Eddie Eccker, MS, LMFT

When attachment becomes enmeshment, we stop relating to others and start losing ourselves in them. That’s when love starts to feel like pressure. That’s when care turns into control. That’s when you stop saying what you really think, because you’re too afraid of rocking the boat.

...sophistication isn’t about appearances or performance. True sophistication isn’t easy. It requires the kind of honesty, depth, and discernment that our shortcut-obsessed culture rarely rewards. It’s not the curated Instagram feed or the cocktail-party fluency in ideas; it’s a way of being anchored in truth, beauty, and moral discernment. And in a fragmented world that constantly pulls us toward shallow freedoms and aestheticized identities, real sophistication is a quiet rebellion...

You’ve probably heard the phrase “the couple that drinks together, stays together.” While tongue-in-cheek, there’s a hard truth beneath it. According to landmark studies, alcohol, especially when only one partner drinks heavily, is one of the strongest predictors of divorce