A bishop once said, “Your family are God’s gift to you.” A playwright once said, “Your friends are God’s way of apologising for your family.” I must admit at different times in my life I have felt both are true. Whatever your past experience of family life and family relationships — whether it’s been positive, negative, mixed, or barely there — when it comes to romantic relationships, it’s wise to think about the family factor: yours and your partner’s.

Couples who play together stay together. I love this expression and it rings true for me. If two people can sing, dance, paint, hike, bike or swim together, and support each other despite different levels of ability, I believe they are on to a good thing. My husband and I did most of our courting on mountain bikes. I remember one bike ride clearly – I was struggling to get up a steep slope and he was pedalling alongside me, cheering me on. Without his support, I likely would have got off and walked. As it was, I made it to the top without putting my feet down.

When it comes to mountain biking, I can’t compete with my husband – he’s bigger, stronger and faster than me – but we still enjoy biking together. As a laid-back guy, he’s happy to go at my pace, to wait for me now and then and to tell me that I can do it when I think I can’t. He encourages me but doesn’t push me. Not everyone is like this.

We’re all different and have different upbringings and outlooks on life, so it’s completely normal to have disagreements from time to time. Whether you’re in a relationship, or just getting to know someone, a time will come when you’ll find that you’re not on the same page, or you just have different views on a particular matter. What do you do when this happens? Jump ship? Decide the friendship or relationship is worth more than a (small) disagreement? It’s not fun having disagreements with people we care about, but there are some simple ways to disagree without losing the relationship. Here are five tips on how to disagree well.

Online dating has challenges as well as blessings, but what happens when you have unrequited feelings, when you like someone who doesn’t like you back? You find someone online who seems to be perfect, you build up excitement, you meet said person and they seem even better than hoped for, but then it’s like having a relationship with a brick wall. It can feel intense! Nancy Meyers put it well in romcom ‘The Holiday’: “And then, there’s another kind of love: the cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. It’s called unrequited love. Of that I am an expert.” How can you move on from this?

Our world is full of love songs, romantic comedies and stories of people finding that long-desired love. Sometimes we can overlook the importance and value of friendship, and forget how to develop great friendships. I would argue that friendships are actually the most important relationships we have. From our first day of school as a child, to moving to a new city or joining a church, our greatest need is to make connection with other people. Whether we find a partner or not, we all need friends to walk through the ups and downs of life with. How can we grow strong fulfilling friendships that last a lifetime?

An Ancient Greek myth tells of a young man who lost all his chances of love and happiness. Why? Because he caught sight of his own reflection in a pool of water and fell in love with himself, never bothering to look away from his reflection into the eyes of a potential life-partner. This is the legend of Narcissus, from which we derive ‘narcissism’. So how can a story about an Ancient Greek relate to our romantic relationships today? It’s because sometimes in our dating life we have a drive, unconscious or not, to focus too heavily on what in the HR world is called ‘Mini-Me Syndrome’.

When I was single and looking to meet someone, I was clear in my head that I wanted to get married. I wasn’t into dating just for the sake of it, and I would have let anyone that I was interested in or that was interested in me, know, before things got serious. But I’ve often wondered, what if you start to develop feelings for the person you’re talking with and along the line they tell you that they just want to be friends? Or that they’re not looking for a serious relationship leading to marriage? What happens when you want something more? Do you just keep the relationship going, in the hope that they will come round to what you want, or do you end it and count your losses?

When I was dating, I had a pretty clear picture of the man I was looking for, only I couldn’t find him anywhere. I took heart from the Michael Bublé song, “I Just Haven’t Met You Yet”, and continued my search. Still single in my early forties, I finally realised that the person I’d been seeking actually didn’t exist. I saw that I had a rigid idea of my future partner and I wasn’t open to anyone who didn’t fit the mould – and this was thwarting my chances of finding love.