A good friend just told me that the key to a successful marriage was to argue naked! I’m gonna do that from now on, when that rarely happens.
Ha, seems like good advice :)
Men who… were considering just a fling with a woman were more likely to peek at a picture of her body than men who were thinking about a long-term relationship, the research found. The guys considering a long-term relationship showed a preference for looking at her face.
Men who want a fling, she said, may be subconsciously looking to a woman’s waistline to judge the woman’s current fertility. Men looking for long-term partners, on the other hand, may be more interested in her face for clues of reproductive potential in the future.
Previous studies have noted that a woman’s face reflects her youth and health, which can affect her future reproductive abilities. Lots of wrinkles might suggest she has few childbearing years left, for example. The body, on the other hand, holds clues as to how fertile a woman is right now. Waist-to-hip ratio can signal whether a woman is already pregnant, and maybe even whether she is currently ovulating, according to previous research.
I wish this had a click through to the story. Are these all the countries over 10%? What is the percent in the US? Germany? Russia? Central and South American Countries?Infographic: Percentage of Women Who Believe It’s OK for Husbands to Hit Them
Source: UNICEF Childinfo (via thesocietypages.org)
I knew that women in developing countries were more likely to put the blame on themselves every time they were hit by their husbands so I was initially expecting high numbers. But 90% in Jordan?! 81% in Ethiopia? Anything over 0% is already way too many women believing that it’s ok for their husbands to hit them. We don’t tolerate it here because most of us are educated enough to know better but… wow.
(via chairolyn)
‘Every fifth divorce in US involves Facebook…Flirty messages and photographs found on Facebook are increasingly being cited as proof of unreasonable behaviour or irreconcilable differences. Many cases revolve around social media users who get back in touch with old flames they hadn’t heard from in many years, the Daily Mail reported.
While about 8% of men and 7% of women identified themselves as gay, many more than that reported engaging in some type of same-sex sex within their lifetimes. … 14% of men ages 40 to 49 and 15% of men ages 50 to 59 reported ever having received oral sex from another man in their lifetimes. … Similar findings apply to women: among adult women ages 18 to 29, the rate of ever giving oral sex to another woman ranges from about 8% to 14%; the rate of receiving oral sex ranges from about 8% to 17%.
When we were hunter gatherers, serial monogamy was the norm, and it wasn’t until the agricultural revolution, when the concept of having possessions became common that marriage became prevalent…In other words marriage was tied to the idea of having possessions.
Divorce Not Always Bad for Kids | LiveScience
Children of parents who fight a lot yet stay married experience more conflict in their own adult relationships than children of parents who fight and do get a divorce. “The basic implication is, ‘Don’t stay together for the sake of the children if you’re in a high conflict marriage,’” said study researcher Constance Gager, of Montclair State University in New Jersey.
The strange thing is, being bombarded with visions of beautiful women (or for women, socially powerful men) doesn’t make us think our partners are less physically attractive. It doesn’t change our perception of our partner. Instead, by some sleight of mind, it distorts our idea of the pool of possibilities. These images make us think there’s a huge field of alternatives. It changes our estimate of the number of people who are available to us as potential mates. In changing our sense of the possibilities, it prods us to believe we could always do better, keeping us continually unsatisfied.
Another related point from the same article:
There appears to be something about male teachers who come in daily contact with teenaged women that increases the likelihood of being currently divorced or separated,” Kanazawa says. He adds that these men remain unmarried because any adult women they might meet and date after their divorce would pale in comparison to the pretty young things constantly around them.
States allowing biological first cousins to marry: California, Illinois, New York, Vermont. States NOT allowing biological first cousins to marry: Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, West Virginia.
Well I’ll be.
Inside A Psychopath's Brain: The Sentencing Debate : NPR
All psychopaths claim they feel terrible about their crimes for the benefit of the parole board.
“But then you ask them, ‘What do you mean, you feel really bad?’ And Brian will look at you and go, ‘What do you mean, what does it mean?’ They look at you like, ‘Can you give me some help? A hint? Can I call a friend?’ They have no way of really getting at that at all,” Kiehl says.
Kiehl says the reason people like Dugan cannot access their emotions is that their physical brains are different. And he believes he has the brain scans to prove it.
most psychopaths do not differ from normal subjects in the way they rate the photos: Both psychopaths and the average person rank the KKK with a burning cross as a moral violation. But there’s a key difference: Psychopaths’ brains behave differently from that of a nonpsychopathic person. When a normal person sees a morally objectionable photo, his limbic system lights up. This is what Kiehl calls the “emotional circuit,” involving the orbital cortex above the eyes and the amygdala deep in the brain. But Kiehl says when psychopaths like Dugan see the KKK picture, their emotional circuit does not engage in the same way.
the emotional circuit may be what stops a person from breaking into that house or killing that girl. But in psychopaths like Dugan, the brakes don’t work. Kiehl says psychopaths are a little like people with very low IQs who are not fully responsible for their actions. … “What if I told you that a psychopath has an emotional IQ that’s like a 5-year-old?”
yeah, ha, the first thought that came to mind is that after having dated a few unemotional people, I mean they know to say they’re sorry or they’re sad or this or that, you don’t always feel it from them….I know it’s nowhere near the same, but it just triggered that thought.
The Marriage Myth: Why do so many couples divorce? Maybe they just don't know how to be married.
More than 40 percent of first marriages end in divorce. The divorce rate for second marriages is above 60 percent, and it’s higher than 70 percent for folks making their third walk down the aisle.
they all argue about the same subjects — money, kids, time and sex chief among them — and that for the average couple, 69 percent of those disagreements will be irreconcilable. A morning bird and a night owl won’t ever fully eliminate their differences; nor will a spendthrift and a penny pincher. What distinguished satisfied couples from the miserable ones, he found, was how creatively and constructively they managed those differences.
If every couple has about the same number of disagreements, people who leave a marriage because of irreconcilable differences are likely to find themselves arguing just as much in their next marriage. The wallpaper might be different and the specifics may vary, but the frustrations will feel awfully familiar.
If marriage education teaches couples only one thing, Sollee says, it’s how to listen. Not just that they should do it but how to listen— “with a full and open heart, in a way that they cannot doubt that you love them.”
The method George and Mindee were taught involves parroting. One explains at length how he or she feels, and the other paraphrases the sentiment, going back and forth until they are on exactly the same page.
Even if they don’t resolve the issue, “it’s always about being heard,”
all things being equal — children raised in two-parent homes fare, on average, better than those who grow up in single-parent households. They have more economic stability, are less likely to exhibit behavioral problems or abuse drugs and alcohol, and are more likely to finish high school and go on to college.
“It made sense to start to think, ‘What would government do if it were interested in preventing family breakup, and how would it go about doing that?’”
So for almost five years now, the federal government has been spending tax dollars trying to teach couples how to be better at marriage.
In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, they found that of married Army couples who took their Strong Bonds program, 2.03 percent were divorced after one year. Out of a control group of couples who didn’t take a marriage education course, 6.2 percent were divorced in the same period. What’s impossible to know: whether the couples who volunteered for the retreat were in a better place to begin with, or whether the skills they acquired made the difference.
Among the lessons taught: a new way to listen.
Heidi was doubtful of the technique but decided in their hotel room that night, “Okay, let me see if this stuff works. I’m going to be quiet.”
And Kirk talked for 20 minutes, uninterrupted. In the history of their relationship, that had never happened before.
“It felt like a breath,” he recalls. “Like when you’re drowning and you get a fresh breath.”
Heidi’s habit of interrupting Kirk was done was with the intention of advancing the conversation, making him see what she really meant. But it happened so frequently that Kirk says he “would just close up and keep it all inside.”
So that night in New Mexico, when he finally spoke and she finally listened, “We got things off our chest that were weighing down on us,” he says. “Things we didn’t talk about — ever.”
“I understood sooooooo much more,” she recalls.Great article. Convinced me there should be funding for marriage education, and that in general, people can be taught to be more successful at relationships - I’m sure that listening effectively is 1 of several skills that should be taught. This makes me more convinced that emotional intelligence should really be taught in schools…
Survey: When a Romantic Relationship Ends, Men Often Feel More Isolated, Heartbroken than Women (Time)
While women are often characterized as the more emotionally sensitive of the sexes, new research published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior suggests that, when it comes to the heartache following a failed romance, men may actually suffer more than women.
The research, conducted by sociologists at Wake Forest University and Florida State University and highlighted by the Telegraph, was based on survey responses from 1,000 unmarried men and women between the ages of 18 to 23. The researchers say the results indicate that when relationships fail it tends to have a greater impact on men’s own sense of self worth, and because men are less likely to confide in other male friends, this feeling is compounded by a sense of isolation. Women, in contrast, tend to have close friends who they confide in, and whom they can turn to for support.
Responding to the results, Melanie Bartley, a sociologist at University College London, told the Telegraph:
“Young women do tend to have wider relationships with friends and family by this time to rely on. Young men don’t tend to confide in each other and that can make them feel isolated. Their friendship groups are more competitive than nurturing. They are just as sensitive as women but it’s a matter of whether they feel valued.”
The researchers also found that men and women’s reported coping strategies differed significantly. While women would look to friends for consolation after a break-up, men were more likely to say they sought refuge in drugs and alcohol.
Is the Best Sex Sex With Somebody You Marry? This Study Says No
“Only 48 percent of married women say the guy they locked it down with is the guy who brought it the best in the sack. ”
A depressing new study that depressingly found that 63 percent of married women would rather get extra sleep or catch up on their reading than have sex with their husbands… (full article)
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