Month: April 2018

Looking for love? Try friendship first

The journal Psychological Science has released some new and very interesting findings on physical attraction in dating and relationships. According to lead researcher Lucy hunt of the University of Texas at Austin, when two individuals have more time to get acquainted before they begin a romantic relationship, factors like personality and compatibility weigh as heavily as physical attraction does when two people start dating right after meeting. Essentially this means that a person’s compatibility and personality can make them more attractive to someone who might not have been attracted to them in a typical meeting and dating situation.

This study was inspired by an interest that Hunt and colleagues Paul Eastwick (UT Austin) and Eli Finkel (Northwestern U) had in understanding why individuals are more likely to be with mates who have similar physical, behavioral, and psychological characteristics, otherwise known as “assortative mating.”

Obviously success in dating comes from one’s desirability, so those who are most physically attractive tend to get the most notice from others who are also considered highly desirable. This study challenged this by looking at how those who are less physically attractive could get an edge on the competition, and it appears they can when they can get to know someone over time and therefore, increase their attractiveness to that person. Looks then take a back seat to all those other qualities.

This is good news for anyone who feels left out in the typical dating scene—always left on the sidelines as your “beautiful” friends get chosen. It also gives more weight to what some relationship experts (myself included) have been saying for years—try to meet people through a passion, sport, activity, interest that you are involved in regularly. It will bring you into contact with like-minded people and give you a lot of face, body, mind, and soul time to connect, get to know one another, learn about what each has to offer, feel a connection and then maybe go for that first date.

Yes, friends can and do become lovers. According to this research, it might be the best way to find that right someone.

Want to read the study? Click here

Getting a “sleep divorce” may help your marriage

Once again the topic of married couples sleeping apart is being discussed. This past week on NBC’s Nightly News there was a segment on it—which was probably prompted in part by the latest research on sleep deprivation and its impact on both our physical and emotional health. Getting a good night’s sleep is critical to longevity, good health, fighting disease and good brain health which impacts our thinking and emotions—not to mention our relationships.

Apparently over 25% of couples are now sleeping in separate beds or rooms. This number is reported to have risen in recent years as the rate of sleep disorders has also risen. There is an epidemic of sleep disorders out there—and they can take the shape of difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, frequent nighttime wakening, apnea, staying up too late, and/or using electronic devices too close to bedtime or turning them on when awakened during the night. All of these will result in not getting enough hours of sleep—especially those quality hours of deep sleep in which we dream heavily and our brains get to work excreting toxins and doing important repairs.

So why are couples separating at night? Sharing a bed can lead to being awakened by a spouse who snores, gets up frequently to go to the bathroom, is sick, is a light sleeper who tosses and turns, who snores, and/or uses their device in bed, impacting their partner with the light it gives off. Some of these can be addressed through changing behavior, but others are more complicated and may require seeing a Doctor and/or sleep specialist to address the problem.

I recommend to couples struggling with this that they begin with an open discussion, sharing ideas on what they can do to resolve it. Everything from having an agreement that the bedroom will be a no electronic zone, to having separate top sheets and blankets, to changing which side of the bed they sleep on, to changing their mattress to something larger or one that accommodates their different sleep needs. If one has apnea and/or is a heavy snorer, seeing a doctor is a must. There are many new treatments that can help sufferers get a better night’s sleep. The key is that the couple can work together on the problem and both be willing to make adjustments. If they decide it just isn’t workable, sleeping apart may be a necessity for them as going without sleep will lead to increased tension, anger and fighting, and could lead to serious marital discord.

If sleeping in separate beds, they can spend some time together in one before falling asleep. If separate rooms, they can spend time together in one in order to spend intimate time together. If weekends allow them to sleep in, they could do overnights if they desire. The key here is not to assume if you or someone you know is sleeping apart that it is the end of the relationship. Intimacy—both emotional and physical is shared throughout the day and there is plenty of time for couples to have it together. The bed is primarily for sleep—and since it’s a critical part of a healthy life, it’s important to ensure your partner is getting theirs. Sweet dreams.

The wisdom of those with age and experience can help prevent divorce

A gerontologist from Cornell University conducted a project that studied nearly 400 Americans who were 65+ years old and had been married for 30+ years . Extensive interviews were designed to capture the wisdom and insights of these people who had managed to overcome the common marital challenges and problems of their shared life and keep their unions intact. Divorced individuals were also interviewed for their experience with breaking-up and how others might avoid the problems they encountered.

The Cornell Marriage Advice Project’s conclusions are detailed in the book by Karl Pillemer, the project’s author. In 30 Lessons for Loving: Advice from the Wisest Americans on Love, Relationships, and marriage; Pillemer presents a list of the most frequently selected lessons for successful, long-term relationships.

Here are his top five lessons:

  • Learn to communicate. Couples who talk things through openly and candidly usually work them out.
  • Get to know a person well before making the commitment. This came even from those who married young and after a short courtship. Their bottom line, you can’t change anyone, ever.
  • See marriage as a lifetime commitment, not just a limited contract that you can break when it’s no longer fun and/or easy like it was. It’s important to hang in there and work through your problems, not walk away.
  • Be a team. If you treat marriage as two individuals, it will be every man for himself when the going gets rough. You are in it together and this attitude leads to mutual support and happiness.
  • Choose someone who is similar to you or compliments you. It’s important that your interests, values, and world view are compatible—especially when it comes to handling money and raising children.

This study is important not just for those who have already walked down the aisle—but for those who are out there dating and in relationships moving towards commitment. It starts with who you choose and why—then it’s using both your head and heart when you make that important choice and once made—staying true to that commitment through thick and thin.

Healthy self-Esteem is at the root of good relationships

It has often been said that we “should work on ourselves first” before making a lifelong commitment to someone else. There is a lot of wisdom in this as we need to be really OK with ourselves first, on the inside, not just the outside, and have a basic readiness that is essential to relationship success.

Researchers Nyla Branscombe from the University of Kansas and Catherine Haslam from the University of Queensland collaborated with lead author Jolanda Jetten on experiments that explored the importance of group membership to a person’s self-esteem.

Their subject group included school children, the elderly, and formerly homeless people from several countries. They found that people who belonged to several groups, regardless of what these groups were–had higher self-esteem. The only caveat was that these people needed to see the groups they were a part of to contribute to their sense of who they are—in other words, these groups offer a sense of identity along with belonging. Most interesting was the finding that having many friends did not correlate with higher self-esteem like being a part of several groups did. Apparently being a part of a group does more for our sense of self than just our interpersonal relationships do. So much for the old belief that having many friends makes us well-adjusted and raises our self-esteem.

According to the researchers, group membership offers people meaning, connection, support and a sense of control over their lives. Certainly helps to explain how important group identity is to a developing adolescent and why kids will gravitate to ANY group, even one that is seen negatively, rather than risking having no association or identity.

This also defines an old belief that somehow self-esteem is something we just possess or not. The good news is that anyone can raise theirs by seeking out groups that offer them something valuable and actively participating in them. It has been shown in previous studies that people who feel a part of something larger live happier, healthier lives than those who are isolated. Makes a lot of sense.

All this points to the importance for anyone in any relationship stage to stay connected to others outside of your primary relationship and family. Peer networks that grow from work relationships, shared passions, places of worship, community causes, or anything that brings people together and helps unite them is good for us. It appears that old adage has real wisdom—“No man is an island.”

Tempted to cheat? Get a better job

Christin Munsch from the University of Connecticut is a sociologist and author of a new study on the economics of sexual infidelity. In a nutshell, her research found that the greater the income gap between what a couples makes, the more likely it is that one of them will have an affair. Not really surprising is that when the woman is the primary earner, the likelihood of infidelity s higher than if the man earns more or is the sole breadwinner. Ms. Munsch calls this “masculine overcompensation.” Put in simple terms, men have issues when their wives are the primary breadwinners. Guess most of us knew this instinctively. Guys don’t like being dependent on women and this study shows it can lead to them seeking other ways to feel good about themselves.

Women also are more likely to have an affair if their spouse earns much more money than they do or is the sole breadwinner, and men who earn a high income and are the sole provider also have affairs more often than, say, guys who earn less and/or about the same as their wives.

So who isn’t cheating according to this study? Couples who both work outside the home and have comparable salaries. Hopefully couples who have this income disparity won’t jump to conclusions about what their partner might be up to. Women won’t be checking the computer and his cell phone for evidence of infidelity and he won’t be wondering what she is up to at home when he is out at work. After all, this study may offer clues to what contributes to cheating but it doesn’t mean a couple is doomed if they fit the infidelity profile found here.

There are many variables that could be contributors here and this study should be followed up with other research that goes further and looks at what else could be in play here. Things like boredom, opportunity, depression, stress and overload, feeling taken for granted or undervalued—could all be issues for couples who have very different schedules, roles, demands on their time and energy, and either more freedom from household duties or less pressure from financial burdens. In other words, they could be miles apart in their day to day lives which can lead to losing touch with one another on a number of different levels.

My take away is that all couples need to be conscious of the importance of checking in with one another, acknowledging the contributions of their partner, not taking their partner for granted, and understanding that whatever role each has, it is critical to the health and well-being of their home/family life.

Proof that He puts appearance first

Dr Rory McGloin from The University of Connecticut led a study that looked at the relationship between trust and appearance for those who use online dating sites to meet people. 305 men and women aged 17 to 36 stated that trust is an important part of a relationship for them. Yet when they got into more specifics with participants the feedback was sometimes contradictory to this.

Men usually felt the profiles with the most attractive women were less trustworthy. This led the researchers to the conclusion that misleading and untruthful profiles are to be expected in online dating. They also found that men were not deterred by their perceptions of untruthfulness and continued to have a greater desire to date the more attractive, yet less honest women. Therefore the conclusion was a resounding choice by men of physical attractiveness over trust. Even if they suspected she was less than honest about herself, it was worth the risk if her picture portrayed her as beautiful.

On the flip side, when men enhanced their profiles to make themselves look more attractive, women were more likely to perceive them to be both more attractive AND more trustworthy. No wonder so many women have blind spots when it comes to bad boys. If he’s cute, he must be trustworthy too.

A top predictor of relationship happiness

As a psychotherapist and dating/relationship coach, I am frequently asked to weigh in on how someone can be sure they are choosing the right person when dating, or if they are married, if their spouse is the right one for them. My simple answer for years has been that healthy and mutually satisfying relationships are ones in which the individuals bring out the best in each other. It appears that science is backing this up.

The Deseret News ran a piece yesterday on a study published last year in the journal Personal relationships that found that the people we care about have a lot of impact on how we see ourselves, and that the happiest relationships are those in which people perceive positive change in themselves. In other words, their relationship has helped bring out the best in them.

Of course, the opposite also hold. In some relationships, people bring out the worst in one another. It’s not a simple bad guy, good guy dynamic like we want to believe. It’s just that the combination of those two selves doesn’t work well for one or both of them.

The study uses the term “self-pruning,” of less desirable traits—which is not the result of nagging or criticism, rather the partner acts as a kind of mirror to a negative behavior and this helps the other person to recognize and change it.

Another study mentioned in the piece is one done by Psychology Today in which the author talks about the ability to recognize undesirable personality traits that can lead to unhappiness in a future relationship. Apparently some folks have better radar for this, but I believe anyone can sharpen theirs with a little focused effort.

Relationship success has always been the result of choosing with one’s heart and head, and science is now backing this up.

Want to hear more on the difference between normal wedding jitters and something more serious? Click here

The NY Times on Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman, a Harvard trained psychologist, past science writer for the NY Times, and author of the book Emotional Intelligence penned a column on April 7th titled, How to be emotionally intelligent. It’s written in a very straightforward style, in which he outlines the competencies of EQ.

I found this piece to be very user friendly as the usual definitions and descriptions for its use are very wordy and often seem too weighted and academic. This list gets right down to what you need to think about and focus on in order to raise your EQ, which will help you to attract others in your professional, personal and dating/relationship lives.

Dating and relationship coaches and counselors often focus on how a person dresses, and what they say when they approach or converse with others. While these have importance, it’s everything we don’t say that often speaks the loudest and sends the truest messages about who we are and what we think and feel.

If you have had little exposure to EQ or have only a limited understanding of what it is or how important it can be to your interactions and relationships with others, I recommend you read this piece in the NY TIMES.

Marrying outside of your class

Jessi Streib, an assistant professor of sociology at Duke University, has written a book titled The power of the Past: Understanding Cross-class marriages. As a therapist who specializes in working with couples on their relationships, I have found this book to be a very interesting study on attraction and conflict in relationships and how differences in where we come from can impact us as adults.

What Mr. Streib found in his research is that that “inter-class’ couples often struggle around issues that were shaped by how they grew up, and most especially the socio-economic classes that they come from. In other words, if you come from a stable, middle-class environment you will have different feelings about money than a partner who grew up poor and feeling insecure about it. Makes a lot of sense, it’s just that no one has actually studied it quite like this before.

Mr. Streib’s book profiles many different couples who agreed to be interviewed, but not identified by name. They talked candidly about how everything from their views of how to spend leisure time, to parenting and the handling of money have often clashed due to the way these things were both viewed and dealt with in the environments in which they grew up. In a matter of speaking, this is really about value differences, which is something that comes up often in couples counseling.

The good news is that these can be worked with if the couple is committed to the marriage, works on improving their communication, and if both are willing to negotiate and work towards a middle ground. It’s also useful to note that opposites do attract because we are drawn (often unconsciously) to people who compliment us and have certain strengths or character traits that make up for something they feel is missing in their life.

Mr. Streib emphasizes an interesting point about how the divide between the haves and have not’s may influence all of this in coming years. The way he sees it, children will not be confronted with this as much because they will not have the same opportunity to meet, marry and fall in love with people of different classes. It’s an interesting point, but I’m not sure I agree that this will happen. As the world continues to change, diversify and shrink, anything is possible when it comes to attraction and love.

Want to read more about this? Go to

Can you increase your happiness and attractiveness to others?

The New York Times is running an interesting piece called “The feel Good Gene.” Essentially the author, Richard Friedman, MD talks about how some people are less prone to anxiety and drug use to control it, due to a gene variation in the brain that leaves some folks less anxious and fearful. A higher level of the chemical anandamide is produced by those who have this variation, and this resulting chemical is appropriately known as the “bliss molecule.”

Talk about the luck of the draw—some things really are helped or harmed by basic biological luck. According to recent research, about 20% of adult Americans have this mutation—bet we all know someone. They are those easy-going, happy, calm folks who can “just say no,” to drugs like pot and cocaine and mean it. We all have some measure of anandamide, just some have more and life is a bit easier for them because of it.

A mouse study was published last month that backs up these findings. Mice with higher levels of anandamide were more outgoing, risk-taking, and calmer than those who had less. Their emotional control was stronger as well. The good news here (yes there is some) is that environment always influences genetic predisposition. Given the right amount of stress and a too heavy dose of life challenges, those with this gene mutation could exhibit high levels of fear and anxiety. The reverse is also true.

The real take away from some of this research is that anyone regardless of having or not having this genetic advantage can have high stress and related addiction problems in the right environment. My take-away is a reinforcement of what I have always believed. Making good choices and decisions influences outcomes–having a good support system, using relaxation and other techniques for stress control, eating good food, getting a healthy amount of sleep, engaging in regular exercise, and seeking out positive people can make a difference for all of us. Maybe this is the real secret of happy people, the kind that others want to be around.

Want to read more? Go to to read the whole article and see if it can be useful to you, especially in your relationship life.