11 TED Talks that will help you strengthen your relationships
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Relationships are never easy. By definition they entail connections between people, and people, as we all know, are eternally complicated creatures.
Relationships also come in all sizes and colors — there are romantic relationships, work relationships, and friendships, just to name a few.
Regardless of what kind of relationship you want to strengthen, each is fundamentally similar to the next in a number of ways.
In all healthy relationships, we are able to listen well, empathize, connect, resolve conflict, and respect others.
The following TED Talks are a great refresher course in doing all that.
Andrew Solomon's 'Love, no matter what'
Through interviewing parents of exceptional children for several years, the author of "Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity" says he has come to understand that everyone is different in some fundamental way, and this core human condition of being different is, ironically, what unites us all.
Solomon explains that all people who love each other struggle to accept each other and grapple with the question, "What's the line between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance?"
Using a number of poignant anecdotes, he helps unpack this question.
Yann Dall'Aglio's 'Love — you're doing it wrong'
Dall'Aglio, a French philosopher and author of "A Rolex at 50: Do you have the right to miss your life?" and "I love you: Is love a has been?," says love is the desire of being desired. But in a world that often favors the self over others, how can people find the tenderness and connection they crave?
It may be easier than you think: "For a couple who is no longer sustained, supported by the constraints of tradition, I believe that self-mockery is one of the best means for the relationship to endure," he says.
In this surprisingly convincing talk, Dall'Aglio explains how acknowledging our uselessness could be the key to sustaining healthy relationships.
Jenna McCarthy's 'What you don't know about marriage'
Fiction and non-fiction author McCarthy writes about relationships, marriage, and parenting in books including "If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon," and in her TED Talk, shares some surprising research on how marriages really work.
One study might even entice husbands to do more housework.
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