This longitudinal study examined associations between perceptions of partner responsiveness and relationship satisfaction of each partner (new parents) across the first 2 years of a chronically stressful life event-the transition to parenthood. Responsiveness indexes the degree to which partners respond to each other with understanding, validation, and care. Consistent with prior work, lower ratings of responsiveness receipt and provision predicted declines in relationship satisfaction across the transition. These effects, however, were moderated by parental stress, such that among new parents who reported experiencing higher levels of parental stress, providing higher levels of responsiveness to partners was associated with declines in relationship satisfaction. Conversely, under lower stress, relationship satisfaction benefited from higher levels of both providing and receiving responsiveness. All of these effects held when controlling for both partners' levels of agreeableness, neuroticism, support-seeking, income, and work-family conflict. Post hoc moderation analyses revealed that high stress partners who reported providing higher responsiveness reported larger declines in relationship satisfaction if they scored higher in attachment avoidance or had more negative social exchanges with their partner. We discuss these novel stress moderation results in light of the need to and meaning of engaging in responsiveness, especially during chronically stressful periods of life.

In recent years, positive psychology and mindfulness practices have increasingly been integrated in neo-liberal organisations to promote individuals’ well-being. Critics have argued that these practices actually function as management techniques, encouraging individuals’ self-governance and acceptance of the status quo despite adverse contexts. This article extends this argument by unpacking ways in which such ‘well-being’ programmes are also gendered, having been formulated around neo-liberal hegemonic masculine values of rationality, individualism and competition, and further masculinised through integration into gendered organisations. The argument is presented that this process produces a neo-liberal version of hegemonic masculinity that the author calls ‘mindful masculinity’. This theoretical argument is illustrated through examples of specific ways in which ‘well-being’ practices have been reworked in strongly masculine settings to promote neo-liberal hegemonic masculine goals under a symbolic veneer of spirituality and mental health.

This qualitative study explored the question, “What kinds of interactions did people experience as meaningful connections with others during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Unites States?” Eighty-eight participants completed an online survey, 3 to 7 weeks following the World Health Organization’s declaration of global pandemic. Participants completed open-ended questions about social interactions they experienced as meaningful connections with people of three levels of familiarity. Thematic analysis of participant responses identified four overarching themes: openness to the other, affirmation of the self, emotional uplift, and meeting of basic needs. A secondary research question explored, “In what ways did people perceive the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as affecting how meaningful connections were motivated, enacted, and experienced?” The context of the pandemic enhanced the meaning of social connection, offered a common struggle to connect over, and motivated prosociality. This study offers a descriptive window into the interactions experienced as meaningful connections in the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic and may usefully inform future research and applied work promoting social connections in current and future collective crises.

Forgiveness, although a difficult task, allows those who have experienced injustice and injury to move beyond the pain of anger and resentment to a state of greater well-being. Yet it is possible that genuine forgiveness in the face of major transgressions may most readily occur when victims have already gained mastery with the forgiveness process by practicing it in daily life. This article proposes a short forgiveness practice that allows individuals to gain experience forgiving minor transgressions on a routine basis. Although other forgiveness practices exist, this practice is unique in that it is informed by a philosophically and empirically grounded understanding of the forgiveness process, and is meant to strengthen ones' ability to forgive in the face of more challenging injuries and injustice that may arise in the future. Individuals engage in this practice by reflecting upon minor instances of transgression from their daily life and working through six stages, each drawn from research on forgiveness therapy and selfcompassion, to move from resentment to compassion. A case study is provided to showcase one individual's experience engaging in a single iteration of routine forgiveness practice in the aftermath of a minor transgression.

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