Long-term, stable marriages have at least five positive exchanges for each negative exchange. Drop below that, and you’re in trouble. This comes from one of the best known marriage researchers, John Gottman. He has a remarkable track record of predicting the state of your marriage four years later based on watching only a 15-minute conversation about some problem the two of you face. What...
Another upside to being married: It’s the rational thing to do. In MIT Professor Dan Ariely’s new book, Predictably Irrational, he shows how irrationally we’ll behave to keep our options open, whether it’s TV surfing, paying extra for features we don’t even know if we have any use for, or pursuing interesting opportunities that distract us from our goals. Professor...
The news from psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University yesterday, according to the Washington Post: Happily married people have lower blood pressure than unhappily married people or singles, even those with a supportive social network.
Better yet, blood pressure dips even lower at night in the happily married, reducing their risk of cardiovascular problems.
NY Governor David Paterson and his wife made some tough public admissions of infidelity as he starts his service as governor of the state where Eliot Spitzer just stepped down. “I betrayed a commitment to my wife several years ago…both of us committed acts of infidelity.” It’s an awful thing to confess to, and many cannot understand how a decent man or woman could be unfaithful or how...
Politicians can wield a great deal of public power, but it is often how they conduct their personal relationships that takes it all away in an instant. People are human. They make really foolish mistakes, especially when it comes to feeding their very human desires for love, respect, intimacy, and sex, mistakes almost as shocking to them as to the rest of us. The preventative medicine is not fear...
