In successful relationships, both partners feel emotionally secure, connected, and comfortable being themselves around each other. But for many of us, romantic relationships can bring out our deepest insecurities.

As a Harvard-trained psychologist who works with couples, I often tell people that emotional security in a relationship starts with seeing yourself as worthy of love, and trusting that your partner is accepting, caring, and truly committed — through the highs and the lows.

Couples who truly trust each other use seven phrases every day, and they should be relationship goals for all of us.

Feeling safe in a relationship means never having to hide parts of yourself. You are comfortable being vulnerable when talking about painful or difficult topics because you trust that your partner will respond with compassion, not judgement.

Similar phrases:

• “Thank you for loving me as I am.”
• “I appreciate that I can be myself with you.”

Trust is the foundation of emotional security. You believe that your partner’s words and actions align, whether you’re together or apart. You know who they are and you believe they have your best interest in mind.

Similar phrases:

• “Thank you for being respectful of me and our relationship.”
• “We’re a team, and I trust that you want what’s best for the both of us.”

Even the most emotionally secure couples have conflict. What differentiates them is how they handle it. They don’t panic or threaten to leave during disagreements because they trust that the relationship can weather the storms.

Similar phrases:

• “One tough phase doesn’t mean it’s over for us.”
• “Let’s figure this out together.”

People who trust their partners don’t feel threatened during time apart. Alone time feels natural. They respect each other’s need for independence, knowing that it strengthens the relationship.

Similar phrases:

• “I’m glad you’re making time for yourself.”
• “Thanks for giving me the space when I need it, too.”

Missing someone doesn’t mean you’re clingy — it means you’re connected. Even when you support each other’s personal space, you still look forward to being together.

Similar phrases:

• “Being apart helps me realize how grateful I am for you.”
• “I’m excited to see you when you get home.”

Secure relationships make room for hard conversations. When something feels off, you’re not afraid to speak up because you believe your partner will be nurturing and listen with care.

Similar phrases:

• “There’s something I’d like to check in about.”
• “I’ve been feeling a little off and I want to make sure we’re okay.”

Looking forward to the future, whether it’s date night or a shared life goal, indicates mutual investment in the relationship. You see your partner in your long-term vision, and they see you in theirs.

Similar phrases:

• “Can we go over our schedules?”
• “I’m really looking forward to our trip.”

Sharing intimate information about ourselves with our partners isn’t easy. It makes us vulnerable — and if we aren’t met with empathy, it can really hurt.

But the goal is to be in a relationship where we can be fully seen, fully known, and fully accepted. It doesn’t happen overnight, though. It requires conscious effort, and it means learning to accept yourself first, seeing your partner for who they truly are, and committing to growing together over time.

Dr. Cortney S. Warren, PhD, is a board-certified psychologist and author of the new book “Letting Go of Your Ex.” She specializes in romantic relationships, addictive behavior, and honesty. She received her clinical training at Harvard Medical School after earning her doctorate in clinical psychology from Texas A&M University. Follow her on Instagram @DrCortneyWarren or Twitter @DrCortneyWarren.

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At 66 years old, one Sherman Oaks, California-based mom thought she’d be enjoying an empty nest with her husband. Instead, she’s sharing her home with an unexpected roommate: her 27-year-old daughter.

Since their 27-year-old moved back home in early 2024, the mother, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her daughter’s identity, says she and her husband are spending close to $5,000 a month covering all of her daughter’s living expenses. This includes up to $1,500 on food, $700 on transportation and $400 on her pet cat, the mother says.

Because of the increased expenses, she says they’re no longer going on vacation this year, and her husband, a radiologist, may have to delay retirement.  

“We were not planning on this kind of expenditure at this point of our lives,” the mother says. “The reason we do it is because we don’t want to see her on the street.”

The couple join a growing number of parents who say their finances have been affected by children aged 18 to 35 moving back home. One survey published in May by financial services provider Thrivent found that nearly 40% of U.S. parents say supporting their adult children has impacted their savings goals — the highest percentage since the survey began four years ago.

The parents from Sherman Oaks say their relationship with their daughter has become so strained that they’ve turned to Kim Muench, a parenting coach who specializes in young adults, for guidance.

Muench says “a good majority” of her clients have been affected financially by their adult children living at home. Many parents aren’t traveling like they typically would, are pushing off retirement and are forgoing other self-care expenses.

“Parents sometimes hesitate to get help for themselves and invest in their health … because they’re already spending more than they would like to support their adult or emerging adult children,” she says.

While using short-term savings to support adult children may mean missing a vacation or not going out to dinner as often, dipping into long-term savings or delaying retirement can lead to financial challenges later in life — especially if health issues or age make it difficult to keep working, experts say.

Some decisions, however, aren’t always driven by a lack of money: “I would say 80% is emotional, 20% is financial from the parents,” Muench says.

Many of her clients forgo vacations because they don’t trust their kids to stay home alone, Muench says.

The father from Sherman Oaks says that retirement wouldn’t just mean a loss of income, it would also mean losing access to his employer-sponsored health insurance — which currently costs the couple close to $600 a month for their daughter.

“At this point, I was hoping to do a lot more travelling … we’ve really put that on the back burner,” the mother says. “I thought my husband and I would have the house to ourselves with the dogs, and we wouldn’t be worried sick about her all the time.”

While many parents are happy to care for their adult children when they first move back home, there’s usually an expectation that the move will be temporary, Muench says. However, a lack of communication between parents and children, especially around finances, can often leave parents feeling stuck in a long-term living arrangement.

“When their son or daughter is not taking [financial responsibility] on incrementally, they actually get very worried that they will be financially providing for the rest of their lives,” Muench says.

Muench says parents can work with their adult children by having open, calm conversations to define financial boundaries together.

Instead of taking drastic measures, Muench suggests parents introduce gradual financial boundaries to help young adults build responsibility with support. Ask them to start small, she says, such as taking over their phone bills or putting a weekly portion of money away in a separate savings account to mimic paying rent.

“It takes consistent conversations, because it’s probably not going to happen in the first conversation,” Muench says. “And it takes an emotional maturity level on both the parents and the emerging adult side to figure out how they can work together.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include additional details about the daughter from Sherman Oaks, California’s living expenses.

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Ten years ago, Amy Shack Egan agreed to help a friend plan her wedding. She couldn’t have imagined that it would inspire her to launch two businesses — or that Kerry Washington would become her lead investor.

At the time of that first wedding, Egan was freshly out of college and working three jobs to stay afloat in New York City.

“I was like a lot of early 20-somethings: frustrated about feeling really ambitious, but not sure what path I was supposed to go down,” Egan recalls.

While helping her friend navigate wedding logistics, she found that she had a knack for event planning — and an unexpected interest in the wedding industry.

Weddings quickly became Egan’s side hustle: that year, she planned three more weddings as a freelancer. The next year, she planned six weddings. By the following year, in which she booked 25 weddings, Egan decided to focus on wedding planning full time.

That’s the origin story of Egan’s first business: Modern Rebel, an ‘unconventional’ wedding planning company she founded in New York City in 2015.

As a former gender studies major, Egan, now 33, says that she had never imagined herself entering the often hyper-traditional wedding industry, but the idea of “rewriting the rules” intrigued her.

“Sometimes the best people to start a new business and shake up an outdated space are the people that go into it almost reluctantly — which is definitely how I did,” Egan says.

In the ensuing decade, Modern Rebel has planned over 500 weddings, which Egan calls “love parties,” and expanded from a one-woman show to a team of “really talented people.”

Still, she knew that there was even more room to grow within the industry – even if that meant taking a step back from wedding planning.

Over 80% of couples plan their weddings by themselves, according to a 2025 survey by The Knot.

However, it can be difficult for couples to manage logistics while enjoying their big day, so many look to hire a wedding coordinator, Egan says: “Somebody who can step in a few weeks out, get to know the event, and then be their stage manager.”

In Egan’s experience, a good wedding coordinator can be hard to find. Online wedding marketplaces often have subscription fees and can be difficult to navigate, she says, so many couples resort to finding wedding coordinators through word of mouth.

“For a lot of reasons, there were couples reaching out to Modern Rebel saying, ‘hey, who do you trust? Who do you recommend?’” Egan says. “I realized that this could be its own business, and it actually could be bigger than Modern Rebel.”

In February 2025, Egan officially launched Cheersy, a digital platform that connects couples with pre-vetted wedding coordinators.

It’s the kind of company Egan wishes had existed back when she was a freelancer, she says.

“I have been in their shoes,” she says. “I have been in the trenches with them. I respect and value the service, and I see how important it is.”

Her experience with Modern Rebel has helped her understand both sides of the wedding marketplace, she says: “I’m not your typical tech CEO that’s just focused on the bottom line. I have a lot of respect for both sides of this equation.”

Becoming a tech entrepreneur involved a lot of learning for Egan — mostly the hard way, she says. She had no prior fundraising experience when she launched Cheersy’s pre-seed round, which concluded in January 2025.

“I just cast that net out to some really incredible people in my network,” Egan says. “I said, I don’t know what I don’t know, and if there’s someone in your network that I should know, please introduce me.”

Through “somebody who knew somebody,” Egan found herself discussing Cheersy with actress Kerry Washington’s director of social impact at a dinner party.

“She said, you’ve got to meet Kerry. She’s going to love this,” Egan recalls.

Pitching Cheersy to Washington was “surreal,” she says.

“When I met Kerry, it was an immediate ‘yes’ the first time we had a meeting,” she says. “For her to come in early and say ‘I believe in this, I back this’ was so validating.”

Washington resonated with Cheersy’s mission that “all couples are seen and celebrated,” Egan says.

Washington, who became the lead investor for Cheersy’s pre-seed round, is just one of the company’s high-profile investors. Others include Elizabeth Cutler, co-founder of SoulCycle; Jennifer Gilbert, founder of event planning company Save the Date; and Christina Tosi, founder and owner of Milk Bar.

By the end of the pre-seed round, Cheersy had raised $550,000 in financing, all from angel investors.

Egan had initially planned to start Cheersy’s seed round in fall 2025, but she and her husband John received unexpected news in January: after a year of struggling with secondary infertility, Egan was pregnant with twins.

“I think anyone, even if they’re not an entrepreneur, is like, how the hell do you raise two babies at the same time?” she says. She and John also share four-year-old son Arlo.

Since her due date is in August, Egan decided to launch another small pre-seed round of fundraising in the summer, and pushed seed funding to 2026.

Planning around a pregnancy is “not something that every founder has to deal with,” she says, “but it’s a unique challenge, and I’m up for it.”

In the meantime, she’s working on growing Cheersy’s customer base, building connections with vendors, and preparing for another round of fundraising.

Creating a startup “isn’t a straight line,” Egan says, but she’s using every bit of her experience in the wedding industry to build Cheersy.

“I always wondered why the universe made me a wedding planner,” she says. “I look now at where I am with Cheersy, and where we’re going with it, and I feel like the universe was giving me a front row seat to couples in this beautiful way.”

 Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Egan’s husband’s first name. His name is John.

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When Shao Chun Chen was laid off from his dream job at Google in early 2024, he was forced to take a break and rethink how he wanted his life to look like. Suddenly, he was no longer obligated to stay in his home country of Singapore, where he had built his entire career.

“When the layoff happened, I was [reflecting], you know, feeling sorry for myself,” the 39-year-old told CNBC Make It. “Then I asked myself: ’Hey, let’s flip it around. How can this be a positive thing?”

“I wanted to try something different, and I’ve always enjoyed Thailand,” said Chen.

He was drawn to the diverse environments that it offered, from bustling cities to serene beaches and mountains. In addition, he liked how the Asian country had visas and policies that were transparent and friendly to foreigners.

Ultimately, Chen said that his layoff allowed him to get out of his comfort zone and experiment with building out his dream life, and as part of this lifestyle re-design, he and his wife moved to Chiang Mai in November 2024.

Today, the two reside in a 600-square-foot one-bedroom luxury condo which costs 15,000 Thai baht (about USD $460) a month. The condo came fully furnished, and he pays about $20 a month for utilities, and about $15 a month on WiFi.

Chen said he is currently paying for his unit on a month-by-month basis, so his rent would be cheaper if he commits to a longer lease. Previously, his 500-square-foot condo in Singapore cost about $2,500 a month — more than five times the amount he is paying currently in Thailand.

His current condo offers amenities such as a gym, a small pilates studio, a co-working space, multiple swimming pools and a water slide.

Since getting laid off from his corporate job, Chen works for himself by creating educational content on YouTube and from his coaching business, through which he says he can charge $500 an hour, depending on the client.

He has also made money by teaching as an adjunct lecturer at the National University of Singapore, which required him to supercommute between Singapore and Thailand once a week. However, he is now taking a break from this gig, he said.

Additionally, Chen has built a seven-figure portfolio over the course of about a decade, according to documents viewed by CNBC Make It, which has afforded him financial independence.

Chen noted that life in Thailand is much slower and “zero stress”, unlike how mentally taxing it was in Singapore, he said. This has allowed him to cut down on expenses.

“When I was in Singapore … [my job] paid very well, but the lifestyle was very hectic. I was working like 12 to 14 hours a day,” he said. Due to the high level of stress he experienced, Chen would cope by spending money on things like therapy, spa visits and drinking on weekends.

“The funny thing is that now that I’m here, these things are way more affordable, but I don’t even desire [them],” he said. “My head space is completely different.”

Today, on top of using the gym in his condo, Chen said he occasionally pays for massages, which cost about $15 an hour.

“I find that I actually save more money, even though I don’t work as much,” said Chen.

Though he is very happy living in Thailand, he would consider moving back to Singapore if the right opportunity opened up, he said. For now, he is living presently and enjoying the life that Thailand has to offer.

“The previous version of myself … I valued everything on efficiency and ROI,” said Chen. “But then here, people don’t think that way. They may not have as much as a safety net … but they seem to enjoy their day to day, and they actually have time to sit down and enjoy their coffee and have time to read a book.”

“These are some of the simple pleasures that I now am able to afford, which doesn’t actually cost a lot,” he said.

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For over four years, I’ve been a professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Before that, I worked in the corporate world at organizations like Coca-Cola and IBM. 

Recently, for work, I went to Denmark, one of the world’s happiest countries, to teach a course called “Happiness Blueprint.” While there, I discovered what many had learned before me: Hobbies are integral to life in Denmark. 

From cycling to sewing, I watched Danes find joy in the everyday outside of work. When I returned to the U.S., I thought hobbies could be the answer to help me take a break from my Type-A brain. Last year, I decided to put that theory to the test.

I ended up trying 17 hobbies over the course of one year — baking, cold plunging, collage-making, embroidery, golf, home DIY, horseback riding, jewelry making, mahjong, ornament making, painting, pickleball, pottery, rock climbing, sewing, tennis, and woodworking.

I came away from my experiment, stronger, braver, and more confident. After a year, I was fundamentally changed. Here’s how:

To make space for my hobby experiment, I had to find time — something I assumed I didn’t have as a busy working mom. Surprisingly, there were pockets of time everywhere, particularly once I gave up my evening habit of watching TV while half-working and doomscrolling on a second screen.

When your hands are covered in flour, holding a paintbrush, or gripping a climbing wall, your phone is simply unavailable. I realized I had more agency and less stress when I was putting my energy towards learning new skills, rather than getting pulled under by an algorithm on social media.

I loved woodworking, but it comes with a hefty startup cost and isn’t compatible with small kids underfoot. So, I wrote it off. Ironically, a friend of a friend who’d heard about my experiment invited me to his woodshop, and a few months later, I gave woodworking another shot. 

This time, instead of feeling overwhelmed, I realized woodworking is a “not-right-now” hobby for me. I can picture a future where the kids are older, we’ve stocked the garage with tools, and we’re building bookshelves for our dream library together.

Try hobbies even if they don’t fit your current season of life. You can bookmark them for later.

As a mother to two young kids, one of the most triggering questions in my life is, “What are we eating?” For me, anything in the kitchen is considered work. 

But when I spent time with Sophie, a senior at Emory, I found that each of us finds stress relief from different activities. For her, baking was the furthest thing from work. It helped her decompress from the grind of being a student. 

Indeed, I also found baking to be methodical and soothing. The activity was quiet in a way that my family dinner prep was not, and my efforts led to a delicious treat at the end.

Once I thought about hobbies in this light, I understood that home DIY was a hobby for me, but it was work for others. If you do something consistently and find joy in it, go ahead and call it a hobby! 

For a long time, I had regular manicures, facials, and lash appointments. I thought self-care would make me more balanced, but it created stress from having to be in more places at set times. 

There’s nothing wrong with an occasional trip to the nail salon, but a few months into my experiment, I realized that rather than make one of these appointments in an attempt to soothe my brain, I was redirecting all my energy and free time into my hobbies. 

A general rule that resonates with me is you need one hobby for your brain, one hobby for creativity, and one hobby to keep you in shape. For me that became mahjong, home DIY, and tennis. 

America is facing a loneliness epidemic. But I’ll tell you who isn’t lonely: the hobbyists I met through my experiment. 

When I was invited to try horseback riding, I saw how tightly knit the barn community was. What struck me was people of all ages were brought together by their love of horses. When I spent time with rock-climbers, I heard how they swapped route info so other climbers could be successful. 

Each group of hobbyists has a community and they are actively forming relationships and identities outside of work. My tennis team has about 20 moms. We have something like 53 children under the age of 13 between us.

Being with my teammates is always a reminder that I do have the time to pursue my hobbies.

Every time I asked someone about their hobby, they surprised me. I was once chatting with Emory’s Dean of Admissions, who I knew as a no-nonsense professional, when she shared that her weekends are filled with competitive sailboat racing! 

Once people heard about my experiment, I was freed from making small talk. Instead, I found myself in deep conversation with others, understanding who they were at their core, outside of obligations. 

Thanks to my year of hobbies, I feel like I know the people in my life much better.

All too often, I hear from my former students that they are experiencing burnout. They tell me that as soon as they find balance at work, they will get into a hobby.

Unfortunately, balance doesn’t work like that. It’s not a shiny pebble you find on your way to work. If you want balance, the secret is to get a hobby. You’ll naturally be forced to define your boundaries: as a worker, as a parent, and as an individual. 

My experiment has come to an end, but hobbies are still an integral part of my life. I’m on a tennis team, I have a standing Mahjong game and I’m learning golf alongside my kids. 

The other night, while lying in bed, my 7-year old turned to me and said, “I have so many hobbies.” That’s when I knew, without question, I was modeling something very right.

Marina Cooley is an Assistant Professor in the Practice of Marketing at Emory’s Goizueta Business School and a P&W 40 under 40 Best MBA Professor. She is the author of the Substack ”Professor Off Duty.” To get more of her insights on work/life balance, find Marina on Instagram @marinacooley.

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