For The Gottman Institute’s 30th anniversary, we’re exploring five relationship myths that just won’t quit, and what the research actually says. After 50 years of relationship research, we know more than ever about what makes love last. Yet some relationship myths refuse to disappear. You’ve probably heard a few of these myths before. Your parents might have shared them as advice, you may have encountered one during a well-meaning conversation with friends, and movies and media are notorious for perpetuating the most cliché relationship myths.

With the marriage rate in America still hovering near an all-time low reached in 2019, despite...

Family estrangement isn’t new, and sometimes, especially in cases of abuse, it’s tragically warranted. Like a healthy immune system, we need the capacity to identify and expel what threatens us. But the rising phenomenon of no contact is more like an autoimmune disease in which the body’s defenses mistake what belongs to it for a threat. Those swept up in this phenomenon can lose the ability to distinguish the dangerous from the difficult; they end up attacking indiscriminately what is in fact vital.

Young men today are demoralized. That’s the conclusion from the Institute for Family Studies’ new report on the state of young men, based on a survey that actually talked to them. Society isn’t offering young men the pathways to success they once had, but what it is offering — easy access to sports betting, addictive video games, and porn — is leading them from one modern-day hellish environment straight into another one.

The increase in men’s screen time during the smartphone era has mostly displaced time with friends and other forms of leisure, impacting marriage rates.