horrell, a wedding planner based in Pittsburgh.

“There’s little things you can do here and there to be mindful of what costs you can eat for your guests,” Horrell said.

Putting a “no gifts” request on your invitations is another way to reduce costs for guests, said Rachel Lawrence, the head of advice and planning for the budgeting app Monarch Money.

Be up front with your wedding party

Informing members of the wedding party and other close friends well in advance about what they can expect to pay for a bachelor party abroad or to rent a tuxedo or have their makeup done helps them decide if they can participate, Hargrove said.

If someone agrees to be part of the wedding party and later learns a bride and groom have expensive tastes, they may feel cornered into spending on a splash they can’t afford, she said.

Don’t take it personally if a guest cannot attend

If a friend or relative says they cannot attend a pre-wedding event or the wedding itself due to cost, respond in a kind and gracious way, Hargrove advises.

“Accept it gracefully and you’re gonna have a lot fewer issues relationally. It shows a lot of respect, it shows conscientiousness. People appreciate it. And there’s a lot fewer hurt feelings,” she said.

For guests

Share costs with friends

If the cost of attending a wedding is too high, consider dividing it with a group of friends, said Esther Lee, a deputy editor and wedding expert for The Knot. From sharing a hotel room or sleeping on someone’s couch to going in on group trips and splitting the bill for airport transportation, other guests may also be on a budget.

It’s OK to skip some events

Between the bachelorette party, the bridal shower and the weekend destination wedding, the costs can pile up. If you want to stay on budget, it’s OK to skip some events and choose to attend the ones you think will be the most meaningful for the person getting married.

“It’s hard for people to say no, and we want to show up for everyone. But if it doesn’t work with your budget, then you don’t want to be going into debt just to try and make it” Chelsea Hodl, a financial planner for the financial services app Domain Money.

Communicating to your friend or family member ahead of time which events you will be able to attend is recommended.

Save money on your wardrobe

If you’re working on a tight budget, wedding attire is a place to cut back. Renting a dress or a tux from online websites like Rent The Runway, Nuuly or Black Tux may be less expensive than buying clothes you’ll hardly ever wear.

Guests also can consider wearing a dress they already own or borrowing one from a friend, The Knot’s Lee said.

“Nobody is judging you for re-wearing something, so don’t be your harshest critic,” she said.

Be transparent with your friends

You don’t need to feel ashamed if you cannot afford to attend the wedding of a loved one, Hargrove said. Being honest about the reason why you won’t be there for their special day can help prevent negative feelings or misunderstandings.

“When you are willing to be direct with someone, it just clears the air and it’s amazing how powerful, clear, honest and direct self-disclosure can be,” Hargrove said.

If you will miss a friend’s wedding, try showing your affection for them in another way, such as inviting them to dinner, or sending them flowers on the wedding day. An inexpensive gesture can demonstrate your love without sacrificing yourself and your finances.

——

The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

Matthew McConaughey can attest that size matters — at least when it comes to beds.

After he insisted that downsizing the size of your mattress is the best thing you can do for your marriage in his new book “Poems & Prayers,” the “Interstellar” star shared insight into how getting a smaller bed has helped his and wife Camila Alves’ relationship.

“We have kids, and we go to our friend’s house and he has one of these double king-size beds put together and all the kids sleep in the bed,” McConaughey — dad to kids Levi, 17, Vida, 15, and Livingston, 12, with Camila — told Fox News. “The wife’s on one side with her side table and the husband’s on the other side and it’s great when you got all three kids, but all of a sudden the kids get too big. They’re out of the bed.”

“I wake up one morning, I’m looking over there and Camilla’s like a football field away man,” he continued. “Then you go to bed at night, like you want to snuggle up and, ‘Well, we’ve got to cover you up. Come about 12 feet and I’ll come 12 feet.'”

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With their kids being all grown up, it didn’t take long for the 55-year-old to realize there is beauty in proximity.

“You’re like, ‘Man, this damn king-size bed is not good for the marriage,’” he explained. “’Get rid of that son of a b–ch.’ So we got a queen size where we’re shoulder to shoulder. I’m telling you, it’s good for your marriage.”

While McConaughey and Camila’s bond continues to grow closer as their kids grow older, the Oscar winner has also found ways to make his job a family affair.

In fact, McConaughey recently starred alongside his eldest and his mom Kay McConaughey, 93, in his latest movie “The Lost Bus.”

“He’s introducing himself and I happen to be alongside him and in some of the same scenes of him which is pretty cool,” McConaughey told E! News of his son’s feature film acting debut earlier this month. “Three generations. My mother has always been a performer and so she’s been films. I had no idea he was even interested.”

And because wasn’t sure his son was serious about launching his acting career, the “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” actor had initially ignored Levi’s requests to audition for the role of his onscreen son.

“He came back four times asking me, ‘Can I read for it?” McConaughey recalled, adding that he soon after pitched the idea to the casting director. “They got him on camera, read for it and I said ‘Wow, he can hold the frame, he’s got the instinct for it.’”

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Reese Witherspoon has lived and she’s learned.

Indeed, the Morning Show star detailed the aftermath of leaving an abusive relationship when she was “really young,” including the insecurity and lack of confidence that followed — though it didn’t necessarily show on the surface.

“I was very good at being a professional and showing up and doing the right thing, but I wasn’t emotionally mature when I was young,” Witherspoon recalled during a Sept. 20 episode of The New York Times’ The Interview podcast. “You get into relationships that don’t work for you, and sometimes you don’t even see the dynamics that are happening.”

And though she did eventually get out of the unhealthy relationship, Witherspoon was left with a distorted perception of herself.

“It took me a while to reconstitute myself,” the 49-year-old continued. “My spirit had been diminished because I thought all those awful things that person said about me were true. I had to rewire my brain.”

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Since then, Witherspoon — who shares daughter Ava, 26, and son Deacon, 21, with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe as well as son Tennessee, 13, with ex-husband Jim Toth — has had time to focus on herself and her healing while navigating life in the public eye.

“It took me a long time to be this woman that I am now,” she explained to host Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “It’s very hard to be a public figure.”

“I have a lot of compassion for people who live public lives and maintain privacy,” she continued. “It’s nearly impossible at this point with everybody dehumanizing you in a certain way, taking pictures of you like you’re an animal in the zoo instead of a person with their children or having a private moment.”

The Legally Blonde star’s latest comments come seven years after she first got candid about how leaving an abusive relationship that involved both “psychological” and “verbal” abuse ultimately allowed her to fulfill her destiny.

“I drew a line in the sand, and it got crossed, and my brain just switched,” she told Oprah Winfrey in the March 2018 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. “I couldn’t go any further. I was really young, and it was profound.”

Without delving into the specific details, Witherspoon explained, “It changed who I was on a cellular level, the fact that I stood up for myself. It’s part of the reason I can stand up and say, ‘Yes, I’m ambitious.’ Because someone tried to take that from me.”

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The “Seinfeld” star, 65, who has been married to Daena Title since he was 22, says there are a few factors that contribute to a successful union.

“A piece of it is dumb luck. She walked in the door. I went, ‘Oh my God.’ She went, ‘Eh,’” he recently joked while appearing in an interview with social media star William Rossy of Sprouht.

“The opportunity to meet someone that kind of really does line up spiritually with you, it’s dumb luck,” he continued.

Alexander, of course, gained fame playing George Costanza on “Seinfeld,” a character who constantly had problems with women he dated. In real life, the eight-time Emmy nominee said he and his wife have changed, while noting they were always “headed in the same direction.”

“Our values didn’t change. Our interests didn’t change. We didn’t suddenly become different kinds of people because of the way life had worked or not worked for us,” he said. “We took the work of it seriously. When we had trouble, we went to therapy or she went on her own. I went on (my) own. We went together. We tried to figure it out.”

Alexander then cited something he read for the first time in the play “A Raisin in the Sun” when he was 12 years old. 

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“When do you think is the time to love someone the most? When they’ve done good and made things easy for everybody?” he said. “It’s when they’re at their lowest and they can’t believe in themselves anymore because the world’s whipped them so.”

Alexander also said his wife knows the potential he has, even when he may not reach it.

“What I say about my wife is on my worst day, when I am the worst version of myself that I can be, she is able to know who I am on my best day. And she beckons me back,” he said, echoing a comment he made during an appearance on TODAY back in March. “And that’s extraordinary.”

He said there’s a satisfaction in being with someone he knows so well for so long.

“It is the most comforting thing in the world that I have taken this journey with someone who’s known me almost the whole way. There’s just a joy in it,” he said.

As for how people struggle to maintain relationships, Alexander said it’s important not to give up.

“If you want it to work, you can make it work,” he said. “And I know so many guys — guys in particular — who walk away thinking, ‘It’s the problem.’ And then they go out and start a new relationship and they go, ‘I have the same problem.’ … If the problem is within you, it’s going to go wherever you go.”

He was then asked to define love.

“In a cup that deep,” he said, motioning a glass, “it’s three-quarters filled with selflessness. It is literally elevating someone else’s concerns, needs, passions, existence to being a little more important than your own. That’s all it is.”

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“He’s a cheater,” Walker said, reading some of the comments on one post out loud.

“What clubs does he go to?” another person asked on a different post. “He’s cute.”

The app, which appears to have been advertising itself online since at least last fall, allows users to solicit feedback about specific men they’re dating.

Walker, 22, is among the 4 million users on the women-only safety app, which this week became the No. 1 free app in the Apple app store.

It picked up viral traction in the last month after some people began talking about it online on Reddit and TikTok. The app gained more than 900,000 new signups in the last few days, Tea said on social media. Getting off the waitlist can now take days, an inconvenience many new users complained about in comments on the app’s Instagram posts.

Users are presented with local men upon opening Tea. The photos have been uploaded, along with their first names.

For each of the men, other women on the app can report whether they deem him a “red flag” or a “green flag” and leave comments about him, such as those recounting negative date experiences or vouching for him as a friend.

“I’ve seen so many people I know on the app, it’s crazy,” said Walker, a Cleveland-area user who joined the app last week after having seen multiple viral posts about it. “Like, oh my God, I would never think all this stuff about them.”

App users can look up individual names in the search bar or create custom alerts for specific men. The app also offers functions that let users run background checks, search for criminal histories and reverse-search photos to check whether a man is catfishing by using someone else’s photos on his dating profile.

The woman-only app was created by a man, Sean Cook, who said on Tea’s website that he was inspired after he watched his mother’s “terrifying experience with online dating,” including being catfished and unknowingly dating men with criminal records.

Cook’s profile on LinkedIn lists him as the founder of Tea since 2022. The description under his role says, “Tea was self-funded by Sean.”

Cook did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for Tea said the app isn’t offering interviews at this time.

Tea’s mission mirrors similar efforts that have gained popularity in other online forums, such as “Are We Dating The Same Guy?,” a Facebook community with millions of members across the country in localized offshoots.

While the communities have stated that their mission is to keep women safe, they have also faced backlash from men online who say they fear being misrepresented or doxxed on the platforms.

The Facebook groups, which advertise themselves as spaces for women to warn other women about “liars, cheaters, abusers, or anyone who exhibits any type of toxic or dangerous behavior,” have for years been criticized online for devolving into places for gossip or for spreading possible misinformation about people. Last year, judges dismissed two defamation lawsuits filed in Illinois and California by men who were posted in the groups.

With Tea, some men have posted in forums asking for others to report the app in hope of getting it shut down, and others have expressed interest in a men-only equivalent on which they could discuss and mock women.

One app has already tried to offer that. The Teaborn app climbed to No. 3 in the free apps chart Wednesday before it disappeared from the App Store.

Shortly ahead of its removal, the app had rolled out an update with “enhanced content moderation and reporting tools” after its creator condemned users for allegedly sharing revenge porn on the platform.

Teaborn told NBC News in a social media statement: “Apple just removed us yesterday because Tea app doesn’t like competition, but we are working to go back with a new brand!”

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Despite finding apps like Tea entertaining, users like Walker have expressed discomfort with the idea of allowing so many people to anonymously speak negatively about others online.

Signing up for Tea requires users to take selfies, which the app says are deleted after review, to prove they are women. All users who get accepted are anonymous outside of the usernames they choose. Screenshots are also blocked.

On its website, Tea describes itself as “more than an app; it’s a sisterhood.” The app claims it donates 10% of its profits to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

A spokesperson for the hotline didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

“Together, we’re redefining modern dating,” the app says.

Walker said that she has noticed many users focus more on gossip than real safety concerns but that she believes some people have found Tea useful for exposing serious issues like abuse.

“I feel like if people were to use the app how it’s supposed to be used, this could actually save a lot of women from being hurt or harmed,” Walker said. “But at this point, I think it’s like a joke to everybody and just like cyberbullying.”

As the author of “Managing Up,” an executive coach to top performers at the world’s biggest companies, and a professor of human behavior, I’ve seen how certain phrases — even ones that sound perfectly reasonable in your head — can chip away at trust.

People may hesitate to share ideas or information with you. You may stop getting invited to meetings or to social events. And before you know it, you’re being labeled as resistant or not a team player. 

Here are five common phrases that can make you sound judgmental, even when you don’t mean to be, and what to say instead. 

1. ‘Why don’t you just…’

You may say this when someone brings up a problem that seems to have a straightforward solution. Maybe your friend is stressed about their inbox, and you mention, “Why don’t you just set up filters?” Or your direct report is struggling to get buy-in on a decision, and you jump straight to, “Why don’t you just schedule one-on-ones?”

You think you’re helping, but what the other person hears is: “The answer is obvious, so why haven’t you figured it out?” They may need empathy before they’re ready to problem-solve.

What to say instead

Get curious before offering solutions. For example: 

• “That sounds frustrating. What have you tried so far?” 

Once you understand the situation better, you can then suggest ideas with phrases like: 

• “One thing that’s worked for me…” 
• “An option that comes to mind is…” 

2. ‘Actually…’

At a family gathering, someone mentions, “Grandma grew up in Ohio,” and you jump in to clarify, “Actually, it was Michigan.” Even small corrections like, “Actually, the deadline is Friday,” can come off harsher than intended.

Prefacing statements with “actually” can seem to imply, “You’re wrong and I’m right,” or, “You’re not paying attention,” and come off as condescending. 

What to say instead

Embrace “yes, and…” improv energy to build on others’ ideas, not tear them down. Try: 

• “You’re right about [X situation], and something else to consider is…” 
• “That’s a fair point. I wonder if we also need to factor in…” 

Signal humility with wording like: 

• “I might be misremembering, but I thought the deadline was Friday. Do we want to double check?”

3. ‘To be honest…’

Over dinner you comment to your partner, “If I’m being honest, I had more fun at the show than I thought I would.” Or you might use it to express feedback, like: “Honestly, we should consider other options.”

You’re trying to be transparent. But saying “to be honest…” can subtly imply everything you said before wasn’t truthful. Worse, it often signals criticism is coming, so people might get defensive before you’ve even made your point.

What to say instead

Drop the preamble and lead with the positive experience:  

• “I’d definitely do something like that again!”
• “I wasn’t sure what to expect and I really enjoyed myself.” 

If you’re offering input, position your opinion as one possible perspective, not the only truth. For example: 

• “I see a few challenges with that approach.”
• “My experience has been…”

You can also use words that invite open-mindedness like: 

• “How about we explore…” 
• “I’m curious about…”

4. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

You might say this when someone’s explanation or idea doesn’t line up with your thinking or experience. For example, maybe a teammate says they’re prioritizing a smaller client over a bigger one.

What you mean is, “I don’t understand your reasoning,” but the subtext can be perceived as, “Your logic is flawed.” Even if you’re truly confused, this phrase puts the other person in the position of having to defend their intelligence. 

What to say instead

Acknowledge what you do understand or paraphrase what you’ve heard first. Try: 

• “I know we’re trying to be thoughtful here. Can you help me understand the upside of waiting a bit longer?” 
• “So if I’m following, we’re focusing on the smaller client first because of the referral potential, correct?” 

5. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know that.’

You might genuinely be caught off guard when someone isn’t aware of information that seems fundamental or well-known to you. Sometimes it’s even a nervous reflex if you feel awkward for not catching an oversight sooner. 

By expressing “surprise,” you’re inadvertently suggesting their lack of knowledge is unexpected and perhaps inappropriate for someone in their role.

What to say instead

Focus on being helpful rather than highlighting their unfamiliarity. Try: 

• “That’s one of those terms that gets thrown around a lot. It means…” 
• “Totally understandable. Want me to fill you in real quick?” 

These phrases aren’t always judgmental. Tone and timing matter, too. Be aware of both your intention and your impact and you can become the type of person others trust, respect, and want to invest in. 

Melody Wilding, LMSW is an executive coach, human behavior professor, and author of “Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge.” Download exact scripts to diplomatically say no at work here.

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A survey of 1,000 wedding guests conducted by The Knot found that the average guest spent $150 on a wedding gift last year, with gifts increasing in value for closer friends and family members.

While many abide by the “pay-for-your-plate” rule, which encourages guests to match the value of their gift to the cost of their food and drink, some experts say this rule is outdated.

Online etiquette guide The Emily Post Institute calls the rule a “modern myth” and suggests determining a gift’s value based on a guest’s budget and their relationship with the engaged couple.

Wedding advice sites, such as The Knot, also vary suggested gift values by relationship to the couple and offer calculator tools to suggest appropriate gift values.

Lynne Kennedy, a master wedding planner and owner of luxury wedding planning firm The Gilded Aisle Weddings, said some guests still abide by the “pay-for-your-plate” rule. But, determining the cost of a plate can be difficult, and as food costs have risen in recent years, some guests are unsure whether their gifts should match these price increases, Kennedy said.

Instead, she suggested that registries can allow guests to determine an expected price range and plan their gift accordingly.  

“Just taking a look at a couple’s wedding registry and the types of gifts and price levels that they have listed might tip you off as to what their expectations are,” Kennedy said.

What about gifts for a destination wedding?

Those traveling for a wedding may be curious whether their gifts should be adjusted to account for additional expenses.

“I think couples do realize when guests are traveling that they’re incurring more expenses and don’t expect that type of level of gift,” Kennedy said.

However, she added, guests should consider how much the couple hosts attendees during the wedding, including the duration of the wedding celebration and what expenses are covered by the couple once guests arrive.

The Emily Post Institute echoed this sentiment, saying less expensive gifts are acceptable when guests are spending a considerable amount to attend a wedding. However, the etiquette site warns against skipping the gift entirely.

“Every wedding invitation carries the obligation to give a gift,” it reads.

The one exception, experts agree, is when the couple explicitly tells guests no gift is needed, such as by including “your presence is your present” on an invitation.

As a couples counselor, I’ve seen how unresolved, repetitive conflicts can create a culture of negativity, which can whittle a healthy relationship dynamic down to resentment, disconnection, and loneliness. 

For over 50 years, psychologist John Gottman, along with his wife and fellow psychologist Julie Gottman, conducted hundreds of studies on relationships and communication. They identified four toxic communication strategies that can lead to breakups, separation, and divorce — a theory Gottman calls “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” 

Couples who avoid these four communication pitfalls tend to have happier, healthier relationships:

1. Criticism and blame

When criticism and blame are present in a discussion, phrases like “you always” and “you never” tend to run amok. These types of expressions are unhelpful, and often elicit defensive responses.

What to do instead

Replace “you always” and “you never” with “I” statements. Try to make your complaints specific by stating a particular behavior, and then talk about your own feelings that came up.

Try this strategic formula: “When [X] happened, I felt [X] and [X]. In the future, I would love [X].  

Here’s what that might sound like in a real conversation: “Last night when you called me a shrieking freak, I felt angry, then really, really sad. Moving forward, I would love it if you would curb the name-calling and just tell me what you need.”                       

2. Defensiveness

Think self-victimization, excuses, and cross-complaining (i.e., responding to a complaint with one of your own). One partner’s defensiveness signals to the other that they’re trying to deflect, dismiss, or ignore, rather than repair. It can cause frustration, confusion, and self-doubt. This dynamic can lead to disconnection, loneliness, and emotional distress. 

What to do instead

Listen to complaints with curiosity. Ask open-ended questions to get a deeper understanding of how your behavior has affected your partner, like:

• “Can you share a little more about that?” 
• “How did that make you feel?”

Repeat back your understanding of how your actions or choices affected your partner emotionally. Then take responsibility for your actions during the conflict, and offer a genuine apology. 

For example, you might say: “I’m so sorry I shared your most embarrassing high school story with your work colleagues. I realize how awkward and uncomfortable that made you feel, and I feel terrible you had to relive those feelings again. Next time, I’ll try to be more mindful when sharing childhood experiences.”  

3. Contempt

Contempt includes lashing out in disdain, berating and belittling, using menacing language, and trashing your partner’s character. It’s “you hideous monster” and “you heinous witch.” 

In his book “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work,” Gottman shares his theory that contempt is a top predictor of divorce. It ups anxiety, explodes the couple’s friendship, and shuts down sex. 

What to do instead

Gottman’s antidote for contempt is to co-create a culture of fondness and appreciation. This translates to expressions of warmth, affection, gratitude, and emotional closeness. It includes appreciating the little stuff, celebrating the big stuff, scheduling dates, and spending time together.

It can be as simple as letting your partner know that you’re genuinely grateful for something they said or did. You might say, for instance:

• “Last night at Janet’s party, I loved how you made us all laugh so hard when you told that hilarious cat story!” 
• “It’s nice that we can just sit quietly together and read, and I still feel so connected to you.”

All these little moments add up.

4. Stonewalling

Usually stonewalling happens when one partner has become so angry, activated, or overwhelmed that they suddenly shut down, refuse to engage in further communication, and even physically remove themselves from the situation in the middle of an argument. 

But the silent treatment is dangerous. It can leave the other person feeling frustrated, invalidated, and abandoned. It can trigger feelings of rejection, anxious attachment behavior, and emotional withdrawal. And in the long run, avoidance can squash vulnerability, erode trust, and fuel resentment.

What to do instead

In the repair process, both partners need to try to be open, honest, and emotionally present. If you or your partner are getting so worked up that you’re about to storm off or go silent, it’s time for a break.

You should both:

• Disengage from the conflict. 
• Schedule a time to come back to the table and discuss. 
• Self soothe. Go to separate corners to calm down — whether it’s by doing some deep breathing, exercising, calling a friend, or listening to music. The goal is to quiet the brain and settle down the body before you return to the conversation.

It just takes one partner, in the heat of conflict, to identify one of the four horsemen, lasso it, and ride it off the ranch. It can mean the difference between a relationship that explodes into a zillion pieces or lopes off  quietly into the night — and one that thrives for the foreseeable future.

Kelley J. Brower is a former professional comedian and a psychotherapist who’s specialized in couples and relationships for the last 10 years. As a Level 3 Gottman counselor, and a certified first responder crisis counselor, Kelley believes that when evidenced-based theories, techniques, and tools are blended together with solid experience, expert training, and a splash of creativity and humor, amazing behavioral changes can happen.

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Progressively interacting in this way with someone outside your relationship may be no big deal to you. To your significant other, however, it may be microcheating, which some people consider a form of infidelity because it can involve building a bond one heart emoji at a time.

Although pushing the boundaries of what’s allowed in a relationship is not a new concept, the issue has become even more common with the rise of remote work, said William Schroeder, a therapist and owner of Just Mind Counseling centers in Austin, Texas.

“People are having more digital relationships so it kind of creates more space for that,” Schroeder said. “In this work-from-home environment, it can happen even easier because it’s real low risk.”

What is microcheating?

Microcheating, a term popularized by Australian psychologist Melanie Schilling, could be anything short of a physical or emotional relationship if it involves a behavior you can’t talk about openly with a partner.

Besides furtive social media chatting, it also could mean lingering too long at the water cooler to talk to a co-worker, sharing personal details of your own relationship, or dressing up if you know you’ll see someone.

“We’ve just put a newer label on it,” said Abby Medcalf, a psychologist in Berkeley, California, and host of the “Relationships Made Easy” podcast.

But Medcalf noted that with most of her patients in recent years, microcheating involves texting or messages on social media. And it can be a slippery slope.

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What’s the big deal?

As relationship norms evolve and terms like “polyamory” come out of the shadows, liking or commenting on a photo may seem fairly innocuous. Many couples don’t care, Medcalf said, but people who do shouldn’t feel bad for it.

“There isn’t a right and wrong in relationships,” she said. “It comes down to preferences.”

Even if a specific action has not been discussed and forbidden, trouble arises when it takes away energy from your primary relationship, she said.

“It’s cheating if your partner doesn’t like it, or doesn’t know about it, or wouldn’t like it if they knew about it,” she said.

She advised resisting the urge to snoop, which is a sign there is a lack of trust in the relationship. “All you want to know is, how is your partner treating you?” she said. “Do you feel No. 1?”

How should couples handle it?

Schroeder said every relationship has boundaries, some of which may have been discussed and others that are implied. These days, the gray area is bigger than ever.

Particularly if a couple met on a dating app, it’s important to discuss whether to disable it and be exclusive, he said. Then define what “exclusive” means, such as not dating other people, continuing conversations through an app or pursuing others on social media.

The best time to bring it up is long before a problem arises, even if it’s difficult to know when or how, he said. He equated having this talk with driving.

“If you think that you have a full tank of gas, you’re not going to start thinking, ‘When should we stop to get gas?’” he said.

A change in behavior — if your significant other seems to be more secretive with their phone, for instance, or checks social media more often — could a sign of an issue, he said. But try not to be accusatory. Rather, mention you have noticed they are more engaged with their phone and that it worries you because you’re not sure what it means.

“Having that kind of curiosity is a much better place to have a conversation,” Schroeder said.

He said microcheating happens for many reasons, but often it’s because people are simply looking for that spark they feel from a new relationship. Some patients who engage in secretive behavior never cross further lines, but Schroeder said noticing if you yourself are doing it can be instructive.

Also, it doesn’t necessarily mean the end of a relationship. 

“It can be this crisis to rebuild,” he said. “Sometimes when these little microcheating examples come up, it can be really helpful to understand, ‘Alright, why is this coming up for me?’”

In an interview with TODAY.com ahead of the second season of her Lifetime show “Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup,” Blanchard explains how one romantic relationship helped prepare her for another.

Blanchard married Louisiana teacher Ryan Scott Anderson in 2022 while she was in prison. They were together through 2024, when she rekindled a relationship with Ken Urker, to whom she was previously engaged. She and Urker now have a daughter.

“My marriage with Ryan taught me a lot about myself and showed me that I had a lot to learn about relationships and marriage,” she said. “There was something that Ryan had said in Season 1: ‘Life is not a fairy tale, and it will have its challenges.'”

Blanchard said Anderson’s words resonated and she applies them to her current relationship with Urker. 

“I didn’t understand that at the time, but after everything I went through, I apply that to my relationship with Ken. We will have bad days, but you can’t judge the whole relationship on one argument. You have to push through,” she continues.

Blanchard served seven years for her role in the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. Blanchard is thought to be a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a psychological disorder in which a caretaker claims someone needs care or medical treatment who doesn’t, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Blanchard was released from prison in December 2023 at the age of 32. Nicholas Godejohn, who carried out the murder, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after first pleading not guilty.

Anderson picked her up from prison, he recalled in a TODAY.com interview in 2023 and he appeared in the first season of “Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup.” 

By mid-2024, they were in the midst of a divorce and Blanchard was back with Urker.

Anderson told TODAY.com last June that he was “blindsided” by how quickly their relationship ended.

“I’m just experiencing things as they come. I’m still in reflection and processing mode,” he said. “A lot has happened. It’s hard to wrap my head around a lot of things that have happened because I mean, when I say I’m blindsided, I really am blindsided about how fast things progressed.”

The second season of “Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up” premieres March 10 on Lifetime, and will follow Blanchard as she faces the challenges of divorce, public scrutiny and rebuilding relationships while preparing for the arrival of her first child.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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