The truth is that even if I have to sleep alone, I still can find my way to sleep these days, and that’s what really matters. I might never sleep great next to a warm body again. I’m mostly okay with that.

Ascribing some kind of nobility to the choice not to date a black woman if you’re a black person or not to date an Asian man if you’re an Asian person is more likely to play into existing stigmas than ameliorate them.

Hours spent in the company of children, friends, and extended family members all plateau by our mid-50s. And from the age of 40 until death, we spend an ever-increasing amount of time alone.

Cards #bw #Oakland #twitter #ssm #samelove #marriage #vscocam

Joe Haletky on the secret to a happy #marriage: "honesty, openness, keeping it real essentially"

It’s easier to talk to someone at a series of shows and parties and only gradually start to spend time with them on purpose, and then still not admit attraction until 6 am and sunrise finds both of you still sitting on their couch, talking in hushed tones across a six-inch distance. If it never happens, it’s easier to pretend there was never anything at stake. Ambiguous and indeterminate contexts leave room to negotiate and to save face.

I weirdly do consider myself an optimist about love. In my Buried Alive show, I tell a story about a guy who meets his future wife when he goes to Bed Bath & Beyond to get Drano. They fall in love. And in the joke, I just talk about how amazing it is that all these random factors came together to make it possible for these people to run into each other at this particular moment in time, in a parking lot at Bed Bath & Beyond, and then fall in love. I’m an optimist—I feel like an amazing part of life is that at any moment, any of us could have that Bed Bath & Beyond moment.

"Our results point to better race relations in 2008 than 1980, but we still have a way to go." @osuresearch #marriage

"I thought I would get wonderful stories about infidelity, about people who were arguing until six in the morning or would not return their lover's or ex-lover's possessions," Gershon revealed to Spark host Nora Young. "Nothing of the sort. Everybody answered 'It was on Facebook. It was text.'"

“One size never fits all, and it isn’t just dividing between men and women and gay and straight. Monoga­my is not natural, nonmonogamy is not natural. Variation is what’s natural.”

Maria Kefalas, a sociology professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and co-author of “Hollowing Out the Middle,” a 2009 book about the migration of the educated class from rural Iowa, said that changes in families have been profound. She noted that the alarm sounded by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1965 about the rise of out-of-wedlock births among African-Americans applies to the country as a whole today: One in three babies is born to unmarried parents.

“It has hit the whitest, most married, most idyllic heart of America — Iowa,” Professor Kefalas said. “The cultural narrative about marriage — you get a job, you marry your sweetheart, you buy a house, you educate your kids — has been torn to shreds. Without that economic foundation, the story cannot support itself.”

“Regret is something that can push people into better success in the future. It’s a motivator. ... It’s a benefit if you take a lesson and move on quickly. It’s a problem if you keep [re-living] that same regret over and over again.”

"Economics is the study of how people and societies allocate scarce resources. Relationships involve two people who are sharing scarce resources -- whether that's time, energy, libidos, money, ambition, patience, whatever -- and that's of course going to involve trade-offs."

R.G.: Right. I think Derek didn't want it to be something that you can pin on one event. For him it was a study of: Where does love go? It's there and suddenly it's not, and each person has their own idea of what happened. You can't really pinpoint it as one specific event. It's all of these subtleties that you can't really talk about, and you have to watch and try to understand. He's asking the audience more than he's telling them. He's asking them: Here are these situations, what do you think is going wrong? What's the communication problem?
M.W.: And then it's like a poison. Like, it infiltrates everything. The smallest exchange you just can't get right. You don't know why, and you didn't set out to make it that way, but all the small things are wrong.

While the notion of self-expansion may sound inherently self-serving, it can lead to stronger, more sustainable relationships, Dr. Lewandowski says.

"If you're seeking self-growth and obtain it from your partner, then that puts your partner in a pretty important position," he explains. "And being able to help your partner's self-expansion would be pretty pleasing to yourself."

The concept explains why people are delighted when dates treat them to new experiences, like a weekend away. But self-expansion isn't just about exotic experiences. Individuals experience personal growth through their partners in big and small ways. It happens when they introduce new friends, or casually talk about a new restaurant or a fascinating story in the news.

"[...] People believe in love in the most duplicitous circumstances — they believe in it even for Don and Betty, who have the worst marriage on the show, possibly of all time. Our concept of sin is in the Ten Commandments, and was always there. But the thing that’s strange to me is that when people turn on the television, they want to judge the bad guys and love the good guys. When you fall in love with characters, when they do crappy things, or are cruel to each other, you feel a sense of betrayal. [...]"

"When we started this study, we felt we didn't know many people with open relationships, but now our friend set is much more diverse. People we didn't think were open turned out to be. It's just not talked about that much."

"If you take away 'Twilight' and put in a football team, this doesn't look so much different from what guys have been doing for decades," says Baym. "They stay up late at night looking at statistics and playing fantasy football. You could just as easily say they've lost touch with reality or that they're addicted. 'Twilight' is just a story women are engaging with passionately, so people say it's dysfunctional. On the other hand, maybe men's relationship with football is dysfunctional as well."

It's not that if you have a bad memory of your first date that you're headed for divorce, but I think it's a useful tool to listen to yourself and your partner, and when you start to hear the negativity creep in, it's a red flag.

I was in marriage counseling at one point and the counselor wanted to hear about our first date, and I thought it was a ridiculous question. I thought we needed to talk about what's happening now, not what happened 20 years ago. And I wish she had stopped to explain that it does matter. Later, I would tell the exact same story and there would be a few little negative fingers in there. There's a big difference between saying, "We got horribly lost on our first date," and, "Of course, you didn't stop to ask for directions." It's the same first date but by the time he's being accused of not getting directions, you can tell that the relationship is going south. You can see that the structure of the relationship has changed.

“If I were the protagonist of a book or a movie,” Milo says to his onetime boss, “it would be hard to like me, to identify with me, to like me, right?” The response is devastating: “I would never read a book like that, Milo, and I can’t think of anyone who would. There’s no reason for it.”

A lot of people seem to feel that way about “Greenberg,” which has done modest business and inspired a great deal of ambivalence among audiences. “Funny People” was a big flop, and “Hot Tub Time Machine” has not done nearly as well as “The Hangover,” which offers up coarse humor and male immaturity without the slightest attempt at historical perspective. Since its publication in March, “The Ask” has sold around 7,000 copies. Disappointing? Of course. Our generation wouldn’t have it any other way.

“When someone holds your hand in a study or just shows that they are there for you by giving you a back rub, when you’re in their presence, that becomes a cue that you don’t have to regulate your negative emotion,” he told me. “The other person is essentially regulating your negative emotion but without your prefrontal cortex. It’s much less wear and tear on us if we have someone there to help regulate us.”

"Women like me haven't necessarily had a community," says Susan Herr. "We haven't shared information. Do we shop in the women's department or the men's? How should a good suit fit? We had to figure this all out on our own."

[...] Communication, respect and shared interests are among the themes emerging from his interviews.

"These are not check boxes," he said. "You develop a communication style and openness, and from that comes common interests and respect for the individual. I'm trying to get my students to stop looking for check boxes and the ideal picture."

He also wants his students to learn that sooner or later, every marriage faces difficulties.

"The key is how you overcome obstacles," he said. "Every marriage that's together 40 years is not perfect all the time. These people had their problems, and they worked through them.

"Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's bad," he added. "It means you're working through something you're committed to."

"Ninety percent of my girlfriends are single. They're teachers, attorneys, professional women." @tndotcom #marriage

Syreeta McFadden, a 35-year-old Columbia and Sarah Lawrence graduate who is between jobs after working in real estate development, said: “With men of any ethnic group, it’s a little intimidating for them to encounter smart women. Money is tricky.

“But, I think for me, it comes down to compatibility,” Ms. McFadden said. “Can you grow with me? Or as my genius friend the textile designer says, she asks on first dates or meeting men in bars, ‘Do you have a passport and a library card?'"

[...] Monogamy can work beautifully but it's a constant moving and growing and changing thing. A marriage doesn't get fixed, it moves. I don't know if I'd call it an indictment of marriage, I'd call it an indictment of the assumption that monogamy is the one necessary thing. I had to change how I was married and become a person who can stand on her own two feet. To find out that I could be a singular human being and also be in a marriage was the only reason that our marriage was able to survive. [...]

Every disaster movie derives its suspense from trying to guess which of the characters will survive and which will expire. One of the disappointments of "2012" is how predictable the crash-and-burn list turns out to be. As in many of these epics, the characters who have committed some kind of extramarital transgression are the ones marked for death. Cecil B. DeMille would have been pleased.

“Among the divorced, the least marriageables in our society are older women, highly educated who make a good salary.”

“Studies show men tend to marry down — someone slightly younger, less educated, making less money,” Dr. Adler-Baeder said. “Women in their 50s literally don’t have a visible pool of eligible men around them.”

“And if she’s tall on top of that,” Dr. Adler-Baeder said, “the pool’s even smaller.”

"The culture still attaches negative associations to men speaking about their personal lives. They are supposed to know this stuff. They are not supposed to ask for help. It's seen as a weakness. ...

"In the same way that at one point in the work world, men might have had to say to women, 'Here's what you have to do in business to be successful,' men get it that they have to receive wisdom in the domestic realm. And just as women have found that their way of doing things in the work world brings added value, men see that there's a male way of doing things in the home.

"Both men and women have their emerging competencies."

"Father, send your Holy Spirit into our hearts. Place within us love that truly gives, tenderness that truly unites, self-offering that tells the truth and does not deceive, forgiveness that truly receives, loving physical union that welcomes. Open our hearts to you, to each other and to the goodness of your will.

Cover our poverty in the richness of your mercy and forgiveness. Clothe us in our true dignity and take to yourself our shared aspirations, for your glory, for ever and ever. Mary, our Mother, intercede for us. Amen."

In a series of experiments, scientists at Ohio State studied the relationship between marital strife and immune response, as measured by the time it takes for a wound to heal. The researchers recruited married couples who submitted to a small suction device that left eight tiny blisters on the arm. The couples then engaged in different types of discussions — sometimes positive and supportive, at other times focused on a topic of conflict.

After a marital conflict, the wounds took a full day longer to heal. Among couples who exhibited high levels of hostility, the wound healing took two days longer than with those who showed less animosity.

The truth feels like the biggest sucker-punch of them all: it’s not a spouse or land or a job or money that brings us happiness. Those achievements, those relationships, can enhance our happiness, yes, but happiness has to start from within. Relying on any other equation can be lethal.

We talk about our marriages so seriously and with such reverence; we talk about our sex or lack thereof in the same way. Maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we shouldn't treat the institution and its dirty little companion as some sort of precious Fabergé egg that is either shattered and worthless or pristine, untouchable and priceless. Maybe it's more like Silly Putty and the plastic egg it comes in. Sometimes the egg is open, allowing for hours of stretchy, flexible fun; sometimes the egg is closed and kind of boring, but as long as the Silly Putty remains inside the egg it's still full of as much potential as your imagination allows, and the value of the egg is not diminished no matter how often or vigorously the egg or its contents are fingered or played with. (And yes, I was staring at a Silly Putty egg on my dining room table when I came up with that extended metaphor.)

"[...] The dreams of total pre-modern coherence - whether in the malign fantasies of the Taliban or the benign aspirations of theocons longing for the 1950s in the 21st century - are dreams undone by freedom. We live in a new world, and we can and should create meaning where we can, in civil society, in private, through free expression and self-empowerment. But we cannot enforce that old meaning on others by law. [...]"

“I see a changing landscape in which the emphasis is less on the sex than it is on the openness and intimacy and the revelation of secrets. Everybody talks by cellphone and the relationship evolves because you become increasingly distant from whomever you lie to, and you become increasingly close to whomever you tell the truth to.”

The other night, on a flight from Washington to Grand Rapids, Mich. Obama was offering reporters some tips on maintaining a healthy marriage. No real gems of wisdom, just some self-evident rules of the road: "Sense of humor, listening."

"Never forget an anniversary?" he was asked.

"No, because Michelle forgot my first one," he said, adding "Never get so mad that you forget why you love them."

"By your late 20s, many people are not willing to stand around in a bar all night . . . and they've met everybody they would've met through their office mates. So they're turning to new ways to do this same old thing, which is: find love."

[...] "A new line of research is exploring how automatic psychological mechanisms kick into action when the eye starts to wander, helping resist temptation and strengthening the relationship -- even without us being aware of it. Here's a sample from some recently published experiments (all on heterosexual men and women in committed monogamous relationships) that show how our brain keeps us connected to -- and, yes, even happy with -- the old ball and chain. (Spoiler: When it comes to relationships, men and women are a bit different.) [...]"

“Yeah, some guys think open relationship equals slutty,” said A, a polyamorous friend. “Oh yeah, they hope you’re indiscriminate,” said another, citing the “puppy dog eyes” she gets from some of the men she knows.

"Every once in a while you get this weird thought of, 'I'm never going to be a father.' It's equal parts terrifying because you're not like everyone else, and also because you made this extreme decision at 27."

"Ralph, Ralph. Dear God, Ralph had sent me 50 roses for my 50th birthday. And my husband, whose name wasn't Ralph, was holding his card. This wasn't a promising start to my second half-century, nor, it must be said, to our romantic getaway to Hovey Manor. [...]"

"So while conservatives might point to the fact that the per-capita divorce rate has dropped 5% since 1980, the fact is, the marriage rate has also dropped 50% since 1970. Divorce rates have fallen simply because less of us are getting married."

"Families are the last people who should be entrusted with the task of finding you a spouse, for they are incapable of appreciating that you may have changed since the age of 12."

"One can only wonder: Who will be the Sodomites of tomorrow?" Oh, that's easy.

“She isn’t sitting with a fixed, adoring gaze. But she obviously loves him deeply and believes in him, and more than that, she believes in this. And that motivates him.”

"[G]ay weddings could provide a $370-million boost to the state economy. That estimate presumes that about half of California's 92,000 same-sex couples will tie the knot, multiplied by $8,040 [...]"

“I haven’t ever seen anyone who doesn’t deliver on every single demand their sexuality makes on them. [...] There is no more unnatural principle of social organization than sexual exclusivity."

“Honey, am I a gay cliché?” "You can’t be a gay cliché when you get married to a man at 22.”

"That's why most relationships crack under pressure, I think — they're not built to fix us. We're supposed to fix them."

"What was interesting was the strength of the preference among men for women who were interested in short-term sex and the strength of the preference of the women for men not interested in short-term sex."

“It’s about embracing our differences and imperfections, and seeing them as beautiful and accepted.”

"Let's assume your relationship is a refrigerator. One day, a problem arises in your relationship--the refrigerator quits working."

"I've used these principles to improve my marriage. I did not train Scott to sit and stay. People don't get it because they are not aware that animal training has changed. Trainers use it as communication."

"And so now I say things like, 'I’m tired and whiny. Will you pay attention to me and pat my head and tell me it will be alright?' And he does! It works out awesome for both of us."

"We need to get away from that idea that there's only one right way to live. That idea has arguably caused more destruction and more damage to more societies over history than any other single idea you can name."

"Sure, if I'm putting the baby to bed for two hours while they're having hot sex, I get annoyed. But it's not because they're having sex without me. It's because I'm really tired and I've been putting a baby to bed for two hours."

"What I want to do in a relationship is something that's a function of the other person's want. I don't just do whatever they want, but if a partner doesn't like Valentine's Day, it doesn't give me a lot of joy to make her celebrate it."

“The emotional highs and lows, the anxieties, fear or jealousy — I can make sense of it all, because I know that other people have gone through it.”

“They think they know what they want. But meeting somebody who possesses the characteristics they claim are so important is much less inspiring than they would have predicted.”

"[T]he quantum of solace, he says, is a precise figure defining the comfort, humanity and fellow feeling required between two people for love to survive. If the quantum of solace is nil, then love is dead."

"I can live without you, no problem." "My love for you will definitely change." "You're not everything I need." "I won't always hold you close." "You and I aren't one." Got it?

"Bring the plants into the bathroom, turn on the heater and lay some towels down. Pretend you're on vacation."

"The fridge was stuffed; my friends were ecstatic and full. But in the mornings, alone before dawn, a jolt of terror: What had I done?"

"In the long run, the rational response is not for couples to marry early and marry often; it is to divorce less and marry less, too."

'Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom, and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name."

"The truth is that fighting about money is easy. Much harder is to talk and listen and fashion together a solution that makes both people content."

"It signals a kind of change and acceptability. It testifies to women’s desire and wish to be economically independent, to be able to interact in public space and be in the same world as men.”

"Because as the years barrel toward 40, I have begun to face another truth, one that chills less, but chills all the same: I am never going to find the model relationship, because half of that relationship is always going to be me."

"Social capital depends on belonging to a church, which in turn depends on acting like a mensch." Got religion?

"Among adults 25 and older who had been divorced, 52 percent of men and 44 percent of women were currently married. On average, people who remarry typically wed again in about [3.5] years. Second marriages [...]end in divorce [in] about 8.6 years."

"Google and Yahoo may know everything, but they don’t really care about you. No one cares more about the things you do than the person that used to be married to you."

"Our brains are not specialized for 21st-century media. There's no switch that says, 'Process this differently because it's on a screen.' "

"Ali, realizing he's being picked on, responds with a joke that he is going to take on another wife. 'You have the computer,' says Asiila. 'That's wife No. 3.' "

"There really is nothing that compares to being able to type in those qualities and actually having access to those men. Not only having access to them, but to also know that they're looking."

Wherein I discover writing a song about kissing off an ex is easier and more satisfying than kissing off an ex.

"I believe in marriage. Or want to, anyway. Sometimes, I think the problem is the institution. It is what needs to be remodelled so that it's good for both men and women."

"While on a cozy walk through New York's Harlem a few years ago, a young man taunted me with 'Polly, want a cracker?' as we strolled by. My husband and I laughed loudly at that one."

"Marriage today, like the rest of our lives, is about personal satisfaction. [...] On the other hand, our relationships are much more fragile, because we think we should leave them if they become unsatisfying."