What our stories about relationships tell us about how we live now

While so much of the Guardian’s focus in our reporting is on areas of conflict – now more than ever, with wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan – we also like to offer our readers coverage of how people get along with each other in their personal lives. Stories about personal relationships can often tell us a lot about how we live now.

We had a fantastic example this week, in a feature written by two Guardian journalists and best friends, Helen Pidd and Alexandra Topping (pictured above). They wrote honestly (adoringly!) about the joy of female friendship and specifically the difficulty that can arise when one becomes a mother and the other wants to, but doesn’t. As Helen wrote: “Now that Lexy and I can actually talk about all of this, we have reached the following conclusions: that however much we loved each other, there were times when we just were not the right person to be holding the other’s hand. And that there is happiness and joy on both sides of the parenting divide – as well as occasional regret about the path not taken.”

Another powerful recent piece was Gaby Hinsliff’s feature on how families can be torn apart when adult children decide to go no-contact with their parents. Gaby spoke to those on both sides of such a split and found this growing trend isn’t “just a series of conflicts between individual children and parents, but a broader clash between generations with different expectations of relationships”.

From decades-long family relationships to first dates, some of our most beloved regular series focus on the way we coexist with friends, families and partners. Our How we met column does what it says on the tin. This week Marc and Lori from Illinois explained how they were ahead of the curve regarding online dating by at least a decade: they found each other in 1995 on an early web bulletin board for Jewish singles. Guardian Australia’s The moment I knew looks at the important next step: interviewing people about the point when they realised they were in love.

For many readers, the advice of Annalisa Barbieri in the Guardian and Philippa Perry in the Observer magazine is a weekly beacon of sanity when it comes to dealing with personal and relationship problems. Eleanor Gordon-Smith’s Leading questions takes a philosophical approach to advice, on relationships and otherwise, while Pamela Stephenson Connolly’s long-running Sexual healing column doesn’t mess around when it comes to helping to solve readers’ more intimate relationship issues. (And for more on that, try This is how we do it, in which each half of a couple gives a frank assessment of their sex life.)

And finally, of course, there’s our much imitated, but never bettered Blind date column. This week’s date, between the smitten Sarah and Max, was a classic. My favourite bit? Max’s first thoughts: “As Sarah walked into the restaurant. I thought: ‘Please be her, please be her!’”

See you next week.

Dan Sabbagh, Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer reported on this week’s further ratcheting of tensions between Russia and the west after Joe Biden and Keir Starmer allowed Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into Russia. Russia retaliated on Thursday by launching an experimental ballistic missile into Ukraine, which Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was a “a clear and severe escalation” in the war, and called for strong worldwide condemnation. Putin’s latest move, wrote Andrew on Friday, was a “warning to the west before the second age of Trump”.

Amelia Hill’s exclusive on the kafkaesque story of a mistake on a British birth certificate – leaving a baby girl accidentally registered as male – was a fascinating glimpse into how bureaucracy can be so inflexible.

Nesrine Malik unpicked how the broken promises of modernity and neoliberalism led to a Trump victory and, for The Long Wave newsletter, she had a fascinating conversation with Lauren N. Williams, deputy editor for race and equity in the US, interrogating how Black people voted in the US election. Sam Wolfson wrote a persuasive piece analysing the perils of underestimating the power of the “Rogansphere” (podcasts like Joe Rogan’s and Theo Von’s), while Jonathan Yerushalmy tried to unpick the growing global political divide between young men and women.

As Donald Trump gears up to deliver on his grim promise to enact the “largest deportation operation in American history”, Maanvi Singh interviewed Arizona migrants, community leaders and law enforcement who are bracing for mass arrests, a rise in racial profiling and harsher policing, after the state voted to pass a “secure our border” act.

As Cop29 creaked towards a conclusion, our coverage of a group of influential climate policy experts saying the Cop summits were “no longer fit for purpose” ignited a wider debate on the effectiveness of the UN summit. Our climate crisis in charts showed how 2024 has broken several unwelcome records. Environment editor Damian Carrington analysed new data showing that at least 24 previously impossible heatwaves had struck communities around the world.

Mazyouna, the critically ill 12-year-old girl, whose story we told last week in an article about children being denied permission to be evacuated from Gaza for medical treatment, has now been allowed to leave with her mother and younger sister following our initial report. She has been taken to Jordan and will travel to the US for life-saving surgery.

Zoe Williams compared and contrasted the two Gladiator movies – 2000’s original and 2024’s sequel – and noted how the films, both directed by Ridley Scott, present such different versions of masculinity, “not just in terms of the actors’ vibes, but how they deal with women, geopolitics and battle.”

Kate McCusker brought some joy into a cold, dark November with a deep dive into the weird world of the Christmas romcom. It involves sexy snowmen, doppelganger duchesses and amnesiac heiresses … as well as some insights into the nature of the streaming economy.

David Squires has been bringing his hilarious football cartoons to the Guardian for a decade. This week he shared his favourite creations from his weekly strip including Lego Arteta, Emo José Mourinho and Shoegaze Roy Hodgson (… if you know, you know).

I loved science correspondent Hannah Devlin’s story as she accompanied Britain’s first female Esa astronaut, Rosemary Coogan, on a zero-gravity flight. “On landing,” wrote Hannah, “I consciously feel the Earth’s pull for the first time. In total I’ve spent 11 minutes in weightlessness. It is a short but breathtaking glimpse of life beyond the confines of our home planet.”

One of my favourite writers, Rebecca Solnit, wrote an essay about a kind of “zombie apocalypse” happening in her home town of San Francisco, where everyone is so plugged in to their smartphones and screens and noise-cancelling headphones that they don’t notice or care for each other at all.

One more thing … This week I went to see the new exhibition at Tate Britain, The 80s: Photographing Britain. It’s an exuberant show stuffed full with unforgettable images. This week we ran a special edition of our regular feature My best shot, inspired by the collection.

Cook this | Angela Hartnett’s parsnip tarte tatin

If you’re cooking a Thanksgiving meal, or planning your Christmas menu, this starter is bound to impress; it’s richly coloured and beautifully caramelised, with a sprinkling of warming spice on top. You can also substitute carrots or onions and fennel to suit your taste.

Listen to this | What’s behind the escalating situation in Ukraine?

From Russia’s use of ballistic missiles to its drafting in of North Korean troops, in this episode of Today in Focus Dan Sabbagh examines whether the rapid escalation in Ukraine could signal the beginning of the end of the conflict.

Watch this | We Did Not Consent – a Guardian documentary

Three women targeted in the UK by undercover police officers – with whom they had relationships in a scandal exposed by the Guardian and dubbed the “spy cops” – are reclaiming the narrative and telling their own stories in a film that features re-enactments of the key moments from their lives. Directed by Dorothy Allen-Pickard.

The Guardian’s crosswords and Wordiply are here to keep you entertained throughout the weekend.