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Harvard Professors: Little Lessons - YouTube
Harvard Professor Rebecca Tushnet on the Laws of Engagement Rings
Breaking Up (and Making Up) With Stanley Cavell | The New Republic
“Most texts, like most lives, are underread,” he contends. Writing in the early 1980s, Cavell was addressing a film culture in which most people did not—because they could not easily—watch a film more than once. Video rental stores were just taking off, and many early Hollywood movies remained difficult to track down. But it’s often hard to know what one really thinks about something after experiencing it just once. For Cavell, to give a reading of a film, then, is always to reread it. “A reading of a film,” he explains, “sets up a continuous appeal to the experience of the film.” As with remarriage, the second time’s the charm.
Prenups Aren’t Just for Rich People Anymore | The New Yorker
Twelve years ago, a poll conducted by Harris Interactive (now Harris Poll) asked more than two thousand adults what they thought of prenups. Three per cent of respondents who were married or engaged reported having signed a prenuptial agreement. Recently, I asked Harris Poll for details about that survey, and the firm offered to pose the question again; this time, fifteen per cent of Americans who were married or engaged reported that they had signed one. According to the poll, nearly forty per cent of married or engaged people between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four have signed prenups, while just thirteen per cent of those between forty-five and fifty-four have done so. For those fifty-five and above, the figure is below five per cent. It’s a single poll, of course, but its findings reflected what I heard from multiple experts: more Americans, particularly younger Americans, are getting prenups. And one likely impetus for this change, according to those experts, is the historic levels of debt that many younger Americans have.
How to Choose an Ideal Mate (for Your Career) - Bloomberg
Researchers Brittany Solomon and Joshua Jackson analyzed data from over 4,500 married people and found that of the big five, only conscientiousness had a meaningful impact on the other spouse’s job satisfaction, income and likelihood of being promoted. Regardless of their gender, partners who are reliable, organized and hard-working are an asset, perhaps because they take on more housework. […] They may even serve as role models for their spouses. Whatever the cause, the effect is measurable: Andrew O’Connell, writing about these findings for Harvard Business Review, notes that for every one standard deviation increase in a partner’s conscientiousness, their lucky spouse was likely to earn $4,000 more a year. A second desirable trait is a partner who can serve as a “secure base.” This is a term from attachment theory, which initially was thought only to apply to children’s relationships with their parents, but which psychologists increasingly realize also applies to adult relationships. A secure base is a spouse who can be “dependably supportive” while also encouraging “exploratory behavior.”
A spouse's education can positively impact their partner's overall health -- ScienceDaily
They found that the effect of spousal education on a person's self-assessed overall health is positive and relatively large, suggesting that people benefit from having more highly educated partners in the same way (and to roughly the same extent) that they benefit from being highly educated themselves.
This pattern was especially pronounced among women, whose health was more closely tied to spousal education than men's. This finding, Hernandez said, could reflect the time period (1960s-1970s) in which most of the respondents completed their education, married and entered the labor force.
Opinion: COVID-19 is like running a marathon with no finish line. What does sports science say about how we can win it? - The Globe and Mail
By the time Mr. Wardian decided to pull the chute in his ultramarathon, his only remaining competitors were a guy on a treadmill in the Czech Republic and a woman in Sweden who had plowed her loop through several feet of snow. With the dawn of a third day of racing still a few hours off, he wandered over to the tent he’d set up outside his house and told his wife, who was crewing for him, that he didn’t want to continue. “That’s not a good excuse,” she replied. He considered it and decided she was right. He headed back out for another lap.
Paul McCartney reflects on meeting John Lennon and their songwriting partnership
“I think, ‘Wow, how lucky was I to meet this strange Teddy Boy off the bus who turned out to play music like I did, and we get together and, boy, we complemented each other’. They say with marriages opposites attract and we weren’t madly opposites, but I had some stuff that he didn’t have and he had some stuff I didn’t have so when you put them together it made something extra.”
Why Aren't More Highly Intelligent People Rich? A Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Says Another Factor Matters a Lot More | Inc.com
That comes as no surprise to people familiar with research on married couples: People with relatively prudent and reliable partners tend to perform better at work, earning more promotions, making more money, and feeling more satisfied with their jobs.
"Partner conscientiousness" (for men and women) predict future job satisfaction, income, and likelihood of promotion.
According to the researchers, "conscientious" partners perform more household tasks, exhibit more pragmatic behaviors that their spouses are likely to emulate, and promote a more satisfying home life, all of which enables their spouse to focus more on work.
Your Life is Driven by Network Effects
Compatibility between two people in terms of their individual characteristics is sometimes much less important than the compatibility between their networks. This is one possible reason why there is a surprisingly low divorce rate amongst arranged matches made solely on the basis of compatibility between kin networks.
The dark side of supportive relationships - Neuroscience News
In our study, we found that empathetic and caring partners were more likely to agree with their loved ones’ negative views of their adversary and blame the adversary for the conflict.
We also found that people whose relationship partners responded this way ended up being far more motivated to avoid their adversaries, tended to view them as bad and immoral, and were less interested in reconciliation. In fact, a full 56% of those who had received this type of empathy reported avoiding their adversaries, which can harm conflict resolution and often involves cutting off the relationship.
On the other hand, among the participants who didn’t receive this sort of support from their partners, only 19% reported avoiding their adversaries.
How happy couples argue: Focus on solvable issues first -- ScienceDaily
When researchers observed couples discussing marital problems, all couples focused on issues with clearer solutions, such as the distribution of household labor and how to spend leisure time.
"Rebalancing chores may not be easy, but it lends itself to more concrete solutions than other issues," Rauer said. "One spouse could do more of certain chores to balance the scales."
The couples rarely chose to argue about issues that are more difficult to resolve. And Rauer suggests that this strategic decision may be one of the keys to their marital success.
"Focusing on the perpetual, more-difficult-to-solve problems may undermine partners' confidence in the relationship," Rauer said.
Instead, to the extent it is possible, focusing first on more solvable problems may be an effective way to build up both partners' sense of security in the relationship.
"If couples feel that they can work together to resolve their issues, it may give them the confidence to move on to tackling the more difficult issues," Rauer said.
Opposites attract and, together, they can make surprisingly gratifying decisions: When couples make a joint decision, study finds conflicting interpersonal orientations can produce decisions that satisfy both parties -- ScienceDaily
The studies found that when paired with a selfish partner, it is better to behave altruistically rather than selfishly. Similarly, when paired with an altruistic partner, it is better to behave selfishly to achieve a desired outcome, according to the findings, reported recently in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
In both scenarios, the paired respondents were able to come to decisions that best reflected their individual preferences, or what both partners personally liked -- if they took the opposite attitude as that of their partner, said Boston College Carroll School of Management Coughlin Sesquicentennial Assistant Professor of Marketing Hristina Nikolova.
"When you see that your partner is acting selfishly, it is better to let it go and act altruistically instead; let them make the decision because this will ultimately ensure a better outcome for you than if you act selfishly too," said Nikolova, a co-author of the article "Ceding and Succeeding: How the Altruistic Can Benefit from the Selfish in Joint Decisions."
Want to quit smoking? Partner up: Couples who attempt to stop smoking together have a sixfold chance of success -- ScienceDaily
At the end of the programme, 64% of patients and 75% of partners were abstinent -- compared to none and 55% at the start, respectively. The odds of quitting smoking at 16 weeks were significantly higher (5.83-fold) in couples who tried to quit together compared to patients who attempted it alone.
"Previous research has shown that ex-smokers can also positively influence their spouse's attempts to quit, but in this study the effect was not statistically significant," said Ms Lampridou. "As for non-smoking partners, there is a strong risk that they will adopt their spouse's habit." Ms Lampridou noted that research is needed to confirm the findings in smokers who are otherwise healthy.
Do lovers always tease each other? Study shows how couples handle laughter and banter -- ScienceDaily
The researchers observed that provoking others to laugh at you primarily has positive effects: "Women reported more often that they tended to be satisfied with their relationship and felt more attracted to their partner. They and their partners also tended to be equally satisfied with their sex life," Brauer continues. Being afraid of being laughed at, on the other hand, tended to have negative effects: people who have this fear are less content in their relationship and also tend to mistrust their partner. This also has consequences for the partner: men said more frequently that they did not really feel satisfied with their sex life if their partner was afraid of being laughed at.
Married couples share risk of developing diabetes -- ScienceDaily
'If we adjusted for the women's own weight, they did not have a heightened risk of developing type 2 diabetes as a result of their husband's BMI. But even when we adjusted for the weight in men, they had a heightened risk', says Jannie Nielsen.
A man, whose wife had a BMI of 30 kg/m2, had a 21-per cent higher risk of developing diabetes than men whose wives had a BMI of 25 kg/m2 -- regardless of the man's own BMI.
The researchers have not examined why only the men still had a heightened risk after own weight adjustment. They do have a theory, though, which involves who is in charge of the household.
'We believe it is because women generally decide what we eat at home. That is, women have greater influence on their spouse's dietary habits than men do', Jannie Nielsen explains and refers, among other things, to a US study, which showed that women more often than men are responsible for doing the household's cooking and shopping.
The role of touch in regulating inter-partner physiological coupling during empathy for pain | Scientific Reports
The results indicate that the partner touch increased interpersonal respiration coupling under both pain and no-pain conditions and increased heart rate coupling under pain conditions. In addition, physiological coupling was diminished by pain in the absence of the partner’s touch. Critically, we found that high partner’s empathy and high levels of analgesia enhanced coupling during the partner’s touch.
Is This the End of Couple's Therapy?
Incredibly, one in four couples cite temperature control as a primary source of arguments, with 42 percent of men admitting to having turned down the temperature without consulting their partner. “By the time we reach our late 20s, we’ve already figured out for the most part who we are and what we are or are not willing to put up with, which in turn makes it harder to adjust to others’ likes and dislikes and preferences," says Vijayeta Sinh, a New York City-based clinical psychologist.
That’s why the best home technologies are the ones that do the compromising for you. “The value of a connected home is you have the simple convenience of, ‘Hey, I don't want to be thinking about how I'm taking care of my building. I want my building to take better care of me,’” says Ben Bixby, general manager of energy and safety at Nest, which recently launched the Nest Thermostat E, an affordable and easy-to-use smart thermostat, which requires zero programming, thanks to its “simple schedule,” blends into the background of your home, and can pay for itself—and then some—with energy savings.* Adds Bixby, “You're not an expert in knowing what temperature it should be when—let the thermostat figure that out!”
My Friend, Stalin’s Daughter - The New Yorker
The following year, Svetlana, too, fell in love with a thirty-eight-year-old man, a Jewish filmmaker and journalist named Aleksei Kapler. The romance began in the late fall of 1942, during the Nazi invasion of Russia. Kapler and Svetlana met at a film screening; the next time they saw each other, they danced the foxtrot and he asked her why she seemed sad. It was, she said, the tenth anniversary of her mother’s death. Kapler gave Svetlana a banned translation of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and his annotated copy of “Russian Poetry of the Twentieth Century.” They watched the Disney movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” together.
Only Woman Pence Is Allowed to Eat Alone With Is His Wife
Pence reportedly won’t have dinner alone with a woman who is not his wife; he also won’t attend any events where alcohol is served unless Karen is by his side.
Happy spouse, happy house: New study finds focus on spouse an indicator of strong, healthy relationship -- ScienceDaily
"It may seem like an insignificant thing, but our research shows words can reflect important differences among romantic relationships," Robbins said. "Spouses' use of first-person singular pronouns, and patients' use of second-person pronouns, was positively related to better marital quality for both partners as the focus wasn't always on the patient. So, it reflects balance and interdependency between partners.
"Personal pronoun use can tell us who the individual is focusing on, and how he or she construes themselves within the relationship," Robbins said. "It seems like a small word, but it says a lot about the relationship during a trying time. We found that focus on the spouse, rather than on the patient, lent to better marital quality for both partners. It was an indicator for us that the couple thought of themselves as a team, or a unit -- not exclusively focusing on the patient."
Pocket: My List
Just be optimistic about the future of your relationship. In a study recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Edward Lemay, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, found people who predicted that they would be satisfied with their relationship in the future were more committed to their partners and treated them more kindly in the present-day.
Couples' quality of life linked even when one partner dies
In previous work, Bourassa and colleagues had found evidence of synchrony, or interdependence, between partners' quality of life, finding that a person's cognitive functioning or health influences not only their own well-being but also the well-being of their partner. Bourassa and colleagues wondered whether this interdependence continues even when one of the partners passes away.
To find out, the researchers turned to the multinational, representative Study of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), an ongoing research project with over 80,000 aging adult participants across 18 European countries and Israel. Specifically, they examined data from 546 couples in which one partner had died during the study period and data from 2566 couples in which both partners were still living.
As one might expect, the researchers found that participants' quality of life earlier in the study predicted their quality of life later. And the data also provided evidence for interdependence between partners -- a participant's quality of life earlier in the study was associated with his or her partner's quality of life later.
Intriguingly, the results revealed interdependence between partners even when one partner died during the study; the association remained even after Bourassa and colleagues accounted for other factors that might have played a role, such as participants' health, age, and years married.
Adam and Eve
“They’re always inventing new ways not to be aware of the canyon between them, but it’s a canyon of tiny distances: a sentence or a silence here, a closing or an opening of space there, a moment of difficult truth or of difficult generosity. That’s all. They’re always at the threshold.”
“Of paradise?” the angel asked, watching the humans reach for each other yet again.
“Of peace,” God said, turning the page of a book without edges. “They wouldn’t be so restless if they weren’t so close.”
A Celebrity-Divorce Expert Tells All
I've known instances where a member of that couple has told their publicist before they've told their significant other. I can't tell you who, but it's happened at least once to me, and once to a friend of mine. The hair and makeup people, they always seem to be the first to know. Sometimes the publicist, the hair and makeup people, the car driver, the security — they'll have a little pact where they all tell each other what's going on.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg eviscerates same-sex marriage opponents in court | US news | The Guardian
“Marriage today is not what it was under the common law tradition, under the civil law tradition,” said Ginsburg when Justices Roberts and Kennedy began to fret about whether the court had a right to challenge centuries of tradition.
“Marriage was a relationship of a dominant male to a subordinate female,” she explained. “That ended as a result of this court’s decision in 1982 when Louisiana’s Head and Master Rule was struck down … Would that be a choice that state should [still] be allowed to have? To cling to marriage the way it once was?”
"We" are partners
In another study, from 1998, participants answered questions about their level of commitment to their romantic relationship and then performed a task in which they were asked simply to share some thoughts concerning the relationship, as many or as few as they wished. These thoughts were subsequently analyzed for plural pronoun use (“we” and “our” rather than “I” and “my”), a subtle indicator of the extent to which participants had fused their identities with those of their partners.The study found that participants who were highly committed to their relationships used many plural pronouns, whereas participants who were not especially committed used fewer. Interestingly, this tendency to exhibit a fused, interdependent identity was observed when participants listed thoughts about their relationships with their romantic partners, but not when they listed thoughts about their relationships with their best friends.
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