Category: Relationships

The best type of support to give your partner.

Giving more emotional support can improve relationships considerably, new research finds.

Partners who receive more empathy, concern and acceptance  experienced more positive emotions and had higher relationship satisfaction.

Men, in particular, can improve their relationship by giving women more support of any type.

However, men have a tendency to give advice, when what women often prefer is emotional support, such as empathy.

Women can also improve their relationship by giving men more emotional support.

The conclusions come from a study of 114 newlywed couples.

All were asked about how much of two types of support they received from their partner:

• Emotional support: being empathetic, encouraging, trusting and caring.
• Informational support: providing solutions in the form of advice.

Overall, the results revealed that the best type of support to provide was emotional.

The study’s authors explain:

“…receiving more emotional support was associated with more favorable affect and higher relationship satisfaction regardless of support preferences.

Also, wives who received more informational support from their husbands had higher relationship satisfaction regardless of support preferences.”

However, not everyone likes the same type of support.

Some people get more out of empathy and concern, while others prefer straightforward advice.

Both too much or too little advice can be a source of irritation.

The study’s authors explain:

“Husbands who experienced underprovision of informational support from their wives, experienced less favorable affect.

In contrast, wives who experienced overprovision of informational support from their husbands experienced higher depressive symptoms.”

While there were differences in the types of support partners preferred, everyone was happy to get emotional support.

So, if you are not sure if your partner wants empathy or advice, the default should be empathy first.

The study was published in the Journal of Family Psychology (Lorenzo et al., 2018).

This activity causes untold relationship distress.

Sharing out the dishwashing duties more fairly could be one of the best ways to improve a relationship, new research suggests.

Out of all household chores, (not) doing the dishes is the most likely to damage a relationship.

Women in heterosexual relationships who did more dishes than their partners reported:

• Lower relationship satisfaction,
• more relationship conflict,
• and worse and less sex.

The study looked at different household tasks including shopping, cleaning and laundry.

It revealed that there is something particularly irritating about doing the dishes.

Dr Dan Carlson, who led the study, thinks it is because dishwashing is a thankless task, unlike cooking which attracts praise.

Also, it is yucky.

Men improving, but…

Men are picking up some of the slack in the household chores department, research has found.

Between 1999 and 2006 the couples who shared dishwashing duty rose from 16% to 29%.

Per week, men now do 4 hours of housework compared with two in 1965.

Still way off a perfect score for men, but an improving trend.

The study’s authors write:

“Contrary to arguments of a stalled gender revolution, the authors find that contemporary couples more often share all routine tasks (other than shopping) than couples in the past, with the greatest change in dishwashing and laundry.

The equal sharing of housework is more positively related to sexual intimacy and relationship satisfaction among more recent cohorts and more negatively related to marital discord.”

Of course, men will argue that their share is done in other areas, like lawn mowing, car cleaning and DIY.

However, men still avoid the least desirable jobs, like cleaning the toilet and the laundry.

Naturally, this can create resentment — especially when other couples are seen to share out the work more equally.

The study was published in the journal Socius (Carlson et al., 2018).

The type of car that is more attractive to women.

Men with flashy cars are seen by others as being more interested in short-term sexual relationships, new research finds.

Indeed, women interested in a short-term relationship also found men with flashy cars more attractive.

However, people did not think a man with a flashy car would make a good life partner.

Instead, those looking long-term preferred someone with more  sensible taste — presumably so he’s got money left over for the family.

Dr Daniel Kruger, study co-author, said:

“Participants demonstrated an intuitive understanding that men investing in the display of goods featuring exaggerated sensory properties have reproductive strategies with higher mating effort and greater interest in short-term sexual relationships, as well as lower paternal investment and interest in long-term committed romantic relationships than men investing in practical considerations.”

For the study, both men and women read descriptions of two men purchasing a new car.

The authors explain:

“One man purchased a new car for the sake of reliability (frugal investment); the other purchased a used car and allocated the remaining funds to conspicuous display features (new paint, larger wheels, louder sound system).”

And the results:

“Participants rated the man who invested in flashy display higher on mating effort, lower on parental investment, higher on interest in brief sexual affairs, lower on interest in long-term committed romantic relationships, higher in attractiveness to women for brief sexual affairs, and lower in attractiveness to women for long-term committed romantic relationships, compared to the man with a frugal investment strategy.”

Generally, men prefer to show off their money more than women.

However, showing off your spending power is not always the best policy.

Sometimes it is better to show off your prudence — depending on the signal you want to send.

The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science (Kruger & Kruger, 2018).

How tight is your grip on marriage?

Men with a stronger grip are more likely to be married than men with a weaker grip, new research finds.

The reason is probably that grip strength is a signal of cardiovascular health and even brain health.

Grip strength, though, was not linked to whether or not women were married.

Professor Vegard Skirbekk, the study’s first author, said:

“Our results hint that women may be favoring partners who signal strength and vigor when they marry.

If longer-lived women marry healthier men, then both may avoid or defer the role of caregiver, while less healthy men remain unmarried and must look elsewhere for assistance.”

The researchers analysed data from 5,009 adults in the Norwegian city of Tromsø.

They analysed two groups of people born in the periods 1923-35 and 1936-48.

The results showed there were more unmarried men with weaker grip strength in the younger group of men.

This reflects the lessening importance of marriage, especially in a socially progressive Scandinavian country like Norway.

Professor Skirbekk said:

“In recent decades, women are less dependent on men economically.

At the same time, men have a growing ‘health dependence’ on women.

The fact that many men are alone with a weak grip — a double burden for these men who lack both strength and a lack of support that comes from being married — suggests that more attention needs to be given to this group, particularly given their relatively poor health.”

Professor Skirbekk continued:

“New technologies may potentially offset some of the limitations that low grip strength may imply.

Social policies could also increasingly target this group by providing financial support for those who suffer the double-burden of low strength and lack of spousal support.”

The study was published in the journal SSM-Population Health (Skirbekk et al., 2018).

The cellphone behaviour that irritates everyone.

Ignoring someone in a social situation to look at a phone threatens people’s fundamental need to belong, new research finds.

It is a form of social exclusion, making others feel invisible and eroding their self-esteem.

‘Phubbing’, short for phone snubbing, was linked to poorer communication and lower relationship satisfaction, the study found.

Examples of phubbing include:

• Placing the cellphone where it can be seen during a social interaction.
• Keeping the cellphone in the hand.
• Glancing at the cellphone while talking.
• Checking the cellphone during a lull in the conversation.

The conclusions come from a series of experiments that tested the effect of different levels of phubbing; from no pubbing, through partial phubbing to extensive phubbing.

The higher the level of phubbing, the results showed, the more people felt their fundamental needs were threatened.

For the study, 153 people were shown a series of animations depicting incidents of phubbing.

Phubbing also seems to breed a vicious circle of retribution.

When you are pubbed by someone, you want to phub them back.

And so we all get used to phubbing each other.

As the researchers write:

“…phubbing behavior itself predicts the extent to which people are phubbed, so that being a phubber can result in a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle of phubbing that makes
the behavior become normative.

Research on the effects of phubbing suggests that it may create negative, resentful reactions such that people perceive their interaction to be of poorer quality, are less satisfied with their interactions, trust their interaction partner less, feel less close to their interaction partner when a phone is present, and experience jealousy.”

The study was published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas, 2018).

Phones and relationships image from Shutterstock

The most appealing sexual behaviours revealed by survey of over 2,000 men and women.

Being romantic and affectionate top the list of most appealing sexual behaviours, new research finds.

Even men found kissing and cuddling most appealing in comparison to other activities, the survey of over 2,000 men and women found.

The sample included a wide range of ages and sexual orientations.

Professor Debby Herbenick, the study’s first author, said:

“Contrary to some stereotypes, the most appealing behaviors, even for men, are romantic and affectionate behaviors.

These included kissing more often during sex, cuddling, saying sweet/romantic things during sex, making the room feel romantic in preparation for sex, and so on.”

The survey asked people what sexual behaviours they actually engaged in along with those that were most appealing to them.

Other romantic behaviours people found appealing were watching a romantic movie or giving or receiving a massage before sex.

Many people simply reported that having a little more sex would be appealing to them.

The study’s authors write:

“…one-third of women and nearly one-quarter of men had not engaged in sexual activity with anyone in the last year (consistent with NSSHB data)–and about 1 in 10 partnered Americans considered themselves monogamous but sexless—it is important to acknowledge that sizable proportions of Americans do not engage in partnered sexual activities during certain periods of their lives.”

The study was published in the journal  PLOS ONE (Herbenick et al., 2017).

Many people are attracted to a younger partner, but is it worth it in the long run?

The best age gap for marital satisfaction is…none at all, research finds.

In the long run couples who are mismatched in age tend to be less satisfied, even if they are better off at first.

Both men and women are initially particularly satisfied when they get a younger husband or wife.

Professor Terra McKinnish, who co-authored the study, said:

“We find that men who are married to younger wives are the most satisfied, and men who are married to older wives are the least satisfied.

Women are also particularly dissatisfied when they’re married to older husbands and particularly satisfied if they’re married to younger husbands.”

However, after around 6-10 years of marriage this gap disappears.

Professor McKinnish said:

“Over time, the people who are married to a much older or younger spouse tend to have larger declines in marital satisfaction over time compared to those who are married to spouses who are similar in age.”

The researchers think this could be partly down to how they respond to money worries.

Professor McKinnish said:

“We looked at how couples respond to negative shocks and in particular, if they have a major bad economic shock or worsening of their household finances.

We find that when couples have a large age difference, that they tend to have a much larger decline in marital satisfaction when faced with an economic shock than couples that have a very small age difference.”

The more difference in people’s ages, the more differing views they have on important issues like having children and spending habits.

Over time, these are bound to create flash points in the relationship.

The study was published in the Journal of Population Economics (Lee & McKinnish , 2017).

Boosting marital quality with some of the oldest (and cheesiest) techniques known to psychology.

It can be hard to keep positive feelings towards your partner in a long-term relationship.

But help is at hand in the shape of new research funded by, of all people, the US Department of Defense.

Dr Jim McNulty, the study’s first author, explained:

“The research was actually prompted by a grant from the Department of Defense — I was asked to conceptualize and test a brief way to help married couples cope with the stress of separation and deployment.

We would really like to develop a procedure that could help soldiers and other people in situations that are challenging for relationships.”

What the psychologists came up with is a kind of subtle reprogramming of the mind using images of cute animals.

The idea being that we need to have positive associations with our partners.

So, why not boost those associations automatically using some of the oldest known techniques in psychology?

Half of 144 married couples watched a stream of images, with many positive ones appearing next to images of their partner.

The control group repeatedly saw their partner’s image linked to neutral rather than positive images.

They did this 3 days a week for 6 weeks.

The procedure worked: those who saw positive images linked to their partner reported higher marital quality afterwards.

Dr McNulty said:

“I was actually a little surprised that it worked.

All the theory I reviewed on evaluative conditioning suggested it should, but existing theories of relationships, and just the idea that something so simple and unrelated to marriage could affect how people feel about their marriage, made me skeptical.”

Of course, there are many other more everyday ways to create these positive associations, however, Dr McNulty said:

“One ultimate source of our feelings about our relationships can be reduced to how we associate our partners with positive affect, and those associations can come from our partners but also from unrelated things, like puppies and bunnies.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (McNulty et al., 2017).