# data[].attributes.body
Gaming, especially games that are MMORG, or role playing games with a huge and highly engaged multiplayer community, has been linked to addiction in dependency of social interactions or interpersonal communications that are not usually seen outside of their gaming social spaces. They use those games for the lack of normal methods of communication that they don't have outside of gaming. The rise of this type of addiction has not been named a medical diagnosis, despite the reality of the addiction.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Abstract

Keywords: online gaming addiction, high engagement, interpersonal dependency, motivations to play

Introduction

During the last decade and a half, Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have become a significant entertainment medium to which millions of young people devote a large portion of their leisure time ( Williams, Yee, & Caplan, 2008). Although mere entertainment and leisure activity for most gamers, a certain proportion report that online gaming took over their lives and caused serious problems in their social or occupational functioning ( Haagsma, Pieterse, Peters, & King, 2013). Health-related negative consequences are also among the symptoms of excessive patterns of online gaming and include low quality and quantity of sleep, neglecting meals or poor and unhealthy diet, repetitive strain injuries, etc. (c.f. Kalmus, Siibak, & Blinka, 2014 for an overview). The most excessive players may spend 40 hours or more per week online, which equals or exceeds the amount of time spent in a regular full-time job ( Dauriat et al., 2011). Online gaming has been shown to be the riskiest online activity in terms of the development of Internet addiction and related problems ( Blinka et al., 2015).

The American Psychiatric Association included Internet Gaming Disorder in Section 3 of its revised diagnostic manual, DSM-5, as a potential future diagnosis that requires further investigation ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013). However, whether problematic patterns of online gaming represent a distinct psychiatric condition that belongs among behavioural addictions is not yet a matter of consensus within the scientific community ( Griffiths, King, & Demetrovics, 2014). Although Griffiths' criteria (2005) of behavioural addiction were generally accepted in the research of online gaming addiction, not all criteria were identified as similarly contributing to the increase of pathology. Peripheral criteria (euphoria, cognitive salience, and tolerance), especially when dominantly present without core criteria (behavioural salience, withdrawal symptoms, relapse, and conflict), seem to be signs of non-pathological gaming ( Charlton & Danforth, 2004). Such high engagement in online gaming, although extensive at first glance but non-problematic at the second, is not connected to those personality traits which are associated with pathological gaming ( Charlton & Danforth, 2007, 2010). This suggests that high engagement and addiction, although overlapping in some symptoms, are rather distinct categories and thus point toward the usefulness of differentiating approaches in measuring Internet gaming addiction. The addictive potential of online games is usually associated with the reward aspects of gaming ( King, Delfabbro, & Griffiths, 2011). However, MMOGs are inherently social environments and thus the social aspects of games, the social motivations of gamers, and their sociability may play an important role. As shown by Ng and Wiemer-Hastings (2005), MMOGs are played much more intensively compared to non-MMOGs. The difference is the community - while offline video games are solitary or a small-group activity; thousands of people are online in MMOGs at the same time. MMOGs represent a rich and valued source of social contacts for gamers through in-game interactions, discussion forums, and also communication beyond the gaming tasks ( Cole & Griffiths, 2007; Yee, 2006). It has also been reported that collective gaming, necessary for reaching advanced in-game content, leads to more time spent online and may contribute to the development of patterns of compulsive gaming ( Haagsma et al., 2013). According to the Social Compensation Hypothesis ( Caplan, 2003; Davis, 2001), lonely individuals are especially prone to compulsive Internet use as they seek social support, which they lack in their natural offline environment. Such gamers may then be caught in a vicious circle - with increasing time spent online for in-game social interactions and in-game group commitments, there may follow a negative effect on daily functioning and face-to-face interactions, and the sense of loneliness may worsen ( Davis, 2001; Shen & Williams, 2011). From this point of view, the social motivation for gaming (i.e. the seeking of in-game social support) can be expected to contribute to increased addictive gaming. Nevertheless, such a direct relationship has not yet been confirmed. Several studies indicate that this relationship is rather negligible ( Blinka & Mikuška, 2014; Caplan, Williams, & Yee, 2009; Dauriat et al., 2011; Kardefelt-Winther, 2014; Király et al., 2015). According to Blinka and Mikuška (2014), a gamer's social skills and personality traits, such as lower interpersonal trust and lower social self-efficacy, contribute to the development of pathological gaming more than the actual social motivation for gaming. Gamers with schizoid personality traits and higher introversion are reported to be more at risk of problematic online gaming ( Kuss & Griffiths, 2012). This finding indicates that the underlying psychological dispositions of individuals may be the key to the relationship between social motivations and online gaming addiction, and to the development of online gaming addiction.

Interpersonal dependency represents a useful concept to study the social traits of gamers in relation to potential pathological game play. The concept itself describes how people rely on others - how their cognition, motivation, affective responses, and actual behavioural patterns are affected by relationships to others ( Bornstein, Porcerelli, Huprich, & Markova, 2009). The concept is, to some extent, similar to the concept of attachment; for instance, high levels of interpersonal dependency share some similarities with insecure attachment ( Pincus & Wilson, 2001).

Bornstein et al. (2003) divided the idea of interpersonal dependency into a three-dimensional concept. The three dimensions of interpersonal dependency are healthy dependency (confidence and autonomy, desire for closeness, and situation-appropriate help seeking) representing healthy functioning; and two representing dysfunctional functioning - destructive overdependence (characterised by weak self, fear of negative evaluation, and reassurance seeking) and dysfunctional detachment (fear of being hurt, fear of being overwhelmed by others, and consequent need for control over social situations) ( Bornstein et al., 2003). Individuals with unhealthy interpersonal dependency traits tend to be more sensitive to peer pressure, less stable in their attitudes and beliefs, and have a more pronounced need for acceptance by others ( Bornstein, 2009). These characteristics may be associated with negative consequences and feelings in some social contexts and situations, but may be effective and useful in others.

Destructive overdependence and dysfunctional detachment may underlie the effect of dysregulation in individuals that may, subsequently and reportedly, put individuals at risk of psychological and physiological disease ( Fiori, Consedine, & Magai, 2008). Individuals scoring high in interpersonal dependence face more psychological impairment through decreased lower self-esteem and increased depression, loneliness, and overall emotional dysregulation ( Overholser, 1992). When observed, the association between interpersonal dependency traits and substance use disorders (e.g. smoking and alcoholism) was generally linked to orally dependent personality features ( Greenberg & Bornstein, 1988). The link between dependency traits and the tendency to addictive behavioural patterns might, therefore, lead to the compensation of unsatisfying or imperilling social contacts in real life. Thus, as online games are inherently social environments, we assume that interpersonal dependency and the conceptualizing social orientation of the individual might be a significant factor explaining why some gamers tend to pathological gaming while others do not.

Research Focus and Hypotheses

In the present study we examine social motivations as conscious preferences and personal traits represented by the three dimensions of interpersonal dependency in relationship to highly engaged and addictive gaming.

Based on a literature review we expect the followings:

H1: Social motivations do not play an important role in online gaming addiction, and online gaming addiction is predicted by personality traits related to social functioning. Social situation was expected to contribute to problematic gaming by some researchers ( Lemmens, Valkenburg, & Peter, 2011). However, the relationship between online gaming addiction and social motivations, which may be a conscious reflection of the lack of social contact, is not supported in literature.

H1a: Destructive overdependence is positively associated with online gaming addiction. We expect that personal traits associated with orientation towards social commitment and the need for positive feedback from the community may be an important factor that contributes to higher addictive potential in these gamers.

H1b: Dysfunctional detachment is positively associated with online gaming addiction. We expect that the MMOG environments, where it is easy to control social interactions and there is a lack of face-to-face interactions, attract gamers who score high in dysfunctional detachment.

H1c: Healthy dependency is negatively associated with online gaming addiction. We expect that the healthy dependency personality trait, usually associated with healthy social functioning, is negatively associated with online gaming addiction.

H2: High engagement in online gaming is not, in contrast to online gaming addiction, significantly associated with the social motives and psychological traits significant for social functioning. A large number of motives for online gaming has been identified ( King et al., 2011; Koo, 2009; Yee, 2006). We assume that intensive yet non-pathological gamers enjoy the game for these various reasons and thus they are not a group with any unified gaming pattern nor psychological trait or distress.

Methods

Participants

The data come from the first wave of a three-wave longitudinal online survey of Internet gaming addiction. A total sample of 6,730 Czech and Slovak online gamers was recruited through advertisement in online gaming magazines, on gaming discussion forums, and on guild websites. The ads targeted the core of the Czech and Slovak gaming community, with heavy players expected to be the highest proportion. Incentives in the form of lottery prizes were used to solicit higher participation. The questionnaire was published in Czech on the Lime Survey platform in the spring of 2013. A subsample of 4,074 players (ages 10-68; M = 20.81, SD = 5.95; 93.50% male) of MMORPG and MOBA games was selected for the analysis, and measurement tools were developed specifically for these types of games. Participants spent between 2 and 92 hours per week playing online games (M = 32.85, SD = 16.72); League of Legends (MOBA, 35.22%) and World of Warcraft (MMORPG, 19.69%) were the most played games in the sample. Female players were significantly older compared to males (Females: M = 21.79, SD = 6.80; Males: M = 20.75, SD = 5.88; p < 0.05); and spent significantly less hours gaming per week (Females: M = 27.85, SD = 15.84; Males: M = 33.20, SD = 16.73; p  < 0.001).

Measures

Online gaming addiction was measured using the Addiction-Engagement Questionnaire (AEQ), a 24-item tool with response options on a four-point scale (1 - strongly disagree; 4 - strongly agree). The tool distinguishes between online gaming addiction (12 items) and high engagement in online games (12 items). The addiction subscale focuses on core addiction criteria, such as conflict, behavioural salience, and withdrawal, while the engagement subscale measures peripheral addiction criteria, such as cognitive salience, euphoria, and tolerance ( Charlton & Danforth, 2007, 2010). Since the scale was not validated for discriminatory purposes, it is used as a continuum. Both subscales had sufficient internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.79 for addiction and Cronbach's α = 0.72 for high engagement). We created two new combined variables for addiction and engagement as mean scores of the respective subscales ranging from 1 to 4 (M ADD = 1.82, SD ADD = 0.49; M ENG = 2.50, SD ENG  = 0.26).

The frequency of online gaming, expressed in weekly playing hours, was constructed as a combined measure using two open-ended questions: "In the last 3 months, how much time (in hours) did you usually spend gaming on a normal working day?" and "In the last 3 months, how much time (in hours) do you usually spend gaming on a day off?" Respondents who did not play in the last three months (i.e. obtained zero in the combined frequency variable) were excluded from the analysis.

To obtain information about game genre, respondents were asked to name a game they played most often in the last three months. Only players of MMORPG and MOBA games were included in the analysis, as the AEQ scale contained some items relevant only to these types of games (i.e. questions on virtual character, levelling, collecting armour, etc.).

Interpersonal dependency was measured using 30 items of the Relationship Profile Test (RPT) ( Bornstein, Geiselman, Eisenhart, & Languirand, 2002). The scale distinguishes between destructive overdependence (Cronbach's α = 0.81), healthy dependence (Cronbach's α = 0.63), and dysfunctional detachment (Cronbach's α = 0.67), with 10 items providing answer options ranging from "very true" to "not at all true" and representing each subscale. The three new variables, created as mean scores of each sub-scale, ranged between 1 and 5 (M DO = 2.95, SD DO = 0.75; M HD = 3.63, SD HD = 0.56; M DD = 3.22, SD DD  = 0.60).

Social motivations for online gaming were measured using two subscales based on eight items selected from the pool of the most commonly used questionnaires on player's motivations ( Hsu, Wen, & Wu, 2009; Koo, 2009; Yee, 2006). Examples of the items are: "I like talking to other players"; "I enjoy being part of the gaming community"; "I sometimes share worries with other players"; and "I appreciate when fellow players offer support in my real-life situations." The four-point response scale (strongly disagree - strongly agree) focused on respondents' attitudes rather than actual behaviour. The exploratory factor analysis showed two factors - team play (five items) and social support (three items). Both scales had sufficient internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.75 for team play and Cronbach's α = 0.70 for social support). The final variables were created as mean scores of the respective items and ranged between 1 and 4.

Data analysis

Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated for addiction, engagement, and all predictors. Two separate regression models were constructed using a stepwise hierarchical linear regression to determine the association between online gaming addiction / engagement and social motivations / interpersonal dependency traits, while controlling for age, gender, frequency of online gaming, and game genre.

Ethics

According to rules of Masaryk University, the study did not require approval of ethical committee. In line with the university's ethical guidelines ( CTT, 2015), details about the study aims, procedures, and the data collected were provided on the first page of the questionnaire. As the participation was solicited via online advertisement and parents of the underage children could not be addressed directly, minors were requested to confirm that they would participate in the survey with parental approval.

Results

Pearson's correlation coefficients indicate a statistically significant relationship between addiction and all predictors; addiction is negatively correlated with the healthy-dependency-personality trait ( r = -0.18, p < 0.01) and age ( r = -0.23, p < 0.01). There is no relationship between the motivations for in-game social support and high engagement ( r = -0.03, p = 0.07). Time spent online is associated to both addiction ( r = -0.34, p < 0.01) and engagement ( r = -0.11, p  < 0.01), although the effect is stronger for addiction. The association with the negative aspects of interpersonal dependency - destructive overdependence and dysfunctional detachment - is stronger for addiction than for engagement in online gaming. The two negative aspects correlate positively, while there is a negative association with healthy dependency. Healthy dependency is negatively correlated with addiction and positively with both types of social motivations, while there is either no or negligible association between social motivations and negative dependency traits. Team play is negatively associated with both addiction and engagement. The correlation between social support and healthy dependency indicates that these two concepts may be related. The need for in-game social support also increases with age. summarizes the results of the correlational analysis.

shows three linear regression models explaining online gaming addiction by using the main interpersonal dependency subscales and social motivations. It confirms that the negative aspects of interpersonal dependency are positive predictors for online gaming addiction (hypotheses H1a and H1b), while there is a significant negative association with healthy dependency (hypothesis H1c). The main effect of social motivation is small and has only a limited impact on the relationship between addiction and interpersonal dependency. Adding interpersonal dependency variables into the model reduces the effect of social motivations; team play, particularly, becomes non-significant in the third regression step. Overall, the final model explains 25% of the variance of online gaming addiction. Thus, we consider the whole hypothesis H1 as confirmed.

shows similar models for engagement to online games as a dependent variable; the effect of the predictors is less pronounced and the final model explains only 8% of the variance of online gaming engagement. Contrary to online gaming addiction, adding dependency traits into the model slightly increased the effect of social motivations in the final model. The need for social support is a positive predictor for online gaming addiction patterns, but it is negatively associated with high engagement and this effect, although small, remains significant despite the interpersonal dependency traits in the final model. Thus, we cannot fully support hypothesis H2 - the associations are opposite in comparison to addiction; however, small but significant association with social motivation and interpersonal dependency traits still exist.

Discussion

The present study confirmed that interpersonal dependency traits are crucial in developing addictive behaviours discounting from the social motivation factors. Both, dysfunctional detachment and destructive overdependence increase the online gaming addiction score, while healthy dependency is associated with lower addiction scores. The relationship between various addictions and overdependence has been reported in literature ( Loas et al., 2005) and our study extends the evidence of its relationship to online gaming addiction. It must be noted that dysfunctional detachment and destructive overdependence are not mutually distinct categories. On the contrary, they are often found together ( Bornstein et al., 2003, 2009) and they were also mildly correlated in our research. In the case of online gaming, that means that some of the pathological gamers may use MMOGs as an escape to a more secure and controlled social environment and, at the same time, seek the social support and recognition of fellow gamers. A concept very closely related to healthy dependency is connectedness ( Bornstein, 2009). Decreased connectedness has been reported to be associated with increased general problematic Internet use ( McIntyre, Wiener, & Saliba, 2015). Our final model explaining the 25% variance of online gaming addiction is completed with demographic- and gaming-style variables - gender does not play a role, while younger gamers (those preferring the MOBA genre to MMORPG and those spending more time in the game) seem to be more susceptible. While the facts that younger gamers are more at risk of gaming addiction and that the gender effect is rather negligible have been shown in literature ( Caplan et al., 2009), the change in the effect of the game genre is new information. Traditionally, MMORPGs like World of Warcraft were shown to be the environment which tended to attract or produce problematic gaming patterns. The fact that the newly emerging MOBA genre even surpasses the MMORPGs should be further investigated together with other possible emerging trends in the gaming industry.

High involvement in online gaming, on the other hand, is less connected to the psychological underpinning of impairments in interpersonal relationships and can be seen more as controlled, although time-consuming, behaviour. This suggests that highly engaged and addicted gamers are a qualitatively distinct category and that they differ not only in the mere quantity of the activity. Such a result is in line with the previous findings of Charlton and Danforth (2010) and gives support to the approach of measuring Internet gaming addiction that distinguishes types of involvement. Our model combines demographic variables, personality traits, and social motivation for gaming, and explained only 8% of the variance of engagement points to online gaming as an entertaining activity, which is not necessary to problematize. Similar results have been reported elsewhere, though different methods were used (e.g. Griffiths, 2010; Király et al., 2015).

Healthy dependency is positively associated with both types of social motivation, while there is a negligible relationship between social motives and destructive overdependence, and a negative relationship between social motives and dysfunctional detachment. Social motives, therefore, prevail in people who show a healthy need for social contact, and online games are efficient sources for social interaction. For some authors, motivations to play represent conscious choices that are key to understanding the etiology of excessive patterns of online gaming ( Kardelfelt-Winther, 2014). In this view, the problematic patterns of online gaming are not understood as addiction but rather as maladaptive coping strategies. This approach, however, does not explain why only a few of those who report similar motivations to online gaming find themselves hooked on the game, and why some develop extreme symptoms of addiction that lead to neglecting basic drives. Our analysis indicates that this view may be correct in terms of high involvement in online gaming, but when it comes to loss of control, psychological factors play a role in the subsequent development of the pathology. Billieux et al. (2015) report similar results when demonstrating that social motivations are more typical for regulated role-play gamers than for hard-core and unregulated players. Indeed, online gaming addiction has been repeatedly shown to be associated with motives for immersion and escapism and with achieving better in-game content and rewards (e.g. King et al., 2011; Király et al., 2015; Kirby, Jones, & Copello, 2014).

A stronger relationship also exists between the time spent playing and online gaming addiction than with time spent playing and high engagement. This finding suggests that highly engaged gamers may have a sense for balance and can effectively control the impact of gaming on their real-life affairs. Psychological dispositions, then, are the underlying cause for reduced self-control and, subsequently, of disproportionate time spent online. This would be in line with research showing that disinhibition may manifest itself only in certain contexts, while in other situations individuals may perform normally and show sufficient levels of self-control ( Hofmann, Friese, & Strack, 2009). The lack of self-control in online gaming might piggyback on unrelated psychological discomfort, in this case as unsatisfying social contacts as a result of unhealthy interpersonal dependency traits.

The limitations of this study are associated with the fact that, unlike interpersonal dependency traits, motivations to play and the level of involvement in online gaming may vary over time. The cross-sectional nature of the present study, therefore, cannot capture the whole complexity of the relationships delineated earlier in this text. It should also be acknowledged that our data come from a non-representative, self-selected sample of Czech and Slovak online gamers. However, this fact should not compromise the correlational analysis ( Gosling, Vazire, Srivastava, & John, 2004).

Online gaming addiction, distinguished here from high engagement in online gaming, is not a medical diagnosis and should be interpreted with regard to the respective measurement instrument. The addiction subscale of the AEQ stresses those symptoms of addictive behaviours that either represent various types of present conflict or factors that may directly lead to one (i.e. behavioural salience, relapse, and reinstatement) ( Charlton & Danforth, 2007). We, therefore, cannot claim that negative interpersonal dependency traits are predictors of addiction, but they certainly are associated with such patterns of online gaming that put an individual at risk of adverse consequences in many areas of life. People with healthy relationship profiles are less likely to develop these problematic patterns of online gaming.

Authors' contribution

Drafting paper (KS, LB), study concept and design (LB), data preparation (KS), statistical analysis (KS), interpretation of data (LB, KS). All authors had full access to all data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding Statement

Funding sources: The authors acknowledge the support of the VITOVIN project (CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0184), which is co-financed by the European Social Fund and the state budget of Czech Republic, and the support of the Czech Science Foundation (GA15-19221S).

References

American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. [Google Scholar]

Blinka L., Škařupová K., Ševčíková A., Wölfling K., Müller K. W., Dreier M. (2015). Excessive Internet use in European adolescents: What determines differences in severity? International Journal of Public Health, 60, 249-256. [[PubMed] Google Scholar]

Bornstein R. F. (2009). Interpersonal dependency. In Leary M. R., Hoyle R. H., editors. (Eds.), Handbook of individual differences in social behavior (pp. 82-92). New York: Guilford Press. [Google Scholar]

Charlton J. P., Danforth I. D. (2004). Differentiating computer-related addictions and high engagement. Human Perspectives in the Internet Society: Culture, Psychology and Gender, 4, 59-68. [Google Scholar]

CTT (2015). Nakládání s výzkumnými daty na Masarykově univerzitě: Centrum pro transfer technologií, Masarykova univerzita.

Griffiths M. (2005). A 'components' model of addiction within a biopsychosocial framework. Journal of Substance Use, 10(4), 191-197. doi: 10.1080/14659890500114359 [Google Scholar]

Griffiths M. D., King D. L., Demetrovics Z. (2014). DSM-5 Internet gaming disorder needs a unified approach to assessment. Neuropsychiatry, 4(1), 1-4. doi: 10.2217/npy.13.82 [Google Scholar]

Kalmus V., Siibak A., Blinka L. (2014). Internet and child well-being. In Ben-Arieh A., Frønes I., Casas F., Korbin J. E., editors. (Eds.), Handbook of Child Well-Being (pp. 2093-2133). Dordrech: Springer. [Google Scholar]

Kardefelt-Winther D. (2014). A conceptual and methodological critique of Internet addiction research: Towards a model of compensatory Internet use. Computers in Human Behavior, 31, 351-354. [Google Scholar]

Király O., Urbán R., Griffiths M. D., Ágoston C., Nagygyörgy K., Kökönyei G., Demetrovics Z. (2015). The mediating effect of gaming motivation between psychiatric symptoms and problematic online gaming: An online survey. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 17(4), e88. [[PubMed] PMC free article] [Google Scholar]

Kuss D., Griffiths M. (2012). Internet gaming addiction: A systematic review of empirical research. International Journal of Mental Health & Addiction, 10(2), 278-296. doi: 10.1007/s11469-011-9318-5 [Google Scholar]

McIntyre E., Wiener K. K., Saliba A. J. (2015). Compulsive Internet use and relations between social connectedness, and introversion. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 569-574. [Google Scholar]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Interpersonal dependency and online gaming addiction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Keywords: online gaming addiction, high engagement, interpersonal dependency, motivations to play During the last decade and a half, Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have become a significant entertainment medium to which millions of young people devote a large portion of their leisure time ( Williams, Yee, & Caplan, 2008).

# data[].attributes.headline
10 Deadliest Air Disasters Caused By Miscommunication 

# data[].attributes.subject
10 Deadliest Air Disasters Caused By Miscommunication 

# data[].attributes.body
This article is interesting, it talks of the irony of how miscommunication has caused worst and deadliest air disasters. Technology being so advanced, people assume flying a plane is setting it to autopilot, but forget a plane still needs a pilot to land, takeoff and maneuver weather that might cause turbulence. Dominic R.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Image Source
In the technological world of modern air travel, there's a certain irony in the fact that the majority of aviation disasters are caused by human error. And one of the most common forms of error is miscommunication. Even if just one person makes a mistake, the repercussions can be catastrophic.

Air travel is arguably one of the safest forms of transportation, but when airplane crashes do happen, because of their nature, they can take a devastating toll on human life. Here's our list of the 10 worst air crashes caused by miscommunication.

10. Avianca Flight 52 (1990)
Image Source
On January 25, 1990, Avianca Flight 52 was carrying 149 passengers from Bogotá, Colombia to New York. However, because of bad weather conditions and air traffic congestion, the Boeing 707 was forced into a holding pattern off the coast near New York. And after circling for nearly an hour and a half, the aircraft was running low on fuel.

When Flight 52 arrived at Kennedy Airport, due to the fog and wind, only one runway was open for the 33 planes that were attempting to land every hour. What's more, the flight was delayed again as the aircraft ahead of them failed to touch down. Flight 52's fuel situation soon became desperate.

Two crucial pieces of miscommunication led to the disaster that was to follow. When the aircraft was passed from regional to local air traffic controllers, the local controllers were not informed that the aircraft had too little fuel to reach its alternative airport. Compounding the problem, crucially the aircraft's crew did not explicitly declare that there was "fuel emergency" to the local controllers, which would have indicated that the plane was actually in danger of crashing.

As a result, after missing its first attempt to land, the airplane was given a landing pattern that it had too little fuel to execute. While the crew attempted to maneuver the plane, its engines flamed out in quick succession. The Boeing 707 slammed into the village of Cove Neck, Long Island, killing 65 of its 149 passengers and eight out of nine of its crew.

9. Air Florida Flight 90 (1982)
Image Source
On January 13, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 was due to travel from Washington National Airport in Virginia to Hollywood International Airport in Fort Lauderdale, FL, with a layover in Tampa.

Conditions were snowy, and the aircraft had been de-iced improperly. Neither did it have its engine anti-icing system activated. This caused instruments to freeze and fail to register the correct readings. So, while the cabin crew thought that they had throttled up sufficiently for takeoff, in actual fact they didn't have enough power.

The Boeing 737's run-up took almost half a mile (800m) longer than it should have done. Even as they set off down the runway, the first officer noticed that something was wrong with the plane's instruments and that it wasn't capable of getting airborne. However, his attempts to communicate this were brushed off by the captain, who ordered the takeoff to continue.

The plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge, killing 78 people, including four motorists. Later, reports showed that there was sufficient space for the aircraft's takeoff to have been aborted - if only the flight crew had been communicating better.

8. Singapore Airlines Flight 006 (2000)
Image Source
It's not often that an aircraft collides with a bulldozer yet, tragically, that's exactly what happened in this next accident, involving an airplane schedule to fly from Singapore to Los Angeles via Taipei. On October 31, 2000, Singapore Airlines Flight 006 was taxiing to its takeoff point in stormy weather. Conditions were bad. There was low visibility thanks to the heavy rain. And crewmembers accidentally steered the Boeing 747 into runway 05R, which was closed for repairs.

The runway was cluttered with excavators, concrete barriers and a small bulldozer, but the pilot was unable to see them because of the inclement weather. The pilots had also apparently failed to read a report issued two months earlier that stated that the runway would be closed. As a result, they began takeoff procedures on the wrong runway.

While attempting to take off, the aircraft collided with the heavy equipment and broke apart. Many passengers seated in the middle of the plane were killed when fuel in the wings exploded and sent fireballs through that section. The final death toll amounted to 83 of the 179 on board, including four crewmembers.

7. Linate Airport Disaster (2001)
Image Source
On October 8, 2001, miscommunication played a role in a major collision at Linate Airport in Milan, Italy. The runway was obscured by thick fog, effectively reducing visibility to around 656 feet (200 meters), which may also have contributed to the tragedy, together with factors such as high traffic volume.

A Cessna Citation CJ2 business jet was given clearance to taxi to its takeoff point on a route that would avoid the main runway. However, due partly to poor use of radio communications and lack of proper markings and signs, the Cessna misinterpreted the message and turned in the wrong direction, crossing the main runway. Its route led it into the path of Scandinavian Airlines Flight 686, a McDonnell Douglas MD-87 airliner.

The two planes collided, with Flight 686 traveling at about 170 mph (270 kph). The Cessna went up in flames, while the right engine of the MD-87 was destroyed. The pilot of Flight 686, Joakim Gustafsson, managed to get the plane airborne for a brief period. And in an attempt to regain control, he hit the thrust reverser and brakes - noted as a particularly skilful maneuver. Even so, Gustafsson lost control of the plane, and it smashed into a luggage hangar at the end of the runway. In total, 118 people were killed in the disaster.

6. Dan Air Flight 1008 (1980)
Image Source A Dan-Air 727 similar to the accident aircraft
This disaster was caused by a single misheard word. Dan Air Flight 1008 departed from Manchester, England, on the morning of April 25, 1980, en route to Tenerife, one of Spain's Canary Islands. At 1:21 pm, the plane ploughed into the side of the island's mount La Esperanza, killing all 146 people on board.

The cause of the disaster was a misinterpretation made by the Boeing 727's flight crew. The plane was instructed by the control tower to take an unpublished, not officially approved, and potentially dangerous holding pattern above Los Rodeos Airport. But the pilot also seems to have mistaken the word "inbound" for "outbound" in the instructions he received, flying in the opposite direction to which he was supposed to.

This turn in the wrong direction took the plane through an area of exceptionally high ground. And due to the airport's lack of ground radar, the air traffic controllers were unable to tell the flight crew that the plane was off course.

Heavy clouds obscured the crew's vision, likely preventing them from seeing the looming threat of the mountain. The first sign they had of any impending danger was when the plane's ground proximity warning device was triggered. The crew attempted a steep climb, but the aircraft slammed into the mountainside, killing everyone on board instantly.

5. PSA Flight 182 (1978)
Image Source
On September 25, 1978, Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 was making a routine trip from Sacramento to San Diego. In the vicinity, an instructor was giving one of his students flying lessons in a private Cessna aircraft.

At some point, the Cessna made an unauthorized change of course, which put it on the same flight path as the much larger Boeing 727. At first, both pilots managed to steer clear of each other. But communication between the crew and airport control sounded nervous prior to the crash.

In the transmissions between air traffic control and Flight 182, the crucial word "passed" appears to have been misheard as "passing," causing the controllers to believe that the flight crew knew the location of the Cessna. In fact, they had lost sight of the plane.

Less than two minutes after the transmission, the Cessna slammed into the bottom of Flight 182's right wing. The Cessna broke to pieces, and the Boeing 727's right wing was shattered. Both aircraft plummeted into a San Diego neighborhood, killing all 135 onboard on Flight 182, seven people on the ground, and both the Cessna pilots.

Witnesses at the crash site reported utter carnage, with blood and pieces of people's bodies strewn across the entire area. In the end, if the crew of Flight 182 had managed to clearly communicate to air traffic control that they had lost sight of the smaller plane, California's deadliest ever aircraft disaster might have been averted.

4. American Airlines Flight 965 (1995)
Image Source
On December 20, 1995, American Airlines Flight 965 was flying from Miami to Cali, Colombia, carrying 163 passengers and crew. On approach to the airport of Cali, the crew accidentally erased the waypoints that would have allowed them to navigate to the airport.

It was at this point that two miscommunications occurred. First, the captain entered the first "R" on the list of waypoints available, inadvertently sending the plane directly towards Bogotá, through a valley that put it on a collision course with mountainous terrain. Next, the air traffic controller at Cali, Nelson Ramírez, sensed that something was wrong, but he did not know enough English to correct the errant plane.

Flight 965 slammed into the 9,800-foot (3,000-meter) mountain, despite the flight crew's last-minute efforts to pull out of the collision. In total, 159 people were killed in the crash, leaving only four survivors (initially five), who were all sitting within two rows of each other. A dog was also rescued from the wreckage.

3. Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 (1997)
Image Source
On September 26, 1997, Garuda Indonesia Airlines Flight 152 was traveling from Jakarta to Medan. While making its final approach, the pilot called Medan airport for help, complaining of poor visibility due to forest fires burning below.

At the time, the fires had caused delays, and three planes were waiting to land at Medan. Confusion arose because two of the aircraft had the same flight number. And in the chaos, air traffic control allegedly pulled the doomed Garuda Flight 152 off its regular course.

However, it seems that the crucial element of the disaster was a massive failure of communication between the pilot and the airport. Just before the plane - an Airbus A300 - was due to land, air traffic control ordered the pilot to turn right instead of left. A mix-up resulted, and the flight crashed in mountainous terrain, killing all 234 individuals on board. Chillingly, one minute after the plane turned in the wrong direction, the pilots were heard screaming.

2. Charkhi Dadri Mid-Air Collision (1996)
Image Source
The Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision the occurred on November 12, 1996 is the worst mid-air crash in the history of aviation. Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 collided with Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 763 at an altitude of almost 14,000 feet (4,300 meters), killing all 349 people on board both planes.

The cause of the disaster can be traced back to communications difficulties in the Kazakhstani plane. None of the Kazakhstani flight crew, except the radio operator, understood English, so they were completely reliant on him to communicate with air traffic control. The radio operator also lacked his own set of instruments and had to look over the shoulders of the pilots in order to find out information, such as the aircraft's height.

The result of this was that Flight 1907 descended more than 1,000 feet (300 m) below its assigned altitude of 15,000 feet (4,600 meters), while struggling with turbulence inside a bank of cloud. The radio operator noticed the descent and told the crew to bring the aircraft back up, unfortunately placing them square in the path of the Saudi Arabian Boeing 747.

The resulting collision destroyed the left wing and stabilizer of Saudi Arabian aircraft, sending it spiraling towards Earth, disintegrating as it fell. Flight 1907, meanwhile, crashed into a field. Four survivors were recovered from the wreckage of the Kazakhstani plane, but all of them died soon afterwards.

1. Tenerife Airport Disaster (1977)
Image Source
The worst air disaster of all time occurred at Tenerife's Los Rodeos Airport (now known as Tenerife North Airport) in the Canary Islands. Two Boeing 747s, Pan Am Flight 1736 and KLM Royal Dutch Airline Flight 4805, collided in fog, killing 583 people and leaving only 61 survivors. Unfortunately, the causes of the disaster boil down to possible impatience and a very basic error of communication.

On March 27, 1977, Los Rodeos Airport was covered in heavy fog and was overcrowded due to traffic being diverted from Gran Caneria Airport, where a bomb had exploded. This may also have meant that direction from air traffic control was more muddled than usual.

KLM pilot Jacob van Zanten was eager to leave. Van Zanten and his crew had almost reached the legal limit of their on-duty time and would have to stay in Tenerife overnight unless they got going soon. This may have contributed to the pilot's fatal mistake when he received the communication "you are clear" from the air traffic control tower.

A second clearance was required before van Zaten could take off, but instead he began to accelerate down the runway. In the meantime, the Pan Am flight, which was attempting to find its assigned taxiway in the heavy fog, was directly in the KLM airplane's path. The resulting collision obliterated the Dutch plane, sending it some 100 feet into the air before it came crashing down and exploded in a ball of fire. The Pan Am flight was sliced into pieces and also went up in flames.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Deadliest Air Disasters Caused By Miscommunication - Best Communications Degrees

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Image Source In the technological world of modern air travel, there's a certain irony in the fact that the majority

# data[].attributes.body
Here is an article about what message is really communicated  when we refuse to do things a partner might ask because it doesn't seem important to us.  It explains that doing these kinds of things is really more about communicating respect, care and love than tidying up around the house.  The example is a little old-fashioned in the way it reinforces traditional gender-roles but I believe there is still a worthwhile message here about how important respect is to a relationship.
Jonathan N.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It seems so unreasonable when you put it that way: My wife left me because sometimes I leave dishes by the sink.

It makes her seem ridiculous; and makes me seem like a victim of unfair expectations.

We like to point fingers at other things to explain why something went wrong, like when Biff Tannen crashed George McFly's car and spilled beer on his clothes, but it was all George's fault for not telling him the car had a blind spot.

This bad thing happened because of this, that, and the other thing. Not because of anything I did!

Sometimes I leave used drinking glasses by the kitchen sink, just inches away from the dishwasher.

It isn't a big deal to me now. It wasn't a big deal to me when I was married. But it was a big deal to her.

Every time she'd walk into the kitchen and find a drinking glass by the sink, she moved incrementally closer to moving out and ending our marriage. I just didn't know it yet.

"Every time she'd walk into the kitchen and find a drinking glass by the sink, she moved incrementally closer to moving out and ending our marriage. I just didn't know it yet."

But even if I had, I fear I wouldn't have worked as hard to change my behavior as I would have stubbornly tried to get her to see things my way.

The idiom "to cut off your nose to spite your face" was created for such occasions.

Men Are Not Children ― Even Though We Behave Like Them

Feeling respected by others is important to men.

Feeling respected by one's wife is essential to living a purposeful and meaningful life. Maybe I thought my wife should respect me simply because I exchanged vows with her. It wouldn't be the first time I acted entitled. One thing I know for sure is that I never connected putting a dish in the dishwasher with earning my wife's respect.

I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time. It's why the sexiest thing a man can say to his partner is "I got this," and then take care of whatever needs taken care of.

I always reasoned: "If you just tell me what you want me to do, I'll gladly do it."

But she didn't want to be my mother.

She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.

She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.

I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time.

Men Can Do Things

Men invented heavy machines that can fly in the air reliably and safely. Men proved the heliocentric model of the solar system, establishing that the Earth orbits the Sun. Men design and build skyscrapers, and take hearts and other human organs from dead people and replace the corresponding failing organs inside of living people, and then those people stay alive afterward. Which is insane.

Men are totally good at stuff.

"She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management. I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time."

Men are perfectly capable of doing a lot of these things our wives complain about. What we are not good at is being psychic, or accurately predicting how our wives might feel about any given thing because male and female emotional responses tend to differ pretty dramatically.

'Hey Matt! Why would you leave a glass by the sink instead of putting it in the dishwasher?'

1.) I may want to use it again.

2.) I don't care if a glass is sitting by the sink unless guests are coming over.

3.) I will never care about a glass sitting by the sink. Ever. It's impossible. It's like asking me to make myself interested in crocheting, or to enjoy yard work. I don't want to crochet things. And it's hard for me to imagine a scenario in which doing a bunch of work in my yard sounds more appealing than ANY of several thousand less-sucky things which could be done.

There is only ONE reason I will ever stop leaving that glass by the sink. A lesson I learned much too late: Because I love and respect my partner, and it REALLY matters to her.

I understand that when I leave that glass there, it hurts her ― literally causes her pain ― because it feels to her like I just said: "Hey. I don't respect you or value your thoughts and opinions. Not taking four seconds to put my glass in the dishwasher is more important to me than you are."

All the sudden, it's not about something as benign and meaningless as a dirty dish.

Now, it's a meaningful act of love and sacrifice, and really? Four seconds? That doesn't seem like the kind of thing too big to do for the person who sacrifices daily for me.

I don't have to understand WHY she cares so much about that stupid glass.

I just have to understand and respect that she DOES

Yes, It's That Simple

The man capable of that behavioral change ― even when he doesn't understand her or agree with her thought-process ― can have a great relationship.

Men want to fight for their right to leave that glass there. It might look like this:

"Eat shit, wife," we think. "I sacrifice a lot for you, and you're going to get on me about ONE glass by the sink? THAT little bullshit glass that takes a few seconds to put in the dishwasher, which I'll gladly do when I know I'm done with it, is so important to you that you want to give me crap about it? You want to take an otherwise peaceful evening and have an argument with me, and tell me how I'm getting something wrong and failing you, over this glass?

After all of the big things I do to make our life possible ― things I never hear a "thank you" for (and don't ask for) ― you're going to elevate a glass by the sink into a marriage problem? I couldn't be THAT petty if I tried. And I need to dig my heels in on this one. If you want that glass in the dishwasher, put it in there yourself without telling me about it. Otherwise, I'll put it away when people are coming over, or when I'm done with it. This is a bullshit fight that feels unfair and I'm not just going to bend over for you."

The man DOES NOT want to divorce his wife because she's nagging him about the glass thing which he thinks is totally irrational. He wants her to agree with him that when you put life in perspective, a glass being by the sink when no one is going to see it anyway, and the solution takes four seconds, is just not a big problem. She should recognize how petty and meaningless it is in the grand scheme of life, he thinks, and he keeps waiting for her to agree with him.

She will never agree with him, because for her, it's not ACTUALLY about the glass. The glass situation could be ANY situation in which she feels unappreciated and disrespected by her husband.

The wife doesn't want to divorce her husband because he leaves used drinking glasses by the sink.

She wants to divorce him because she feels like he doesn't respect or appreciate her, which suggests he doesn't love her, and she can't count on him to be her lifelong partner. She can't trust him. She can't be safe with him. Thus, she must leave and find a new situation in which she can feel content and secure.

"The wife doesn't want to divorce her husband because he leaves used drinking glasses by the sink. She wants to divorce him because she feels like he doesn't respect or appreciate her..."

In theory, the man wants to fight this fight, because he thinks he's right (and I tend to agree with him): The dirty glass is not more important than marital peace.

If his wife thought and felt like him, he'd be right to defend himself. Unfortunately, most guys don't know that she's NOT fighting about the glass. She's fighting for acknowledgment, respect, validation, and his love.

If he KNEW that ― if he fully understood this secret she has never explained to him in a way that doesn't make her sound crazy to him (causing him to dismiss it as an inconsequential passing moment of emo-ness), and that this drinking glass situation and all similar arguments will eventually end his marriage, I believe he WOULD rethink which battles he chose to fight, and would be more apt to take action doing things he understands to make his wife feel loved and safe.

I think a lot of times, wives don't agree with me. They don't think it's possible that their husbands don't know how their actions make her feel because she has told him, sometimes with tears in her eyes, over and over and over and over again how upset it makes her and how much it hurts.

And this is important: Telling a man something that doesn't make sense to him once, or a million times, doesn't make him "know" something. Right or wrong, he would never feel hurt if the same situation were reversed so he doesn't think his wife SHOULD hurt.

"I never get upset with you about things you do that I don't like!" men reason, as if their wives are INTENTIONALLY choosing to feel hurt and miserable.

When you choose to love someone, it becomes your pleasure to do things that enhance their lives and bring you closer together, rather than a chore.

It's not: Sonofabitch, I have to do this bullshit thing for my wife again. It's: I'm grateful for another opportunity to demonstrate to my wife that she comes first and that I can be counted on to be there for her, and needn't look elsewhere for happiness and fulfillment.

Once someone figures out how to help a man equate the glass situation (which does not, and will never, affect him emotionally) with DEEPLY wounding his wife and making her feel sad, alone, unloved, abandoned, disrespected, afraid, etc. ... Once men really grasp that and accept it as true even though it doesn't make sense to them?

Everything changes forever.

This post originally appeared on Must Be This Tall To Ride.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
marriage relationships divorce love love & sex  communication love and relationships when men divorce respect

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes By The Sink

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It seems so unreasonable when you put it that way: My wife left me because sometimes I leave dishes by the sink. It makes her seem ridiculous; and makes me seem like a victim of unfair expectations.

# data[].attributes.body
Talks about how teens should be more open about whats going on in their lives and the risks of holding on to issues rather than opening up to someone and saying whats on their mind.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"What this study shows, convincingly and for the first time, is that there are very good options for a child who is thought to be at risk for suicidal thinking," said Kevin Stark, a psychologist at the University of Texas, who was not involved with the research. "Psychosocial therapies do work on their own, with time. But they also help prevent relapse, and this shows that they can help make drug treatment safer."

In the study, which began in 1999, researchers recruited 654 youths ages 12 to 17 who had been moderately to severely depressed for up to a year or longer. The adolescents were randomly assigned to be treated with Prozac, the antidepressant made by Eli Lilly; cognitive behavioral therapy for a weekly hourlong session; placebo pills; or a combination of Prozac and talk therapy.

After 12 weeks, about three in four of the patients receiving both talk therapy and medication were rated as "much better" or "very much better," and two-thirds taking just the drug fared just as well. Talk therapy by itself was no better than the placebo.

After four months, about two-thirds of those receiving any treatment were rated as much or very much improved - significantly better than a typical response to placebo pills.

By nine months, 8 in 10 adolescents had shaken off their depression, entirely or almost entirely, no matter the treatment.

Talk therapy was a safer alternative. Almost 15 percent of the patients taking just Prozac reported what were described as "suicidal events," mainly talk and thoughts of suicide so alarming that doctors called in the patients and, often, altered dosages.

The rate of such events for those receiving just cognitive behavior therapy was 6 percent. The results for combination therapy were about the same.

"The message is that medication accelerates recovery, but cognitive therapy protects against these bad reactions, and the combination is the best option," said Dr. John March, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Duke University Medical Center and the principal investigator for the study.

The talk therapy promoted changes in behavior like getting patients out of bed and doing something that they enjoy, like playing basketball or going to a party. It also provided cognitive therapy, in which patients are taught to diffuse poisonous assumptions like "I'm a loser" or "I'll never get a girlfriend."

Experts say it is not easy to find specialists in this therapy outside large cities. The techniques have been widely published in manuals and books, and March said a good therapist could usually work such techniques into a treatment plan.

"The trick," he said, "is to be an intelligent consumer and find a skilled therapist who's willing to work with you on these methods."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Talk therapy pivotal for depressed youth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"What this study shows, convincingly and for the first time, is that there are very good options for a child who is thought to be at risk for suicidal thinking," said Kevin Stark, a psychologist at the University of Texas, who was not involved with the research.

# data[].attributes.body
The article talks about the importance of face to face communication. Regardless of technologies convenience, it demands corporations to re-consider the need for "the personal" needs of its clients. Something email and virtual communication lacks.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In this day and age of high speed internet, increasing globalization, wireless connectivity, and the rigors of air travel, more and more business is being conducted virtually. Webcasts and video teleconferences have become the accepted mode for many interpersonal communications ranging from Board of Directors meetings to all hands meetings. Common to all of these interactions is the presentation, my stock in trade as a coach.

Most of the principles I teach have not changed for more than two millennia, since the glory days of Aristotle. To be persuasive, presenters still must tell their stories with a clear beginning, middle, and end and tell them with authority and assurance-Aristotle called that part ethos. PowerPoint, which reared its ugly head in the late 20 th century, has become an integral part of the process and we have all learned to live with the monster; what has not changed is the role of the presenter. But the virtualization of presentations is threatening to diminish that role by taking the presenter's personal presence-and therefore full interaction with the audience-out of the equation.

There are still a few bastions which preserve that role. Primary among them is the sales call. Case in point: Ford Tamer, the CEO of Inphi Corporation, a public semiconductor company that sells its products to service provider and cloud data center OEMs. has a direct sales force of 22 and indirect sales force of over 50, yet Dr. Tamer, whose main job is to run the company, averages 4 trips per quarter to meet directly with clients in the US, Canada, Asia, and the European Union. He is clearly an executive who understands the importance of the personal in interpersonal communications.

Another case in point is that most mission-critical of all presentations, the IPO road show. Given that the average public offering is around $150 million and investors are limited to buying 10% tranches, any one presentation can result in a $15 million sale-or not. Before 2005, the CEOs and CFOs of the offering companies went on the road for two weeks, across the country, and often across oceans, delivering 70 or 80 iterations of their pitches to potential investors.

In 2005, the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the interest of full disclosure, required that offering companies must make their road shows available to the public online. Since then, the companies make video recordings of their presentations and post them on a website called NetRoadshow. Despite this broad access, the CEOs and CFOs of those companies still go on the road for two weeks to have 70 or 80 face-to-face meetings. No investor will make a $15 million decision based on a canned presentation alone; they want to meet the senior executives in person, press the flesh, look them in the eye, and interact with them directly.

Unfortunately, this essential practice has fallen by the wayside in many of those same companies' interactions with their consumers. Think of how often you have been trapped in a large company's voice mail jail interacting with a disembodied prerecorded voice.

Many internet companies are now extending that disembodiment into voiceless silence. New York Times columnist Joe Nocera described Uber's approach in his column this past Saturday:
Uber does not have a phone number listed in the Manhattan directory. Like many online companies, it believes in the efficiency of communicating via email... Just because Uber doesn't want to talk to customers, though, doesn't mean customers don't want to talk to Uber. Sometimes there are problems that scream for human communication: an accident, a cellphone left in a car, a mixup with a bill. And sometimes, even though online communications may be more efficient, people are simply more comfortable talking to another human.
Mr. Nocera went on to recommend how Uber, having just raised $1.2 billion to "'invest in internal growth and change,'" could address the matter: "Here's a suggestion: Hire some people who will answer the phone."

Here's my suggestion to you: whenever you can, get in front of your audience, in person.Press the flesh, look them in the eye, and be available to interact with them directly.*

The bottom line here is to be transparent, a practice as vital to you as it is to Uber; a point I made in my previous Forbes post and was made very clearly by Andy Kessler in his Wall Street Journal article yesterday.

*For those occasions when you cannot be physically present, you can find guidance to enhance your pitch in "The Virtual Presentation," Chapter 13, in my book Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story.
Jerry Weissman is the country's leading presentation coach and best-selling author. Follow him on ,, and for more insights.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why The 'Personal' Is So Important In Interpersonal Communications

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
PowerPoint, which reared its ugly head in the late 20th century, has become an integral part of the process and we have all learned to live with the monster; what has not changed is the role of the presenter.

# data[].attributes.body
Jordan Belfort is a successful business man as seen on the movie  , " The Wolf of Wall Street." Not only is he successful with money but Mr. Belfort explains how he has managed to be a millionaire. Persuading through communication and even knowing how to use non-verbal communication in business has helped him be the man he is today. In this article Jordan Belfort explains his secrets in persuading with communication.
-Ana Castaneda

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
JORDAN Belfort knows the secret of persuading people.

Or at least that's what he tells me.

In the 1990s the infamous "Wolf of Wall Street" developed a system of persuading and selling that saw him earning $50 million a year on the stockmarket. It also led to a stint in jail after he developed a massive drug addiction and was found guilty of manipulating shares.

Now 12 years sober, he is a bad-boy-turned-good author and speaker, touring his Straight Line System for making "the perfect sale" around Australia this month. But how do you stand out from the sea of ex-cons and former drug addicts who find a righteous path and spin it into a motivational-speaker career?

It helps, Mr Belfort says, that Leonardo DiCaprio is starring in a Martin Scorsese-directed film about his controversial life.

"I'm lucky that I have this movie coming out and a lot of the movie is about the Straight Line System, it's a big part of the movie and it actually moves the action forward," he said.

And, Mr Belfort says, his system is still used by major firms all over Wall Street.

He is intense. Charming and engaging, it's easy to see why he's a world leader in the sales training industry. But a conversation with Mr Belfort provides some insight into his wolfish past.

His overwhelming positivity was punctured twice when he growled at his quiet entourage for making too much noise ("You're killing me!"), and he spent our conversation drinking Red Bull (the hard drugs swapped for caffeine).

Back on message, Mr Belfort said his persuasion tactics can be useful for anyone, not just sales people.

People can use the Straight Line System to persuade their boss to give them a pay rise or persuade a prospective employer to hire them.

"It's [useful] for any employee who wants to increase their value in the workplace," he said.

"There's the truth about what you do and your level of expertise and then there's also how you're able to communicate what you do to other people.

"In the end it always comes down to your ability to communicate your product, your ideas and you vision for the future and to get someone to buy into that with either their time or their money."
How to ask for a raise
There are three things you have to communicate when you want to ask for a pay rise.

"Number one is the value of the product, which is you, and both the job you're doing now and what you can do for the company over the long term," Mr Belfort said.

Then in the moment when you're actually selling your idea to your boss, you have to get into a rapport where they trust and connect with you (see how to do that below).

Finally, you have to be clear about what you're asking for.

"You say I'd like a raise for X amount of dollars and you offer the benefits that you're going to give for that raise," he said.
How to persuade someone to hire you
You have to think about it in terms of "selling yourself" to your prospective employer.

"Saying 'I really want a job here' would be the lowest level of persuasion," Mr Belfort said. "Versus 'Let me tell you what I can add here in value and how I see myself fitting in'."

And where do you see yourself in five years?

"It's a question you always get asked, and the best answer is 'I see myself growing in my own job here and eventually getting to the point where I can manage other people and pass on the skills I've learned to the people around me'."
The first four seconds
You have to make a good first impression and you can't do it just using words.

"It's your tonality and your body langue which allows you to be established as someone worth listening to," Mr Belfort said. "Certain tones are pleasing to the ear and imply certainty about what you're saying."
Build a rapport
Now you have their attention, you need to open somebody up to want to talk to you.

"It's how you phrase your questions and how you listen to somebody," Mr Belfort said.

"If somebody's talking to you and it's a logical thing they're talking about, like about their business, you're leaning back and listening intently.

"And when it's emotional, about the struggles they're facing or if their family comes up, you lean forward and [nod to show you understand]."

You should also match the general posture and pace at which the other person is talking.

"So if someone is unenthusiastic and seems disconnected to your message you don't keep talking at them in a tone that is overly positive and enthusiastic - you match their tone and build up to a level where you sound enthusiastic again," he said.
Always be asking questions
When you ask someone a lot of thoughtful questions you make the person feel like they're in good hands.

"The thing with great sales people, top level entrepreneurs and business people is that they're experts in asking questions and based on that they know how to offer a solution," Mr Belfort said.

So what counts as a "good" question?

Your goal is to work out what people need, but you also need to understand the context.

"What do they value? What are their beliefs about buying and making decisions? What's causing them the most discomfort right now?" Mr Belfort said.

You have to listen and don't try to solve their problem while you're still working out what it is.

"The biggest mistake that novice salespeople make is they try to sell [their product] before they get the full picture [of what someone wants] which is very disempowering for the client," he said.
How to identify what's wrong with people...
To convince people to buy something they have to love the product both logically (so they believe they need it) and emotionally (so they feel good about having it). They have to trust and connect with you as the salesperson. And they have to be thinking about the problem they have and why you can solve it.

"At a certain point one of the questions I always ask is 'What is your greatest headache right now?'" Mr Belfort said.

"I wouldn't ask it first but as I get into deeper and tighter rapport it opens me up to ask those more invasive, troubling questions and if they already sense I'm an expert and a figure of authority they'll reveal their pain to you," he said.
... and how to use it to get a job or a promotion
"Whatever your job is the people who are your superiors are facing struggles," Mr Belfort said.

If you can build a successful rapport with your boss they'll tell you what their struggles are and what they want you to do.

"Know the people who hired you, what are they looking for and how you give them the most value," he said.

When you know what to focus on in your work, and once you are performing and proving you are valuable you can go back and ask for that pay rise or promotion.
Jordan Belfort is touring Australian this month to teach his Straight Line Sales technique.
The Wolf of Wall Street film will be released on December 12.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
JORDAN Belfort knows the secret of persuading people. Or at least that's what he tells me. In the 1990s the infamous "Wolf of Wall Street" developed a system of persuading and selling that saw him earning $50 million a year on the stockmarket.

# data[].attributes.headline
Correlation between doctor interpersonal communication and patient satisfaction 

# data[].attributes.subject
Correlation between doctor interpersonal communication and patient satisfaction 

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about the use of interpersonal communication with Doctors in a health care situation and how it relates to overall patient well being and satisfaction. The study took place over 6 months. The doctors were given a checklist to attempt to follow and patients were given a questionnaire to see results. The conclusion was that Communication actually had less to do with patient satisfaction, but Interpersonal Communication had huge impacts on patient satisfaction.

Tanveer, Fahad, et al. “Impact of Doctor’s Interpersonal Communication Skill on Patien’s Satisfaction Level.” Isra Medical Journal, vol. 10, no. 5, Sept. 2018, pp. 306–309. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=133028251.

# data[].attributes.body
Although the internet is still relatively young, blogging is the new way to self- disclose while creating new emotional connections that bring on the pleasure from social connection. With proper use of the internet, it is a very rewarding type of social integration that can cause new relationships to flourish.

-Vaniesha G.

# data[].attributes.body
The way people perceive one another can easily be a misunderstanding. This article discusses the psychology behind what causes the misreading of someones "active listening" face as their "angry" face. - Kiahna

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mixed Signals: Why People Misunderstand Each Other

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The psychological quirks that make it tricky to get an accurate read on someone's emotions

# data[].attributes.body
Finding a way to forgive someone who has been unfaithful to you can be hard. This article gives you secrets/ solutions to the roots of the emotions you might be feeling right now. If, you can relate to this  stop- go get a cup of coffee and take a seat.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Obviously, there are many types of relationship transgressions of varying severity, and different types of transgressions mean very different things. Forgetting to pick up bread and milk at the store on the way home is far less significant than forgetting to pick up an essential prescription for your partner.

Across the board, however, one of the most devastating relationship transgressions is infidelity. Yet many couples manage to overcome such betrayal; some even grow to have a stronger relationship. How do they do it? Research indicates that the answer involves two related concepts - relational commitment and the capacity to forgive.

Ysseldyk and Wohl (2017) conducted two studies examining the relationship between relational commitment and transgression.[i] In an article aptly named "I Forgive Therefore I'm Committed," they found the severity of the transgression to be linked with decreased commitment, although this relationship was mediated by forgiveness. The greater the amount of forgiveness, the less commitment loss.

They found that after a severe transgression, unforgiveness caused a decline in relational commitment. Forgiveness helps to preserve pre-offense commitment when relationships have suffered a severe transgression.

It is significant to note that although their research did not demonstrate that forgiveness increases relational commitment after a transgression, it apparently mitigates the damage by slowing a decline in commitment.

Previous research by Finkel et al. (2002) found a positive association between relational commitment and forgiveness.[ii] Their results also indicated that commitment inhibits destructive reactions to betrayal, such as neglect or leaving the relationship - a result they note can be interpreted in the alternative, finding that low levels of commitment have no such inhibitory effect. They acknowledge the importance of this finding in light of prior evidence that destructive behaviors harm relationships more than constructive behaviors help them.
When Forgiving Infidelity, Motive Matters
What are the causes of infidelity, and do they matter? Research by Finkel et al. says yes. They found the commitment-forgiveness link was mediated by positive cognition - finding external explanations and extenuating circumstances to explain partner betrayal - rather than attributing the betrayal to internal causes.

They give examples of attributing a partner's betrayal to situational variables or even to chance, rather than to more malevolent explanations such as intent or disposition. They explain that forgiving partners may be more willing to give a partner the benefit of the doubt, consider the circumstances surrounding the betrayal, or even accept some measure of personal responsibility for an incident.

Do these behaviors make victims enablers? Although this is clearly another avenue of important research, it is significant to note that, apparently, systematic external processing of betrayal facilitates forgiveness. And let us not forget that men and women view infidelity differently, depending on whether an affair is physical or emotional. This, in turn, may impact the ability and willingness to forgive.
Gender Matters
Bendixen et al. (2017) found that heterosexual women were more likely to perceive emotional affairs as threatening to their relationships than sexual affairs.[iii] Men, though, appeared to be more willing to forgive emotional infidelity than women, and more likely to believe that their own emotional infidelity would be forgiven. The authors note that this finding is consistent with research indicating that women are more distressed by emotional affairs than men.

Miller and Baker (2017) found that men were more likely to engage in mate abandonment behavior after sexual infidelity than after emotional infidelity, with this pattern reversed for women.[iv] However, when using a forced-choice measure, women chose abandonment behavior equally in response to both sexual and emotional infidelity.

They also found that men viewed partners as possessing less mate value after the partner had been unfaithful sexually as opposed to emotionally unfaithful. In addition, men reported that they would suffer a higher degree of emotional distress in response to sexual infidelity than women did.
Forgiving and Moving Forward
Couples that decide to stay together after infidelity are no doubt well aware of the importance of relational commitment and forgiveness, regardless of whether the affair was physical or emotional. Counseling is available for partners who decide to heal the relationship and move forward. Many are successful.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Number-One Way to Overcome Infidelity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Obviously, there are many types of relationship transgressions of varying severity, and different types of transgressions mean very different things. Forgetting to pick up bread and milk at the store on the way home is far less significant than forgetting to pick up an essential prescription for your partner.

# data[].attributes.body
This article gives us an idea of communication how we as humans are developed to it and it’s a big part of who we are now. “The question here is whether nonverbal has the same interaction like face to face does.” “Face to face communication helps clarify meaning to avoid misunderstanding between people.” “Social networks create personal connection through talking on a phone, texting or using social network sites to share information.” “ The need of social interaction, the need for sharing ideas, the exchange of personal advice, as well as for the expression of care and companionship.” At the end the author isn’t sure that without a social presence an authentic connection is possible in the end.
- Anahi,
A.V

# data[].attributes.body
The article explains how maintaining a secure emotional connection, keeping things positive, listening to your brain, not just your heart, and a happier relationship is a happier life, scientifically make a romantic relationship flourish.
Jessica C.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A growing field of research into relationships is providing science-based guidance into the habits of the healthiest, happiest couples.

# data[].attributes.body
This article focuses on hate speech stemming from Facebook messages sent to vaccine advocates. Unknown context and loss of profit seem to be the main factors as to why this type of communication is allowed. Facebook encourages users to report hate speech, but if and when incidents are reported little to nothing is done to the offender.

-Boltz J.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
she was called the n-word and given instructions to slit her wrists. what did facebook do?   - cnn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
She was called the n-word and given instructions to slit her wrists. What did Facebook do?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These are the findings of a six-month CNN investigation into bullying and harassment faced by parents, doctors, and others who advocate for vaccination on Facebook. A Facebook spokesperson said the platform is conducting its own investigation as a result of CNN's findings.

# data[].attributes.headline
DEAR MAN: Most effective way to make a request

# data[].attributes.subject
DEAR MAN: Most effective way to make a request

# data[].attributes.body
I have included a link to a solid explanation about DEAR MAN. DEAR MAN is an acronym that stands for: describe, express, assert, reinforce, mindful, appear confident, and negotiate. This can be especially helpful when you need to have a conversation that may be difficult to have.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
DEAR MAN DBT Skill: The Most Effective Way to Make a Request

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dialectical behavior therapy skills ( DBT skills) offer tips for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, The Middle Path, and interpersonal effectiveness. DEAR MAN is a subskill of interpersonal effectiveness. You can use it to resolve a conflict or make a request in a respectful and effective way that maintains a relationship.

# data[].attributes.body
Our textbook discusses 8 reasons why we form relationships (appearance, similarity, complementarity, reciprocal attraction, competence, disclosure, proximity, and rewards).  Discuss which factors influenced your choice of partner. (Note: this prompt is not relevant to those who have chosen a family member to be their person.)

What stage in Knapp's model are you and your person in? Discuss.

Reflect back to the last time you interacted with your person... what types of relational messages did you send them? (affinity, immediacy, respect, control)

Have you or your person ever committed a transgression? What type? How did you (or didn't you) repair your relationship?

# data[].attributes.body
See Chapter 12 for more information on conflict.

1. Recall as many conflicts as possible that you have had in one relationship. Identify which approach best characterizes each one: win—lose, lose—lose, compromise, or win—win.

2. For each conflict, describe the consequences (for both you and the other person) of this approach.

Based on your analysis, decide for yourself how successful you and your partner are at managing conflicts. Describe any differences in approach that would result in more satisfying outcomes. Discuss what steps you and your partner could take to make these changes.

# data[].attributes.body
Read the article "Masters of Love."

After reading the article, answer the following questions:

1. Who are the primary researchers of this study?

2. What are the characteristics of masters?

3. What are the characteristics of disasters?

4. Should couples “turn toward” or “turn away”? Explain both and provide why.

5. Provide definitions of the four different ways individuals can respond to positive news. Discuss which response is the kindest.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Science says lasting relationships come down to-you guessed it-kindness and generosity.

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
Every day in June, the most popular wedding month of the year, about 13,000 American couples will say "I do," committing to a lifelong relationship that will be full of friendship, joy, and love that will carry them forward to their final days on this earth.

Except, of course, it doesn't work out that way for most people. The majority of marriages fail, either ending in divorce and separation or devolving into bitterness and dysfunction. Of all the people who get married, only three in 10 marriages remain healthy and happy, as the psychologist Ty Tashiro points out in his book The Science of Happily Ever After, which was published earlier this year.

Social scientists first started studying marriages by observing them in action in the 1970s in response to a crisis: Married couples were divorcing at unprecedented rates. Worried about the impact these divorces would have on the children of the broken marriages, psychologists decided to cast their scientific net on couples, bringing them into the lab to observe them and determine what the ingredients of a healthy, lasting relationship were. Was each unhappy family unhappy in its own way, as Tolstoy claimed, or did the miserable marriages all share something toxic in common?

The psychologist John Gottman was one of those researchers. For the past four decades, he has studied thousands of couples in a quest to figure out what makes relationships work. I recently had the chance to interview Gottman and his wife, Julie, also a psychologist, in New York City. Together, the renowned experts on marital stability run the Gottman Institute, which is devoted to helping couples build and maintain loving, healthy relationships based on scientific studies.

John Gottman began gathering his most crucial findings in 1986, when he set up the "Love Lab" with his colleague Robert Levenson at the University of Washington. Gottman and Levenson brought newlyweds into the lab and watched them interact with each other. With a team of researchers, they hooked the couples up to electrodes and asked the couples to speak about their relationship, including details such as how they met, a major conflict they were facing together, and a positive memory they had. As they spoke, the electrodes measured the subjects' blood flow, heart rates, and how much sweat they produced. Then the researchers sent the couples home and followed up with them six years later to see if they were still together.

From the data they gathered, Gottman separated the couples into two major groups: the masters and the disasters. The masters were still happily together after six years. The disasters had either broken up or were chronically unhappy in their marriages. When the researchers analyzed the data they gathered on the couples, they saw clear differences between the masters and disasters. The disasters looked calm during the interviews, but their physiology, measured by the electrodes, told a different story. Their heart rates were quick, their sweat glands were active, and their blood flow was fast. Following thousands of couples longitudinally, Gottman found that the more physiologically active the couples were in the lab, the quicker their relationships deteriorated over time.

But what does physiology have to do with anything? The problem was that the disasters showed all the signs of arousal-of being in fight-or-flight mode-in their relationships. Having a conversation sitting next to their spouse was, to their bodies, like facing off with a saber-toothed tiger. Even when they were talking about pleasant or mundane facets of their relationships, they were prepared to attack and be attacked. This sent their heart rates soaring and made them more aggressive toward each other. For example, each member of a couple could be talking about how their days had gone, and a highly aroused husband might say to his wife, "Why don't you start talking about your day. It won't take you very long."

The masters, by contrast, showed low physiological arousal. They felt calm and connected together, which translated into warm and affectionate behavior, even when they fought. It's not that the masters had, by default, a better physiological makeup than the disasters; it's that masters had created a climate of trust and intimacy that made both of them more emotionally and thus physically comfortable.

Gottman wanted to know more about how the masters created that culture of love and intimacy, and how the disasters squashed it. In a follow-up study in 1990, he designed a lab on the University of Washington campus to look like a beautiful bed-and-breakfast retreat. He invited 130 newlywed couples to spend the day at this retreat and watched them as they did what couples normally do on vacation: cook, clean, listen to music, eat, chat, and hang out. And Gottman made a crucial discovery in this study-one that gets at the heart of why some relationships thrive while others languish.

Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls "bids." For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, "Look at that beautiful bird outside!" He's not just commenting on the bird here: He's requesting a response from his wife-a sign of interest or support-hoping they'll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.

The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either "turning toward" or "turning away" from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that.

People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn't-those who turned away-would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, "Stop interrupting me, I'm reading."

These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a six-year follow-up had "turn-toward bids" 33 percent of the time. Only three in 10 of their bids for emotional connection were met with intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had "turn-toward bids" 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of 10, they were meeting their partner's emotional needs.

By observing these types of interactions, Gottman can predict with up to 94 percent certainty whether couples-straight or gay, rich or poor, childless or not-will be broken up, together and unhappy, or together and happy several years later. Much of it comes down to the spirit couples bring to the relationship. Do they bring kindness and generosity or contempt, criticism, and hostility?

"There's a habit of mind that the masters have," Gottman explained in an interview, "which is this: They are scanning social environments for things they can appreciate and say 'thank you' for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully. Disasters are scanning the social environment for partners' mistakes."

"It's not just scanning environment," chimed in Julie Gottman. "It's scanning the partner for what the partner is doing right or scanning him for what he's doing wrong and criticizing versus respecting him and expressing appreciation."

Contempt, they have found, is the No. 1 factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing, and they see negativity when it's not there. People who give their partner the cold shoulder-deliberately ignoring the partner or responding minimally-damage the relationship by making their partner feel worthless and invisible, as if they're not there, not valued. And people who treat their partners with contempt and criticize them kill not only the love in the relationship but also their partner's ability to fight off viruses and cancers. Being mean is the death knell of relationships.

Kindness, on the other hand, glues couples together. Research independent from theirs has shown that kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage. Kindness makes each partner feel cared for, understood, and validated-loved. "My bounty is as boundless as the sea," says Shakespeare's Juliet. "My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite." That's how kindness works too: A great deal of evidence shows that the more someone receives or witnesses kindness, the more they will be kind themselves, which leads to upward spirals of love and generosity in a relationship.

There are two ways to think about kindness. You can think about it as a fixed trait: Either you have it or you don't. Or you could think of kindness as a muscle. In some people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others, but it can grow stronger in everyone with exercise. Masters tend to think about kindness as a muscle. They know that they have to exercise it to keep it in shape. They know, in other words, that a good relationship requires sustained hard work.

"If your partner expresses a need," explained Julie Gottman, "and you are tired, stressed, or distracted, then the generous spirit comes in when a partner makes a bid, and you still turn toward your partner."

In that moment, the easy response may be to turn away from your partner and focus on your iPad or your book or the television, to mumble "Uh-huh" and move on with your life, but neglecting small moments of emotional connection will slowly wear away at your relationship. Neglect creates distance between partners and breeds resentment in the one who is being ignored.

The hardest time to practice kindness is, of course, during a fight-but this is also the most important time to be kind. Letting contempt and aggression spiral out of control during a conflict can inflict irrevocable damage on a relationship.

"Kindness doesn't mean that we don't express our anger," Julie Gottman explained, "but the kindness informs how we choose to express the anger. You can throw spears at your partner. Or you can explain why you're hurt and angry, and that's the kinder path."

John Gottman elaborated on those spears: "Disasters will say things differently in a fight. Disasters will say 'You're late. What's wrong with you? You're just like your mom.' Masters will say 'I feel bad for picking on you about your lateness, and I know it's not your fault, but it's really annoying that you're late again.'"

For the hundreds of thousands of couples getting married this month-and for the millions of couples currently together, married or not-the lesson from the research is clear: If you want to have a stable, healthy relationship, exercise kindness early and often.

When people think about practicing kindness, they often think about small acts of generosity, such as buying each other little gifts or giving one another back rubs every now and then. While those are great examples of generosity, kindness can also be built into the very backbone of a relationship through the way partners interact with each other on a day-to-day basis, whether or not there are back rubs and chocolates involved.

One way to practice kindness is by being generous about your partner's intentions. From the research of the Gottmans, we know that disasters see negativity in their relationship even when it is not there. An angry wife may assume, for example, that when her husband left the toilet seat up, he was deliberately trying to annoy her. But he may have just absent-mindedly forgotten to put the seat down.

Or say a wife is running late to dinner (again), and the husband assumes that she doesn't value him enough to show up to their date on time after he took the trouble to make a reservation and leave work early so that they could spend a romantic evening together. But it turns out that the wife was running late because she stopped by a store to pick him up a gift for their special night out. Imagine her joining him for dinner, excited to deliver her gift, only to realize that he's in a sour mood because he misinterpreted what was motivating her behavior. The ability to interpret your partner's actions and intentions charitably can soften the sharp edge of conflict.

"Even in relationships where people are frustrated, it's almost always the case that there are positive things going on and people trying to do the right thing," Tashiro, the psychologist, told me. "A lot of times, a partner is trying to do the right thing even if it's executed poorly. So appreciate the intent."

Another powerful kindness strategy revolves around shared joy. One of the telltale signs of the disaster couples Gottman studied was their inability to connect over each other's good news. When one person in the relationship shared the good news of, say, a promotion at work with excitement, the other would respond with wooden disinterest by checking his watch or shutting the conversation down with a comment like "That's nice."

We've all heard that partners should be there for each other when the going gets rough. But research shows that being there for each other when things go right is actually more important for relationship quality. How someone responds to a partner's good news can have dramatic consequences for the relationship.

In one study from 2006, the psychological researcher Shelly Gable and her colleagues brought young-adult couples into the lab to discuss recent positive events from their lives. The psychologists wanted to know how partners would respond to each other's good news. They found that, in general, couples responded to each other's good news in four different ways that they called passive destructive, active destructive, passive constructive, and active constructive.

Let's say that one partner had recently received the excellent news that she got into medical school. She would say something like "I got into my top-choice med school!"

If her partner responded in a passive destructive manner, he would ignore the event. For example, he might say something like "You wouldn't believe the great news I got yesterday! I won a free T-shirt!"

If her partner responded in a passive constructive way, he would acknowledge the good news, but in a half-hearted, understated way. A typical passive-constructive response is saying "That's great, babe" as he texts his buddy on his phone.

In the third kind of response, active destructive, the partner would diminish the good news his partner just got: "Are you sure you can handle all the studying? And what about the cost? Med school is so expensive!"

Finally, there's active constructive responding. If her partner responded in this way, he stopped what he was doing and engaged wholeheartedly with her: "That's great! Congratulations! When did you find out? Did they call you? What classes will you take first semester?"

Among the four response styles, active-constructive responding is the kindest. While the other response styles are joy killers, active-constructive responding allows the partner to savor her joy and gives the couple an opportunity to bond over the good news. In the parlance of the Gottmans, active-constructive responding is a way of "turning toward" your partner's bid (sharing the good news) rather than "turning away" from it.

Active-constructive responding is crucial for healthy relationships. In the 2006 study, Gable and her colleagues followed up with the couples two months later to see if they were still together. The psychologists found that the only difference between the couples who were together and those who broke up was active-constructive responding. Those who showed genuine interest in their partner's joys were more likely to be together. In an earlier study, Gable found that active-constructive responding was also associated with higher relationship quality and more intimacy between partners.

There are many reasons why relationships fail, but if you look at what drives the deterioration of many relationships, it's often a breakdown of kindness. As the normal stresses of a life together pile up-with children, careers, friends, in-laws, and other distractions crowding out the time for romance and intimacy-couples may put less effort into their relationship and let the petty grievances they hold against each other tear them apart. In most marriages, levels of satisfaction drop dramatically within the first few years together. But among couples who not only endure but live happily together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
most important predictor of satisfaction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Those who showed genuine interest in their partner's joys were more likely to be together.

# data[].attributes.body
This HJ is going to use your person from your RJs.

Utilizing Chapter 10 as a frame of reference, we will discuss how your person meets the criteria of the different types of relationships we have in our lives: family, friend, romantic relationship.

Choose one of the following prompts below. Provide an explanation with an example in your response.

If your person is a family member, discuss how this relationship is formative, role-driven, and involuntary.

If your person is a friend, discuss what type of friendship it is: young vs. mature, long-term vs. short-term, relationship-oriented vs. task-oriented, high-disclosure vs. low-disclosure, high obligation vs. low obligation, frequent contact vs. occasional contact.

If you are in a romantic relationship with your person, discuss how your person meets the characteristics of this type of relationship through love, commitment, and affection.

# data[].attributes.body
Chapter 10: Utilizing at least 100 words, summarize how social media/technology impacts friendships, families, and romantic relationships.

# data[].attributes.body
Choose one of the following situations to discuss for this Homework Journal.

Situation 1: You and your brother both have two-year-old children. You were at the park watching them play (your child was barefoot), and your brother said to you, "I never let Martin (his child) go barefoot. It’s really a health hazard for children and there are so many risks. I always take time to put shoes on him before we play outside."
Based on this statement by your brother, you would likely become defensive. Which Gibb category is your brother's statement? Explain. Identify the alternative behavior based on Gibb categories: What could your brother have said or done differently?

OR

Situation 2: A classmate looks over at your desk and says, “You’re not using a laptop to take notes in class? Doesn’t your hand get tired writing everything down?”
Based on this statement by your classmate, you would likely become defensive. Which Gibb category is your classmate's statement? Explain. Alternative behavior based on Gibb categories: What could your classmate have said or done differently?

# data[].attributes.body
Find an interesting article or link on the internet that you think is relevant to our class?  Complete the Extra Credit Assignment and post your article to this column. See D2L for details.

DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE YOUR NAME!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It can be difficult to know what to say when a friend is struggling. The conversation is hard to even start. Maya Cohen, a first-year student at Tulane University, says she knows better how to intervene after playing a video game created to help people learn how to recognize signs of psychological distress like depression, anxiety and substance abuse, and get them professional help.

Like all incoming students at Tulane, Cohen had to participate in an online conversation simulation game titled "At-Risk For College Students." The purpose is to teach empathetic conversation skills. In the game, you play Jesse, a friend of Travis, a depressed young man who's been failing his classes. Jesse notices that Travis hasn't been the same lately, and goes to his apartment to see how he's doing.

Checking in is the kind of supportive effort that friends ideally do for one another, and the game is supposed to encourage more of that. We hear out each other's burdens. Friends are the first bulwark of support when times are a little rough or when something's deeply wrong. We might pride ourselves on the advice we give, the shoulders we offer, the general "being there" for our friends.

But our skill at doing that varies, says Glenn Albright, a psychologist at Baruch College at the City University of New York and cofounder of Kognito, the company that developed the game. "It's the sad reality that a lot of people don't know how to help people," he says. "How to identify those who are struggling, to approach them, talk to them and give them a level of comfort."

Albright thought that the right conversational training program could help people help those around them. "You're talking about 40 percent of college students reporting systems of depression where they say it's interfering with their functioning," Albright says. Kognito's first simulation, released in 2009, focused on faculty-student conversations. The company has since developed over a dozen simulations.

Many focus on peer conversations, like the game that Cohen played; others address patient-doctor or family interactions. At the end of the conversation, participants get examples of how to sensitively suggest mental health services. In simulations for medical professionals, that might mean managing care collaboratively with other health professionals.

Kognito grounds all of these simulations in psychological counseling methods such as motivational interviewing, which stresses conversation techniques like using open-ended questions and listening and reflecting on what someone says during a conversation.

"[This] is really trying to engage the other person in dialogue, understand what's happening and what's influencing their behavior," says Marlyn Allicock, a health behaviorist at the University of Texas in Dallas who is not involved with Kognito. "Those skills are really grounded in empathy."

In the game that Cohen played, when Jesse relates to the things his friend is saying, Travis responds much more warmly. If Jesse is brusque during the conversation, Travis clams up. "They've done a really nice job modeling a person's behavior," Allicock says.

The games also shows things that might push people apart, Allicock notes. Giving unwarranted advice, for example, might give the impression that you think you know better than your friend. "Those are things that push people away," Allicock says. "I'm not going to open up to you if you're saying, 'You're not doing this right.' "

Cohen says she didn't realize any of this until she started playing through the Kognito simulation. "A speech bubble came up with tips," she says. One says using "I" statements is good, but not when a judgment is attached. That reminded Cohen that when a friend of hers would complain about something, Cohen would make a judgment. "I would approach her and be like, 'I think you're overreacting,' " she says.

Cohen, 19, says she kept thinking back to one time last year when she feels she really should have talked to her friend. She got a screenshot of text messages that her friend Angie had sent to her boyfriend. We aren't using her last name to protect her privacy. The reason will become clear later in this story. "[Angie] was texting her boyfriend saying, 'I feel none of my friends care about me. Would anybody even notice if I was gone?' " Cohen says. She was worried, and wanted to ask Angie about it. "I just didn't know how to start that conversation. And once I did I wouldn't know how to continue it."

Instead, Cohen brought the text to her school counselor, who pulled Angie out of class. "At the time I was really mad because I was like, so depressed, and now you're making my life harder," Angie says now. "They added this entire like new situation."

Angie, 18, says that at the time she was considering killing herself. The counselor's intervention got her the help she needed, but the fact that none of her friends tried talking to her first made her upset. Cohen feels like it put a strain on their relationship, even after they made amends. "We could never go back to how we were before," Cohen says.

After the Kognito training, Cohen says she'd been thinking a lot about how she could have handled the situation better. At the very least, she says, she could have gone to Angie first to check in on her, talk to her and find a way to get her help, but with her consent. "That would have been more inclusive of Angie," Cohen says.
Angus Chen is a freelance writer based in New York. Find him on Twitter @angrchen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Can An Online Game Help You Learn To Help Struggling Friends?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It can be difficult to know what to say when a friend is struggling. The conversation is hard to even start. Maya Cohen, a first-year student at Tulane University, says she knows better how to intervene after playing a video game created to help people learn how to recognize signs of psychological distress like depression, anxiety and substance abuse, and get them professional help.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Somehow we're squeezing 18 people into our apartment for Thanksgiving this year, a year when too many people are worrying about fraught post-election conversations. My relatives, who luckily are all cut from the same political cloth, range in age from my mother, aged 92, to my 32-year-old nephew (my 17-month-old granddaughter's political leanings are still unfolding.)

I love them all, but in a way the one I know best is the middle-aged man across the table whose blue eyes look just like mine: my younger brother Paul.

Paul and I irritated each other when we were kids; I would take bites out of his precisely made sandwiches in just the spot I knew he didn't want me to, and he would hang around the living room telling jokes when he knew I wanted to be alone with the boy on the couch.

But as adults we've always had each other's backs, especially when it comes to dealing with our mother's health crises, which have become more frequent in the past few years. Paul is the first person I want to talk to when there's something that worries me about Mom; I know he'll be worried, too.

There's probably a biological explanation for the intensity of the sibling bond. Siblings share half their genes, which evolutionary biologists say should be motivation enough for mutual devotion. "I would lay down my life," British biologist J.B.S. Haldane once said, applying the arithmetic of kin selection, "for two brothers or eight cousins." Siblings are a crucial part of a child's development, too, teaching one another socialization skills and the rules of dominance and hierarchy, all part of the eternal struggle for parental resources.

When psychologists study siblings, they usually study children, emphasizing sibling rivalry and the fact that brothers and sisters refine their social maneuvering skills on one another. The adult sibling relationship has only sporadically been the subject of attention. Yet we're tethered to our brothers and sisters as adults far longer than we are as children; our sibling relationships, in fact, are the longest-lasting family ties we have.

Most such relationships are close - two-thirds of people in one large study said a brother or sister was one of their best friends. One thing that can scuttle closeness in adulthood is a parent who played favorites in childhood; this sense of resentment can last a lifetime.

Jill Suitor, a sociologist at Purdue University, and her colleagues polled 274 families with 708 adult children (ages 23 to 68) in 2009 and found that the majority had good feelings toward their siblings. Most didn't remember much favoritism when they were kids, but those who did reported feeling less loved and cared for by their siblings. It didn't matter whether they felt themselves to be the favored or the unfavored child. The simple perception of parental favoritism was enough to undermine their relationship.

That's one thing Paul and I have going for us: We're pretty sure our parents treated us the same when we were growing up. Yet we're very different people. Paul is gregarious while I'm shy, funny while I'm not, a terrific amateur saxophonist while I can't read music or carry a tune. This isn't unusual. In families with more than one child, every sibling seems to get a label in contrast to every other sibling.

So if your kid sister is the queen bee in any social gathering, you might get labeled "the quiet one" even if you're not especially quiet, just quiet in comparison. And if you're a bright child who always gets good grades, you might not get much credit for that if your big brother is a brilliant child with straight A's. There's only room for one "smart one" per family - you'll have to come up with something else. (I was smart, but Paul was smarter; I ended up being the "good one.")

The very presence of siblings in the household can be an education. When a new baby is born, writes psychologist Victor Cicirelli in the 1995 book Sibling Relationships Across the Life Span, "the older sibling gains in social skills in interacting with the younger" and "the younger sibling gains cognitively by imitating the older."

They learn from the friction between them, too, as they fight for their parents' attention. Mild conflict between brothers and sisters teaches them how to interact with peers, co-workers and friends for the rest of their lives.

The benefits can carry into old age. The literature on sibling relationships shows that during middle age and old age, indicators of well-being - mood, health, morale, stress, depression, loneliness, life satisfaction - are tied to how you feel about your brothers and sisters.

In one Swedish study, satisfaction with sibling contact in one's 80s was closely correlated with health and positive mood - more so than was satisfaction with friendships or relationships with adult children. And loneliness was eased for older people in a supportive relationship with their siblings, no matter whether they gave or got support.

That's why it's so sad when things between siblings fall apart. This often happens when aging parents need care or die - old feelings of rivalry, jealousy and grief erupt all over again, masked as petty fights ostensibly over who takes Mom to the doctor or who calls the nursing home about Dad.

Many families get through their parents' illnesses just fine, establishing networks where the workload is divided pretty much equally. So far, Paul and I have done fine, too. But about 40 percent of the time, according to one study, there is a single primary caregiver who feels like she (and it's almost always a she) is not getting any help from her brothers and sisters, which can lead to serious conflict.

And because of the particular intensity of sibling relationships, such conflict cuts to the bone. People grieve for the frayed ties to their siblings as though they've lost a piece of themselves.

Throughout adulthood, the sibling relationship "is powerful and never static," said Jane Mersky Leder, author of The Sibling Connection. Whether we are close to our siblings or distant, she writes, they remain our brothers and sisters - for better or for worse.

So let this all percolate as you sit down to turkey with your sometimes-complicated family. And remember the immortal words of folksinger Loudon Wainwright III, in a song called Thanksgiving. It's about spending the holiday with a brother and a sister he rarely sees but still has intense feelings about:

On this auspicious occasion, this special family dinner

If I argue with a loved one, Lord, please make me the winner.

Science writer Robin Marantz Henig is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of nine books. This is an updated version of an article that we originally published on Nov. 27, 2014.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Give Thanks For Siblings: They Can Make Us Healthier And Happier

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Somehow we're squeezing 18 people into our apartment for Thanksgiving this year, a year when too many people are worrying about fraught post-election conversations. My relatives, who luckily are all cut from the same political cloth, range in age from my mother, aged 92, to my 32-year-old nephew (my 17-month-old granddaughter's political leanings are still unfolding.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Power of Vulnerability | Brené Brown | TED

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Whatever! Just leave me alone!"

Tammy stomps her feet up the stairs to the bedroom. A few moments later she slams the door, leaving for work. Jack is exasperated, angry and hurt. He wanted to rush outside and demand that Tammy treat him with respect. He imagined giving her the silent treatment until she apologized. But he knew this would prolong the fight and compound the resentment.

He goes upstairs, tidies their room and does her laundry. He arranges some flowers on their nightstand and goes to work.

Tammy gets home ragged from a long day, sneers at Jack briefly over the edge of her phone and goes upstairs knowing that her laundry needs to be done before work tomorrow morning. After a few moments she comes down the stairs sheepishly, with a gentleness on her face. "Did you do my laundry?"

"Yes," he says.

"And the flowers?"

"I know how stressful work has been. I feel bad about how things went this morning, and I thought they might cheer you up."

"They did. I am sorry."

"Me too."

What Jack did in this fictional scenario was difficult and counterintuitive. It could feel like giving up too much and setting yourself up for being taken advantage of. Why should he have to do something nice for Tammy? She was rude and she owed him an apology.

But it worked. He lost the battle in order to win the war. And in the end the couple joined around the fact that the stresses of life are the enemy, and they are on the same team.

The typical course of action would be for Tammy's cold behavior to lead to Jack being cold, which would in turn lead to even colder behavior by Tammy, and so on. Psychologists call this pattern complementarity, and there are two varieties. The first is that warmth begets warmth whereas coldness begets coldness, as in the case of Jack's initial impulse to give Tammy the silent treatment.

The second is that dominance begets submission whereas submission begets dominance. For instance, some clients submissively say to their therapists: "Doc, I just don't know what to do. I feel like I have tried everything and I am out of ideas. I sure hope you can help." The therapist might respond with complementarity: "I understand. I have some experience with clients like you and I think I can help. Let's start with some assessments to get a better idea about what is going on."

Alternatively, a dominant client might open with: "My problem is depression. I have been depressed before, and what I really need is someone who will listen - to give me a place to talk about my problems without trying to do too much." The complementary therapist might say, "It sounds like you have done a lot of thinking about this, and I am interested in learning more about your situation. I hope I can help."

Complementarity is generally natural and easy. If someone is nice to you, you tend to be nice back. If they're not nice, then why should you be? If someone seems to know what they are doing, it is natural to follow. And when you are in charge, it is easiest if others do what you say.

Noncomplementary behavior is more difficult, but sometimes it is the best choice. Jack's warm response to Tammy's coldness led to her apology, which is what he really wanted and would have been unlikely to receive with the silent treatment.

Research suggests that complementary behavior by therapists is good for building an alliance, which turns out to be really important for helping clients feel better. However, noncomplementary behavior is linked with clients' behavior change.

The submissive client may feel more comfortable with a therapist who tells him what to do. But if he is to learn how to be more assertive, he needs a therapist who will occasionally say: "You know, this is a time when I don't have an answer - you are going to have to figure it out for yourself." The client may become anxious and insecure, but ultimately may also learn to practice a new approach to solving life's problems.

Similarly, the dominant client might need a therapist who will sometimes say: "So you have always had the answers, but at the same time you are here because your solutions have not been working. Friends tell you that you are too bossy and critical, and your automatic response is that they need to be tougher. But I think sometimes they are right, and by shutting them down you are also shutting them out of your life. Then you don't get the support you need, and feel lonely and depressed."

This is a threatening thing for a dominant client to hear, but again, it is the kind of response that may help her see things a different way and change her behavior so that she is more likely to get her needs met.

Noncomplementarity is uncomfortable, can threaten relationships, and should be used with care. If you are always warm to a cold person, you can become a pushover. Meeting dominance with dominance can result in a fight, whereas being submissive with a submissive person can lead to inaction and boredom. Strategic interpersonal behavior in any form can feel manipulative and inauthentic.

However, in psychotherapy, the idea is that occasional, high-impact noncomplementary moments can have a positive impact in the context of a trusting relationship, and this principle generalizes to other relationships as well.
Christopher J. Hopwood is an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University who researches noncomplementary behavior. NPR's Invisibilia podcast and show explores real-life experiments in noncomplementarity, including a Danish city where police embraced young Muslim residents who were becoming radicalized and a dinner party that was suddenly interrupted by a stranger.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Don't Do What I Do: How Getting Out Of Sync Can Help Relationships

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Whatever! Just leave me alone!" Tammy stomps her feet up the stairs to the bedroom. A few moments later she slams the door, leaving for work. Jack is exasperated, angry and hurt. He wanted to rush outside and demand that Tammy treat him with respect. He imagined giving her the silent treatment until she apologized.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Psychologists disagree on whether expecting your marriage to be a deeply fulfilling relationship makes it more likely that the union will thrive, or that it will doom you to disappointment.

So, psychologists, should we just go ahead and expect the worst after the honeymoon?

Only if that matches your capacity to deliver on expectations, according to a study published Wednesday in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin with the deflating title,"Should Spouses Be Expecting Less From Marriage?"

Expecting a lot can make a marriage more satisfying, the study finds, but if people can't meet those expectations - whether for lack of time, effort or social skills - the relationship will suffer.

The study examines the premise that modern-day couples load too many expectations onto the institution of marriage - that it will meet their needs for intimacy, autonomy and friendship, to name just a few.

To explore that premise, James McNulty, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, tracked the relationships of 135 couples in eastern Tennessee for four years, starting when they were newlyweds.

The participants periodically completed individual surveys on their expectations for the marriage and their level of satisfaction. The couples also were videotaped talking over points of contention in the marriage, to gauge their verbal communication skills.

The marriages in which spouses were able to work well together, including being direct about what their partner did that made them mad and what they wanted that partner to do about it, were more likely to feel that the marriage met their high expectations for happiness.

But people in marriages where a spouse resorted to indirect hostility - things like sarcasm, mind reading and hostile jokes - were less likely to feel things measured up.

Indirect hostility leaves a partner wondering what the heck is wrong, McNulty said via email. "That is why it is problematic; it conveys discontent without providing the partner with clear information about how to address the underlying issue."

But here's the rub: If those couples had low expectations for marriage from the get-go, they didn't become significantly less happy. Their expectations were fulfilled.

The question, then, is how to match one's expectations with one's ability to deliver.

There are two options, McNulty says.

"One is to try to fix the marital problems. Marital therapists can help with this. Talking about the underlying issues can also help. These are the best options if problems are fixable."

And if those problems aren't fixable? "You can understand, realize and accept that you will not be able to achieve all the benefits you have been demanding out of marriage," McNulty writes.

The trick, then, is to demand enough of the marriage but not too much, after the honeymoon glow has faded.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
If You Set High Expectations For Your Marriage, Is It Doomed?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Psychologists disagree on whether expecting your marriage to be a deeply fulfilling relationship makes it more likely that the union will thrive, or that it will doom you to disappointment. So, psychologists, should we just go ahead and expect the worst after the honeymoon?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Trying to find a date on Tinder feels a bit like playing a video game. You quickly browse through photos on your phone. If he's cute swipe right, and the app will let you know if he likes you back. If he's posing with a fancy car or a baby tiger, make a gagging sound and swipe left.

Log into OkCupid, and the suitors are purportedly better curated. The app has you answer hundreds of hard-hitting questions like, "How often do you brush your teeth?" and, "Do you like scary movies?" The app then matches you with potential dates who supposedly share interests and values.

But as I burn hours with dating apps, it's hard not to wonder if this is really any better than meeting people the old-fashioned way?

Yes and no, says Benjamin Karney, a social psychologist at UCLA who studies romantic relationships. "Online dating is an amazing technological advance, and it really makes it easier to find a potential partner," Karney tells me.

"Online dating is an amazing technological advance, and it really makes it easier to find a potential partner."

Being connected to a larger pool of potential dates does mean you're more likely to run into duds and creeps. "And we know that people are willing to do and say all sorts of things online that they wouldn't do face to face," he says. Case in point: the young gentleman I found on OkCupid who is wearing a bloodied bunny mask in all of his profile photos.

And it seems like there's no avoiding unsolicited, inappropriate messages from men who are more interested in harassing women then dating them.

But overall, research suggests that couples who meet online tend to be just as happy as those who connected offline, he notes.

"Of course, if you expect online dating to be easier, then you're going to be disappointed," Karney says.

No matter how cute someone looks in her Tinder photos, or how much you like what she says on her OkCupid profile, it's impossible to tell whether you'll click with her in person, Karney says.

And the matching algorithms that dating apps use aren't based on any hard science, he says. "There's no evidence that these apps will find you a better mate than you could find yourself."

Attraction is based on an intangible chemistry - and when you're attracted to someone, research shows that it rarely matters whether the other person shares your political beliefs or your love of horror movies. "If you're romantically attracted to somebody, you focus on the things that are similar and you try to ignore the things that make you different," Karney notes.

Spending tons of time scrolling through online dating profiles doesn't help people choose better dates, studies show. And by judging profiles too harshly, you may be missing out on some great people, Karney says.

That's why Tinder may be the best dating app out there, says Eli Finkel, a social psychologist at Northwestern University who wrote a piece in The New York Times in defense of the often-maligned dating app.

"You can browse through online profiles till you're blue in the face and still not know if you're compatible," he tells me. "Tinder is an easier way to quickly get face-to-face with someone and figure out of there's chemistry."

No matter which dating app you're using, Finkel's advice: "If someone looks pretty good and you find them intriguing - just go on a date."

"If someone looks pretty good and you find them intriguing - just go on a date."

Of course, having too many options online can make it more difficult for some to choose and commit to just one person to go out with on a Friday night, says Paul Eastwick, an assistant professor of human development at the University of Texas in Austin who studies romantic relationships.

"It's called the 'paradox of choice,' " Eastwick explains. Psychologists have known for a while that very often, the more options people are presented with the less likely they are to be satisfied with their final choice.

"There's some evidence that this could occur with online dating," he says. For some, apps like Tinder may lead to the impression that there's always going to be someone better out there - or as my friend Nathalie says, it could be that Tinder is "where monogamists go to die."

Still, as Karney from UCLA points out, commitment-phobes are as old as time. "Some people want to date a lot and they don't want to settle down - and, boy, are those people in luck."

For those who are looking for a deeper connection, Karney says, "the challenges are the same. Online dating has made it easier to date, but it hasn't made it any easier to mate."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Apps Can Speed The Search For Love, But Nothing Beats A Real Date

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Trying to find a date on Tinder feels a bit like playing a video game. You quickly browse through photos on your phone. If he's cute swipe right, and the app will let you know if he likes you back. If he's posing with a fancy car or a baby tiger, make a gagging sound and swipe left.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Young women these days are encouraged to lean in, to want and have it all. And national polls show the idea that a woman's place is in the home has been losing traction among young people since the 1960s.

Given the option, the majority of young men and women say they would prefer to share both work and domestic duties equally with their spouses, according to a study published in the February issue of the American Sociological Review.

So how come women are still under more pressure to leave work or switch to part time when they have kids, and still do more of the housework?

"Our work shows that most people want to have more egalitarian relationships, says Sarah Thébaud, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who co-authored the study. "But they may fall back on to traditional gender roles when they realize that egalitarianism is hard to achieve in the current workplace environment."

The researchers began by rounding up 330 unmarried young adults ages 18 to 32 from all over the country. They divided the participants into three groups.

The first group was asked to choose one of three options: being completely self-reliant regardless of relationship status; being the primary breadwinner in a relationship; or being the primary homemaker. In this group, men and women tended to fall back into more traditional gender roles.

The researchers then asked the second group the same question, but added the option of having an egalitarian relationship - and everything changed.

Sixty-two percent of higher-educated women and 59.3 percent of women without a college education said they preferred an egalitarian relationship. Among men, 63 percent of those with some college education, 82.5 percent with less education responded in the same way.

And when the researchers asked the third group to imagine a world in which all workers had access to paid family leave, subsidized childcare and flexible work schedules, even more men and women said they wanted egalitarian relationships.

The results show that people's current attitudes toward gender roles are likely a result of restrictive workplace policies, Thébaud says.

"The assumption is that you have backup support - a stay-at-home person who is helping you take care of the children," Thébaud says.

Raising children when both parents work full time at demanding jobs is very difficult, Thébaud says, which may be why women are more apt to leave work or work part time.

But this research also suggests that as workplace policies change, people's attitudes toward gender roles will shift as well, says Kathleen Gerson, a sociologist at New York University who wasn't involved in the study.

"Even what we think we want is going to be based on what kinds of options our environment offers us," Gerson says. "Right now, it's very hard in many cases for Americans to even imagine what life would be like if they could depend on the kinds of family and work support that is available in some other countries."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Young Women And Men Seek More Equal Roles At Work And Home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Young women these days are encouraged to lean in, to want and have it all. And national polls show the idea that a woman's place is in the home has been losing traction among young people since the 1960s.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
My boyfriend and I were together for over three years, and then we weren't. The days after the breakup involved lots of crying, and an embarrassing amount of Taylor Swift.

A couple of weeks later, once I was able to will myself out of sweatpants, my friend Eric - who was also coping with a breakup - came over for some IPAs and, of course, Taylor Swift singalongs.

We commiserated about how much life sucked, how lonely we felt and how we were losing sleep. We discussed what was wrong in each of our relationships and what was right.

"I hope talking about this so much isn't bringing you down," I told Eric.

"No, this actually really helps," he said.

It turns out we were on to something. Last week I came across an intriguing bit of research in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. While too much wallowing after heartbreak isn't a great idea, the study found that reflecting on a recent breakup can help speed the healing process.

See, Grace Larson, a graduate student in social psychology at Northwestern University, had been studying heartbreak for years when she began to wonder whether by asking study participants to rehash the painful details of their breakups, researchers like herself were hindering their recovery.

"Maybe science could tell me exactly what I needed to do to be able to move on and stop feeling so lost and sad and hurt."

So she rounded up 210 young volunteers who had recently experienced heartbreak, and had half of them come into the lab regularly to answer questions about their breakup over the course of nine weeks. The other half completed just two simple surveys, one at the beginning and one at the end of the study.

The first group fared better. Answering the researchers' questions helped these people better process their breakup and, Larson tells Shots, "it helped them develop a stronger sense of who they were as single people." That in turn helped them feel less lonely.

For me, Larson's research led to another revelation: that there existed a sizable body of research on how to cope with heartbreak. Maybe science could tell me exactly what I needed to do to be able to move on and stop feeling so lost and sad and hurt. So I put down my copy of Cosmo and began scouring psychological journals.
Heartache Really Is A Pain

"Under an MRI scanner, the brains of the heartsick can resemble the brains of those experiencing cocaine withdrawal."

First, I found out that heartache really does ache. In a 2011 study, researchers had participants look at photos of their ex-loves while monitoring these people's brain activity. They found that parts of the brain usually associated with physical pain had lit up. (Thankfully, another study found that taking a Tylenol might help buffer against such pain.)

That's why moving on isn't just a mental exercise; it's physical as well. Studies have found that people in long-term relationships tend to regulate each other's biological rhythms. A breakup can throw your entire physiology out of whack, disrupting your sleep, appetite, body temperature and heart rate. The stress of a divorce can compromise your immune system.

All this shows, Larson says, that "after a breakup, people are going to have to put in a little extra effort to keep themselves physically healthy."

Then you can start addressing the mental fallout.

"When a relationship ends, that really messes with your sense of who you are," Larson says. "You may think, 'Who am I now that I'm not Mike's or X or Y's girlfriend?' "

That's why, in Larson's study, talking about the breakup helped. "I think that it's possible that coming into the lab and answering these questions reminded them of their new status as singles," Larson says.

A growing body of research suggests that regaining a clear sense of self after a breakup is the key to moving on.

And though calmly reflecting on a breakup may help, dwelling on it doesn't, says David Sbarra, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who co-authored the study with Larson.

While it's tempting to think that getting back together will end the suffering, it may be better to adopt T-Swift's mantra of "We are never, ever, ever getting back together." And though some couples are able to make up after a breakup, research suggests that on-again off-again couples tend to be less satisfied in their relationships.

Still, adapting to being alone after a breakup is not easy.

"So much of who our friends are and how we spend our time revolves around who we're dating or who we're married to," says Sbarra. "When the relationship ends, all of those variables get disrupted." Revisiting old friendships and interests can help, as can taking up new activities.
The Bad News And The Good
The bad news: Scientists have yet to find a quick and easy antidote for a broken heart. Recovering is going to take time, and it's probably going to suck.

In fact, one small study found that under an MRI scanner, the brains of the heartsick can resemble the brains of those experiencing cocaine withdrawal. The researchers theorize that this may explain why some of us feel - and act - a bit crazy after a bad breakup.

Of course, it's best to at least try not to stalk your ex on Facebook or text him a bunch of times, Sbarra says, "because that's just going to bring you more pain." But blaming yourself for the breakup or for the way you're reacting to it isn't a good idea either.

"The only thing to do is to ride the emotion out," Sbarra says.

But there's good news, too: Getting over a breakup isn't going to be as painful as you probably think. While no one can say exactly how long it'll take you to get over an ex, research shows that most people overestimate the amount of time it'll take to recover.

"Your romantic relationships are supposed to be one of the fundamental sources of happiness and joy in your life. If a relationship isn't working, don't be afraid to break it off."

"I'm a little bit more pro-breakup than most people," says Gary Lewandowski, a psychologist at Monmouth University and co-founder of a blog called Science of Relationships.

Lewandowski's research backs up what Friedrich Nietzsche (and my mother and pretty much every pop song about breakups) have been saying all along: "That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

A 2007 study by Lewandowski his colleagues was one of the first to focus on the plus side of breakups. Most of the young adults who the researchers interviewed said the breakup had helped them learn and grow and that they felt more goal-oriented after splitting up.

Coping with breakups can help people realize how resilient they are, Lewandowski says, and that can be empowering.

"I often tell my students, your romantic relationships are supposed to be one of the fundamental sources of happiness and joy in your life," he adds. "If a relationship isn't working, don't be afraid to break it off."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, But Science Can Help

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My boyfriend and I were together for over three years, and then we weren't. The days after the breakup involved lots of crying, and an embarrassing amount of Taylor Swift. A couple of weeks later, once I was able to will myself out of sweatpants, my friend Eric - who was also coping with a breakup - came over for some IPAs and, of course, Taylor Swift singalongs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For milestones like moving in together, intent (rather than chronology) determines success.

Mark Ordonez/Flickr

A report released today from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia looks at the many factors that predict a high quality marriage. More than one thousand Americans, 18 to 35 years old, who were in a relationship were recruited into the study. Within five years, 418 of those individuals got married. Galena Rhoades (a co-author of this article) and Scott Stanley, both at the University of Denver, looked closely at those who married, probing into their relationship history with their spouse, their relationships with others, and the quality of their marriages.

Related Story

The Science of Cohabitation: A Step Toward Marriage, Not a Rebellion
One of the main findings was about how couples handle relationship milestones, like moving in together. Every relationship goes through milestones, or transitions, that mark how serious the relationship is getting. Going on a first date is one; a first kiss is another. Other milestones might include the "define the relationship" talk-the moment a couple says they are actually a couple-sex, engagement, marriage, and children.

In the past, these milestones tended to follow a straightforward order that began with courtship, passed the milestones of marriage, cohabitation, and sex, and ended with children. The structure and rigidity of courtship meant that couples had less freedom, but also that each milestone was ritualized with most couples following the same script. Men didn't just propose to women, for instance; they first attained permission from the father of the bride-to-be. Couples moved through these milestones deliberately, in part due to societal expectations and in part because they knew that each step had life-altering consequences.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For milestones like moving in together, intent (rather than chronology) determines success. A report released today from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia looks at the many factors that predict a high quality marriage. More than one thousand Americans, 18 to 35 years old, who were in a relationship were recruited into the study.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's hard to organize a busy life so that it has enough room for deep friendships, but there are a few strategies that may help.

Plume Creative / Getty

"Thus in four generations the range of linear traveling has increased by a factor of 1000 and the area within which movement takes place has increased by a factor of 1 million," Bradley wrote. "The experienced described here is not atypical." This was in 1989-one imagines that between then and 2017 the average roaming range of humans has only grown.

Related Stories

This matters because when people move, their families may come with them, but they leave their friends behind. And even though extended, remote social networks are more accessible than ever for anyone with an internet connection, proximity still makes a difference. Moving is associated with shallower relationships, and people who move frequently are more willing to dispose of their friends, perhaps because they get used to losing them.

At the same time, there's been a growing interest in exploring the complex dynamics of friendship. As people get married later, and the ranks of single women rise, more and more books and television shows have been exploring friendship dynamics.

But even if someone wants to make friends a high priority in their life, unlike with romantic relationships, for friendships there are fewer cultural scripts to follow to do the work of befriending someone, or making a friendship closer.

"The opportunities for friendship come with how people's lives are organized," Rawlins says. "When I talk to students, I say 'Pay close attention to the habits you're forming, because before you know it, you have organized your life in a way that doesn't allow for the kind of friends that you would like to have.'"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's hard to organize a busy life so that it has enough room for deep friendships, but there are a few strategies that may help. "Thus in four generations the range of linear traveling has increased by a factor of 1000 and the area within which movement takes place has increased by a factor of 1 million," Bradley wrote.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
New research shows that the older people are when they make their first big commitment-cohabitation or marriage-the better their chances for marital success.

As more and more American couples choose to share the bills and a bed without a marriage license, a major question looms. In playing house and stocking up on premarital Ikea furniture are we all heightening our risk for divorce?

A new study from the nonpartisan Council on Contemporary Families says no. Moving in before marriage doesn't automatically make you a divorce statistic. Choosing a partner too early, however, just might.

The study, which will appear in the in the April issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, could redefine how researchers look at cohabitation, but the science shouldn't change the way couples think about living together. Experts warn it's hardly something to be taken lightly.

Arielle Kuperberg was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania when something in her sociology textbooks caught her eye. In research on marriage longevity, Kuperberg observed that the age a couple said "I do" was among the strongest predictors of divorce.

All of the literature explained that the reason people who married younger were more likely to divorce was because they were not mature enough to pick appropriate partners, she says.

That's when a lightbulb went off for Kuperberg. If younger married couples were more likely to divorce, did that mean that couples who moved in together at earlier ages were also at increased risk for broken marriages?
The longer couples waited to make that first serious commitment, the better their chances for marital success.
Other researchers who had been exploring the link between cohabitation and divorce failed to take into account the age at which couples took that plunge. Kuperberg wondered if once she controlled for age, the link between cohabitation and divorce might disappear.

Using data from the U.S. governments' 1995, 2002, and 2006 National Surveys of Family and Growth, Kuperberg analyzed more than 7,000 individuals who had been married. Some of the people she studied were still with their spouse. Others were divorced. Then, instead of studying just the correlation between cohabitation and divorce, Kuperberg looked at how old each individual was when he or she made his or her first major commitment to a partner-whether that step was marriage or cohabitation.

Moving in together without a diamond ring involved didn't, on its own, lead to divorce. Instead, she found that the longer couples waited to make that first serious commitment, the better their chances for marital success.

So how old should couples be when they commit? The research shows that at 23-the age when many people graduate from college, settle into adult life and begin becoming financially independent-the correlation with divorce dramatically drops off.

Kuperberg found that individuals who committed to cohabitation or marriage at the age of 18 saw a 60 percent rate of divorce. Whereas individuals who waited until 23 to commit saw a divorce rate that hovered more around 30 percent.

"For so long, the link between cohabitation and divorce was one of these great mysteries in research," Kuperberg says. "What I found was that it was the age you settled down with someone, not whether you had a marriage license, that was the biggest indicator of a relationship's future success."

Cohabitation has become so common that it's almost odd not to test drive a partner before marriage. It's worthy of a People magazine headline now when a celebrity couple "waits until marriage" to shack up. Bachelor Sean Lowe (of ABC's The Bachelor) and his wife Catherine Giudici were all over the tabloids when they announced they would not move in together until after their televised wedding.

Cohabitation has increased by nearly 900 percent over the last 50 years. More and more, couples are testing the waters before diving into marriage. Census data from 2012 shows that 7.8 million couples are living together without walking down the aisle, compared to 2.9 million in 1996. And two-thirds of couples married in 2012 shared a home together for more than two years before they ever waltzed down an aisle.

Today, discussing cohabitation is about as salacious as watching grass grow. A 2007 USA Today/Gallup poll found that just 27 percent of Americans disapproved of it. The number of painful discussions I personally endured two years ago when I moved in with my own boyfriend can be counted on one hand. My fridge is littered with wedding announcements from couples who are engaged and lived together for years.

Yet the science of cohabitation has largely carried a "toxic for marriage" warning label. From Annie Hall to Friends to Girls, it seems everybody has been moving in with their significant others, but science told us it was hardly a good idea.

Since the 1970's, study after study found that living together before marriage could undercut a couple's future happiness and ultimately lead to divorce. On average, researchers concluded that couples who lived together before they tied the knot saw a 33 percent higher rate of divorce than those who waited to live together until after they were married.

Part of the problem was that cohabitors, studies suggested, "slid into" marriage without much consideration. Instead of making a conscious decision to share an entire life together, couples who shared a dog, a dresser, a blender, were picking marriage over the inconvenience of a break up. Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist, outlined the "cohabitation effect" in a widely-circulated New York Times op-ed in 2012.
"In the 1960's, 70's, and 80's, cohabitation was a more unconventional way of getting together."
"Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages-and more likely to divorce-than couples who do not," she wrote.

Others blamed the types of individuals who were moving in together as the reasons so many of those unions resulted in divorce.

"Back in the 1960's, the 70's, and the 80's, cohabitation was a more unconventional way of getting together. The types of people who were cohabiting were less likely to conform to the traditional standards of marriage such as responsibility, fidelity, and commitment," says Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

In the 1960's, television and movie storylines steered clear of cohabitation. Everywhere women were warned that "giving the milk away for free" could result in lifetime of spinsterhood when nobody wanted to "buy the cow." According to the National Marriage Project fewer than 500,000 unmarried couples were living together in the U.S. in the early 1960's. In her 2013 book Not Just Roommates, Elizabeth Pleck explored how many states kept laws on the books to prohibit cohabitation in the 20th century and even keep interracial couples apart. It took a more free-thinking individual to violate the moral standards depicted in shows like Leave it To Beaver and The Brady Bunch. It took a risk taker to sit down at the kitchen and tell their parents that they were moving in with their girlfriend or boyfriend. Researchers believed that the types of couples who chose to live together before marriage were rebels who held "less conventional" views about the sanctity of the institution.

Now, Wilcox argues that cohabitors represent a broader swath of the public. Many more couples view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, not a rebellion against it.

A Pew Research study in 2011 found that more than 60 percent of Americans who had ever lived with a partner before marriage saw their living situation as a precursor, not an alternative, to wedded bliss.

It's still true that cohabitation isn't without its risks. Experts warn that waiting for an appropriate age to commit to someone is still no substitute for communication.

Jay, who has also written a book about Millennials called The Defining Decade:Why Your Twenties Matter- And How to Make the Most of Them warns that the most recent cohabitation study still does not prove that couples understand the gravity of moving in together, nor does it show that cohabitation is a "silver bullet" to stop divorce.

"Living together doesn't charm or doom you; it is not whether you live with your partner as much as how you live with your partner," Jay said. "I am not against living together, but I am for young adults being more aware that it is an arrangement that has upsides and downsides."
"Once you buy dishes, share a lease, and get a dog, it can be difficult to cut your losses and accept that the relationship isn't working."
Couples who live together before marriage enjoy a companion and a teammate, but sometimes, Jay warns, couples stay in relationships longer than they should because once they live with someone, it can be harder to find the escape hatch.

"I have clients who say 'I spent years of my 20s living with someone who I wouldn't have dated a year if we had not been living together,'" she says, adding, "Once you buy dishes, share a lease, have a routine, and get a dog, it can be difficult to cut your losses and accept that the relationship isn't working."

The risks of unplanned pregnancy are also increased for women who chose to live with their partners before marriage. In a 2013 report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 20 percent of women cohabiting for the first time became pregnant and had a baby within one year of moving in with a boyfriend. That number was up 5 percentage points from 15 percent in 1995.

"Cohabitation fosters enough intimacy to facilitate childbearing but not enough commitment to make people deliberate about their choices to become parents," Wilcox says. "The result, an unplanned birth, can pose real problems to their relationship and to their future odds of successfully marrying."

The latest research should give older couples a sense of relief. The science is beginning to show that peeking behind the curtain before choosing to settle into a lifetime of marriage isn't in and of itself a mistake, but there are still risk factors. It might be important today for all of us to know whether our partner handles the dirty dishes, but cohabitation can still be a mess for those who don't proceed with caution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Science of Cohabitation: A Step Toward Marriage, Not a Rebellion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New research shows that the older people are when they make their first big commitment-cohabitation or marriage-the better their chances for marital success. As more and more American couples choose to share the bills and a bed without a marriage license, a major question looms. In playing house and stocking up on premarital Ikea furniture are we all heightening our risk for divorce?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
lookseebynaomifenton/Flickr

This month, many of the nation's best and brightest high school seniors will receive thick envelopes in the mail announcing their admission to the college of their dreams. According to a 2011 survey, about 60 percent of them will go to their first-choice schools. For many of them, going away to college will be like crossing the Rubicon. They will leave their families -- their homes -- and probably not return for many years, if at all.

That was journalist Rod Dreher's path. Dreher grew up in the small southern community of Starhill, Louisiana, 35 miles northwest of Baton Rouge. His family goes back five generations there. His father was a part-time farmer and sanitarian; his mother drove a school bus. His younger sister Ruthie loved hunting and fishing, even as a little girl.
Ambition drives people forward; relationships and community, by imposing limits, hold people back.
But Dreher was different. As a bookish teenager, he was desperate to flee what he considered his intolerant and small-minded town, a place where he was bullied and misunderstood by his own father and sister. He felt more at home in the company of his two eccentric and worldly aunts -- great-great aunts, actually -- who lived nearby. One was a self-taught palm reader. She looked into his hand one day when he was a boy and told him, "See this line? You'll travel far in life." Dreher hoped she was right. When he was 16, he decided to leave home for a Louisiana boarding school with the intention of never looking back.

That decision created a divide between him and his sister Ruthie, who was firmly attached to Starhill. Leaving for boarding school was "the fork in the road for us, the moment in our lives in which we diverged," he writes in his new book, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life.

In the book, he describes leaving his Starhill home to pursue a career in journalism -- a career that took him to cities like Baton Rouge, Washington DC, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, New York, and Philadelphia. He was chasing after a bigger and better career with each move. "I was caught up in a culture of ambition," Dreher told me me in an interview.

While Dreher was a dreamer, Ruthie was satisfied with what she had. When Dreher was living in big cities, going to fancy restaurants, carousing with media types, writing film reviews for a living, and traveling to Europe, Ruthie was back home in Louisiana, living down the road from her parents, starting a family of her own, and devoting herself to her elementary school students as a teacher. Ruthie could not understand Dreher's lifestyle. Why would he want to leave home for a journalism career? Wasn't Starhill good enough? Did Rod think he was better than all of them?

These "invisible walls" stood between Ruthie and Dreher when, on Mardi Gras of 2010, Ruthie was unexpectedly diagnosed with terminal lung cancer -- devastating news that ripped through her community "like a cyclone" says Dreher, who was living in Philadelphia at the time. She was a healthy non-smoking 40-year-old, beloved by her students, her neighbors, her three daughters, and her husband. Now, she had about three months to live. She actually lived for nineteen. On September 15, 2011, Ruthie passed away.

Existing research by psychologist Tim Kasser can help address this issue. Kasser, the author of The High Price of Materialism, has shown that the pursuit of materialistic values like money, possessions, and social status-the fruits of career successes-leads to lower well-being and more distress in individuals. It is also damaging to relationships: "My colleagues and I have found," Kasser writes, "that when people believe materialistic values are important, they...have poorer interpersonal relationships [and] contribute less to the community." Such people are also more likely to objectify others, using them as means to achieve their own goals.

So if the pursuit of career success comes at the expense of social bonds, then an individual's well-being could suffer. That's because community is strongly connected to well-being. In a 2004 study, social scientists John Helliwell and Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, examined the well-being of a large sample of people in Canada, the United States, and in 49 nations around the world. They found that social connections -- in the form of marriage, family, ties to friends and neighbors, civic engagement, workplace ties, and social trust -- "all appear independently and robustly related to happiness and life satisfaction, both directly and through their impact on health."

In Canada and the United States, having frequent contact with neighbors was associated with higher levels of well-being, as was the feeling of truly belonging in a group. "If everyone in a community becomes more connected, the average level of subjective well-being would increase," they wrote.

This may explain why Latin Americans, who live in a part of the world fraught with political and economic problems, but strong on social ties, are the happiest people in the world, according to Gallup. It may also explain why Dreher's Louisiana came in as the happiest state in the country in a major study of 1.3 million Americans published in Science in 2009. This surprised many at the time, but makes sense given the social bonds in communities like Starhill. Meanwhile, wealthy states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California were among the least happy, even though their inhabitants have ambition in spades; year after year, they send the greatest number of students to the Ivy League.

In another study, Putnam and a colleague found that people who attend religious services regularly are, thanks to the community element, more satisfied with their lives than those who do not. Their well-being was not linked to their religious beliefs or worshipping practices, but to the number of friends they had at church. People with ten or more friends at their religious services were about twice as satisfied with their lives than people who had no friends there.

lookseebynaomifenton/Flickr

These outcomes are interesting given that relationships and community pose some challenges to our assumptions about the good life. After all, relationships and community impose constraints on freedom, binding people to something larger than themselves. The assumption in our culture is that limiting freedom is detrimental to well-being. That is true to a point. Barry Schwartz, a psychological researcher based at Swarthmore College, has done extensive research suggesting that too much freedom -- or a lack of constraints -- is detrimental to human happiness.

"Relationships are meant to constrain," Schwartz told me, "but if you're always on the lookout for better, such constraints are experienced with bitterness and resentment."

Dreher has come to see the virtue of constraints. Reflecting on what he went through when Ruthie was sick, he told me that the secret to the good life is "setting limits and being grateful for what you have. That was what Ruthie did, which is why I think she was so happy, even to the end."

Meanwhile, many of his East Coast friends, who chased after money and good jobs, certainly achieved success, but felt otherwise empty and alone. As Dreher was writing his book, one told him, "Everything I've done has been for career advancement ... And we have done well. But we are alone in the world." He added: "Almost everybody we know is like that."

***

For many years, Ruthie and her mother had a Christmas Eve tradition of visiting the Starhill cemetery and lighting candles on each of the hundreds of graves there. On that first Christmas Eve after Ruthie died, her mother could not bring herself to keep the tradition going. And yet, driving past the cemetery after sunset on that Christmas Eve, Dreher saw sparks of light illuminating the graveyard. Someone else had lit the candles on the graves -- but who? It turns out that a member of their community named Susan took it upon herself to pay that tribute to the departed, including Ruthie.

In the final paragraph of the novel Middlemarch, George Eliot pays another kind of tribute to the dead. Eliot writes, "The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

In other words, those many millions of people who live in the "unvisited tombs" of the world, though they may not be remembered or known by you and me, are the ones who kept the peace of the world when they were alive. For Dreher, Ruthie is one of those people. She was, he told me, "A completely unfussy, ordinary, neighborly person, who you'd never notice in a crowd, but whose deep goodness and sense of order and compassion saved the day."

Dreher also said of his sister, "What I saw over the course of her 19-month struggle with cancer was the power of a quiet life lived faithfully with love and service to others." While Ruthie, an ordinary person, did not live the kind of life our culture celebrates, she "penetrated deeply into the lives of the people she touched," Dreher told me. "She did not live life on the surface."

Related Story

There's More to Life Than Being Happy
What's remarkable, though, is that she was not extraordinary in this regard. Most of the people in the Starhill community were like her in their kindness and compassion, Dreher said.

After Ruthie passed away, Rod decided, with his wife and young children, to put aside their East Coast lives and move back home to Louisiana. They have been there for a year and a half and love it. "Community means more than many of us realize," he says. "It certainly means more than your job."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Relationships Are More Important Than Ambition

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This month, many of the nation's best and brightest high school seniors will receive thick envelopes in the mail announcing their admission to the college of their dreams. According to a 2011 survey, about 60 percent of them will go to their first-choice schools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The future of families: four discoveries that change everything | George Carey | TEDxNaperville

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Hey, guess what? I got married two weeks ago. And like most people, I asked some of the older and wiser folks around me for a couple quick words of advice from their own marriages to make sure my wife and I didn't s--- the (same) bed.

I think most newlyweds do this - ask for advice, I mean, not s--- the same bed - especially after a few cocktails from the open bar they just paid way too much money for.

But, of course, not being satisfied with just a few wise words, I had to take it a step further.

See, I have access to hundreds of thousands of smart, amazing people through my site. So why not consult them? Why not ask them for their best relationship/marriage advice? Why not synthesize all of their wisdom and experience into something straightforward and immediately applicable to any relationship, no matter who you are or how sick of his/her s--- you are?

Why not crowdsource THE ULTIMATE RELATIONSHIP GUIDE TO END ALL RELATIONSHIP GUIDES™ from the sea of smart and savvy partners and lovers here?

So, that's what I did. I sent out the call the week before my wedding: anyone who has been married for 10+ years and is still happy in their relationship, what lessons would you pass down to others if you could? What is working for you and your partner? And if you are divorced, what didn't work previously?

The response was overwhelming. Almost 1,500 people replied, many of whom sent in responses measured in pages, not paragraphs. It took almost two weeks to comb through them all, but I did. And what I found stunned me ...

They were incredibly repetitive.

That's not an insult or anything. Actually, it's kind of the opposite. Not to mention, a relief. These were all smart and well-spoken people from all walks of life, from all around the world, all with their own histories, tragedies, mistakes and triumphs...

And yet they were all saying pretty much the same dozen things.

Which means that those dozen or so things must be pretty damn important ... and more importantly, they work.

Here's what they are.

1. Be together for the right reasons

"Don't ever be with someone because someone else pressured you to. I got married the first time because I was raised Catholic and that's what you were supposed to do. Wrong. I got married the second time because I was miserable and lonely and thought having a loving wife would fix everything for me. Also wrong. Took me three tries to figure out what should have been obvious from the beginning, the only reason you should ever be with the person you're with is because you simply love being around them. It really is that simple."

- Greg

Before we even get into what you should do in your relationship, let's start with what not to do.

When I sent out my request to readers for advice, I added a caveat that turned out to be illuminating. I asked people who were on their second or third (or fourth) marriages what they did wrong. Where did they mess up?

By far, the most common answer was "being with the person for the wrong reasons."

Some of these wrong reasons included:

Pressure from friends and family.

Feeling like a "loser" because they were single and settling for the first person that came along

Being together for image - because the relationship looked good on paper (or in photos), not because the two people actually admired each other.

Being young and naive and hopelessly in love and thinking that love would solve everything.

As we'll see throughout the rest of this article, everything that makes a relationship "work" (and by work, I mean that it is happy and sustainable for both people involved) requires a genuine, deep-level admiration for each other. Without that mutual admiration, everything else will unravel.

The other "wrong" reason to enter into a relationship is, like Greg said, to "fix" yourself. This desire to use the love of someone else to soothe your own emotional problems inevitably leads to codependence, an unhealthy and damaging dynamic between two people where they tacitly agree to use each other's love as a distraction from their own self-loathing.

We'll get more into codependence later in this article, but for now, it's useful to point out that love, itself, is neutral. It is something that can be both healthy or unhealthy, helpful or harmful, depending on why and how you love someone else and are loved by someone else. By itself, love is never enough to sustain a relationship.

2. Have realistic expectations about relationships and romance

"You are absolutely not going to be absolutely gaga over each other every single day for the rest of your lives, and all this 'happily ever after' bull---- is just setting people up for failure. They go into relationship with these unrealistic expectations. Then, the instant they realize they aren't 'gaga' anymore, they think the relationship is broken and over, and they need to get out. No! There will be days, or weeks, or maybe even longer, when you aren't all mushy-gushy in-love. You're even going to wake up some morning and think, "Ugh, you're still here ..." That's normal! And more importantly, sticking it out is totally worth it, because that, too, will change. In a day, or a week, or maybe even longer, you'll look at that person and a giant wave of love will inundate you, and you'll love them so much you think your heart can't possibly hold it all and is going to burst. Because a love that's alive is also constantly evolving. It expands and contracts and mellows and deepens. It's not going to be the way it used to be, or the way it will be, and it shouldn't be. I think if more couples understood that, they'd be less inclined to panic and rush to break up or divorce."

- Paula

Love is a funny thing. In ancient times, people genuinely considered love a sickness. Parents warned their children against it, and adults quickly arranged marriages before their children were old enough to do something dumb in the name of their emotions.

That's because love, while making us feel all giddy and high as if we had just snorted a shoebox full of cocaine, makes us highly irrational. We all know that guy (or girl) who dropped out of school, sold their car and spent the money to elope on the beaches of Tahiti. We all also know that that guy (or girl) ended up sulking back a few years later feeling like a moron, not to mention broke.

That's unbridled love. It's nature's way of tricking us into doing insane and irrational things to procreate with another person - probably because if we stopped to think about the repercussions of having kids, and being with the same person forever and ever, no one would ever do it. As Robin Williams used to joke, "God gave man a brain and a penis and only enough blood to operate one at a time."

Romantic love is a trap designed to get two people to overlook each other's faults long enough to get some babymaking done. It generally only lasts for a few years at most. That dizzying high you get staring into your lover's eyes as if they are the stars that make up the heavens - yeah, that mostly goes away. It does for everybody. So, once it's gone, you need to know that you've buckled yourself down with a human being you genuinely respect and enjoy being with, otherwise things are going to get rocky.

True love - that is, deep, abiding love that is impervious to emotional whims or fancy - is a choice. It's a constant commitment to a person regardless of the present circumstances. It's a commitment to a person who you understand isn't going to always make you happy - nor should they! - and a person who will need to rely on you at times, just as you will rely on them.

That form of love is much harder. Primarily because it often doesn't feel very good. It's unglamorous. It's lots of early morning doctor's visits. It's cleaning up bodily fluids you'd rather not be cleaning up. It's dealing with another person's insecurities and fears and ideas, even when you don't want to.

But this form of love is also far more satisfying and meaningful. And, at the end of the day, it brings true happiness, not just another series of highs.

"Happily Ever After doesn't exist. Every day you wake up and decide to love your partner and your life - the good, the bad and the ugly. Some days it's a struggle and some days you feel like the luckiest person in the world."

- Tara

Many people never learn how to breach this deep, unconditional love. Many people are instead addicted to the ups and downs of romantic love. They are in it for the feels, so to speak. And when the feels run out, so do they.

Many people get into a relationship as a way to compensate for something they lack or hate within themselves. This is a one-way ticket to a toxic relationship because it makes your love conditional - you will love your partner as long as they help you feel better about yourself. You will give to them as long as they give to you. You will make them happy as long as they make you happy.

This conditionality prevents any true, deep-level intimacy from emerging and chains the relationship to the bucking throes of each person's internal dramas.

3. The most important factor in a relationship is not communication, but respect

"What I can tell you is the #1 thing, most important above all else is respect. It's not sexual attraction, looks, shared goals, religion or lack of, nor is it love. There are times when you won't feel love for your partner. That is the truth. But you never want to lose respect for your partner. Once you lose respect you will never get it back."

- Laurie

As we scanned through the hundreds of responses we received, my assistant and I began to notice an interesting trend.

People who had been through divorces and/or had only been with their partners for 10-15 years almost always talked about communication being the most important part of making things work. Talk frequently. Talk openly. Talk about everything, even if it hurts.

And there is some merit to that (which I'll get to later).

But we noticed that the thing people with marriages going on 20, 30, or even 40 years talked about most was respect.

My sense is that these people, through sheer quantity of experience, have learned that communication, no matter how open, transparent and disciplined, will always break down at some point. Conflicts are ultimately unavoidable, and feelings will always be hurt.

And the only thing that can save you and your partner, that can cushion you both to the hard landing of human fallibility, is an unerring respect for one another, the fact that you hold each other in high esteem, believe in one another - often more than you each believe in yourselves - and trust that your partner is doing his/her best with what they've got.

Without that bedrock of respect underneath you, you will doubt each other's intentions. You will judge their choices and encroach on their independence. You will feel the need to hide things from one another for fear of criticism. And this is when the cracks in the edifice begin to appear.

"My husband and I have been together 15 years this winter. I've thought a lot about what seems to be keeping us together, while marriages around us crumble (seriously, it's everywhere... we seem to be at that age). The one word that I keep coming back to is "respect". Of course, this means showing respect, but that is too superficial. Just showing it isn't enough. You have to feel it deep within you. I deeply and genuinely respect him for his work ethic, his patience, his creativity, his intelligence, and his core values. From this respect comes everything else - trust, patience, perseverance (because sometimes life is really hard and you both just have to persevere). I want to hear what he has to say (even if I don't agree with him) because I respect his opinion. I want to enable him to have some free time within our insanely busy lives because I respect his choices of how he spends his time and who he spends time with. And, really, what this mutual respect means is that we feel safe sharing our deepest, most intimate selves with each other."

- Nicole

You must also respect yourself. Just as your partner must also respect his/herself. Because without that self-respect, you will not feel worthy of the respect afforded by your partner. You will be unwilling to accept it and you will find ways to undermine it. You will constantly feel the need to compensate and prove yourself worthy of love, which will just backfire.

Respect for your partner and respect for yourself are intertwined. As a reader named Olov put it, "Respect yourself and your wife. Never talk badly to or about her. If you don't respect your wife, you don't respect yourself. You chose her - live up to that choice."

So what does respect look like?

Common examples given by many readers:

NEVER talk s--- about your partner or complain about them to your friends. If you have a problem with your partner, you should be having that conversation with them, not with your friends. Talking bad about them will erode your respect for them and make you feel worse about being with them, not better.

Respect that they have different hobbies, interests and perspectives from you. Just because you would spend your time and energy differently, doesn't mean it's better/worse.

Respect that they have an equal say in the relationship, that you are a team, and if one person on the team is not happy, then the team is not succeeding.

No secrets. If you're really in this together and you respect one another, everything should be fair game. Have a crush on someone else? Discuss it. Laugh about it. Had a weird sexual fantasy that sounds ridiculous? Be open about it. Nothing should be off-limits.

Respect goes hand-in-hand with trust. And trust is the lifeblood of any relationship (romantic or otherwise). Without trust, there can be no sense of intimacy or comfort. Without trust, your partner will become a liability in your mind, something to be avoided and analyzed, not a protective home base for your heart and your mind.

4. Talk openly about everything, especially the stuff that hurts

"We always talk about what's bothering us with each other, not anyone else! We have so many friends who are in marriages that are not working well and they tell me all about what is wrong. I can't help them, they need to be talking to their spouse about this, that's the only person who can help them figure it out. If you can figure out a way to be able to always talk with your spouse about what's bugging you then you can work on the issue."

- Ronnie

"There can be no secrets. Secrets divide you. Always."

- Tracey

I receive hundreds of emails from readers each week asking for life advice. A large percentage of these emails involve their struggling romantic relationships.

(These emails, too, are surprisingly repetitive.)

A couple years ago, I discovered that I was answering the vast majority of these relationship emails with the exact same response.

"Take this email you just sent to me, print it out, and show it to your partner. Then come back and ask again."

This response became so common that I actually put it on my contact form on the site because I was so tired of copying and pasting it.

If something bothers you in the relationship, you must be willing to say it. Saying it builds trust and trust builds intimacy. It may hurt, but you still need to do it. No one else can fix your relationship for you. Nor should anyone else. Just as causing pain to your muscles allows them to grow back stronger, often introducing some pain into your relationship through vulnerability is the only way to make the relationship stronger.

Behind respect, trust was the most commonly mentioned trait for a healthy relationship. Most people mentioned it in the context of jealousy and fidelity - trust your partner to go off on their own, don't get insecure or angry if you see them talking with someone else, etc.

But trust goes much deeper than that. Because when you're really talking about the long-haul, you start to get into some serious life-or-death s---. If you ended up with cancer tomorrow, would you trust your partner to stick with you and take care of you? Would you trust your partner to care for your child for a week by themselves? Do you trust them to handle your money or make sound decisions under pressure? Do you trust them to not turn on you or blame you when you make mistakes?

These are hard things to do. And they're even harder to think about early on in a relationship. Trust at the beginning of a relationship is easy. It's like, "Oh, I forgot my phone at her apartment, I trust her not to sell it and buy crack with the money ... I think."

But the deeper the commitment, the more intertwined your lives become, and the more you will have to trust your partner to act in your interest in your absence.

There's an old Ben Folds song where he sings, "It seems to me if you cannot trust, you cannot be trusted." Distrust has a tendency to breed distrust. If your partner is always snooping through your stuff, accusing you of doing things you didn't do, and questioning all of your decisions, naturally, you will start to question their intentions as well - Why is she so insecure? What if she is hiding something herself?

The key to fostering and maintaining trust in the relationship is for both partners to be completely transparent and vulnerable:

If something is bothering you, say something. This is important not only for addressing issues as they arise, but it proves to your partner that you have nothing to hide.

Those icky, insecure things you hate sharing with people? Share them with your partner. Not only is it healing, but you and your partner need to have a good understanding of each other's insecurities and the way you each choose to compensate for them.

Make promises and then stick to them. The only way to truly rebuild trust after it's been broken is through a proven track record over time. You cannot build that track record until you own up to previous mistakes and set about correcting them.

Learn to discern your partner's own shady behavior from your own insecurities (and vice-versa). This is hard and will likely require confrontation to get to the bottom of. But in most relationship fights, one person thinks something is completely "normal" and the other thinks it's really grade-A "f----- up." It's often extremely hard to distinguish who is being irrational and insecure and who is being reasonable and merely standing up for themselves. Be patient in rooting out what's what, and when it's your big, gnarly insecurity (and sometimes it will be, trust me), be honest about it. Own up to it. And strive to be better.

Trust is like a china plate. If you drop it and it breaks, you can put it back together with a lot of work and care. If you drop it and break it a second time, it will split into twice as many pieces and it will require far more time and care to put back together again. But drop and break it enough times, and it will shatter into so many pieces that you will never be able to put it back together again, no matter what you do.

5. A healthy relationships means 2 healthy individuals

"Understand that it is up to you to make yourself happy, it is NOT the job of your spouse. I am not saying you shouldn't do nice things for each other, or that your partner can't make you happy sometimes. I am just saying don't lay expectations on your partner to "make you happy." It is not their responsibility. Figure out as individuals what makes you happy as an individual, be happy yourself, then you each bring that to the relationship."

- Mandy

A lot is made about "sacrifices" in a relationship. You are supposed to keep the relationship happy by consistently sacrificing yourself for your partner and their wants and needs.

There is some truth to that. Every relationship requires each person to consciously choose to give something up at times.

But the problem is when all of the relationship's happiness is contingent on the other person and both people are in a constant state of sacrifice. Just read that again. That sounds horrible. It reminds me of an old Marilyn Manson song, "Shoot myself to love you; if I loved myself, I'd be shooting you." A relationship based on sacrifices cannot be sustained, and will eventually become damaging to both individuals in it.

"S-----, codependent relationships have an inherent stability because you're both locked in an implicit bargain to tolerate the other person's bad behavior because they're tolerating yours, and neither of you wants to be alone. On the surface, it seems like "compromising in relationships because that's what people do," but the reality is that resentments build up, and both parties become the other person's emotional hostage against having to face and deal with their own bull---- (it took me 14 years to realize this, by the way)."

- Karen

A healthy and happy relationship requires two healthy and happy individuals. Keyword here: "individuals." That means two people with their own identities, their own interests and perspectives, and things they do by themselves, on their own time.

This is why attempting to control your partner (or submitting control over yourself to your partner) to make them "happy" ultimately backfires - it allows the individual identities of each person to be destroyed, the very identities that attracted each person and brought them together in the first place.

"Don't try to change them. This is the person you chose. They were good enough to marry so don't expect them to change now."

- Allison

"Don't ever give up who you are for the person you're with. It will only backfire and make you both miserable. Have the courage to be who you are, and most importantly, let your partner be who they are. Those are the two people who fell in love with each other in the first place."

- Dave

But how does one do this? Well, it's a bit counterintuitive. But it's something hundreds and hundreds of successful couples echoed in their emails ...

6. Give each other space

"Be sure you have a life of your own, otherwise it is harder to have a life together. What do I mean? Have your own interests, your own friends, your own support network, and your own hobbies. Overlap where you can, but not being identical should give you something to talk about and expose one another to. It helps to expand your horizons as a couple, but isn't so boring as both living the exact same life."

- Anonymous

Among the emails, one of the most popular themes was the importance of creating space and separation from one another.

People sung the praises of separate checking accounts, separate credit cards, having different friends and hobbies, taking separate vacations from one another each year (this has been a big one in my own relationship). Some even went so far as to recommend separate bathrooms or even separate bedrooms.

Some people are afraid to give their partner freedom and independence. This comes from a lack of trust and/or insecurity that if we give our partner too much space, they will discover they don't want to be with us anymore. Generally, the more uncomfortable we are with our own worthiness in the relationship and to be loved, the more we will try to control the relationship and our partner's behaviors.

BUT, more importantly, this inability to let our partners be who they are, is a subtle form of disrespect. After all, if you can't trust your husband to have a simple golfing trip with his buddies, or you're afraid to let your wife go out for drinks after work, what does that say about your respect for their ability to handle themselves well? What does it say for your respect for yourself? I mean, after all, if you believe a couple after-work drinks is enough to steer your girlfriend away from you, you clearly don't think too highly of yourself.

"Going on seventeen years. If you love your partner enough you will let them be who they are, you don't own them, who they hang with, what they do or how they feel. Drives me nuts when I see women not let their husbands go out with the guys or are jealous of other women."

- Natalie

7. You and your partner will grow and change in unexpected ways

"Over the course of 20 years we both have changed tremendously. We have changed faiths, political parties, numerous hair colors and styles, but we love each other and possibly even more. Our grown kids constantly tell their friends what hopeless romantics we are. And the biggest thing that keeps us strong is not giving a f--- about what anyone else says about our relationship."

- Dotti

One theme that came up repeatedly, especially with those married 20+ years, was how much each individual changes as the decades roll on, and how ready each of you have to be to embrace the other partner as these changes occur. One reader commented that at her wedding, an elderly family member told her, "One day many years from now, you will wake up and your spouse will be a different person, make sure you fall in love with that person too."

It logically follows that if there is a bedrock of respect for each individual's interest and values underpinning the relationship, and each individual is encouraged to foster their own growth and development, that each person will, as time goes on, evolve in different and unexpected ways. It's then up to the couple to communicate and make sure that they are consistently a) aware of the changes going on in their partner, and b) continually accepting and respecting those changes as they occur.

Now, you're probably reading this and thinking, "Sure, Bill likes sausage now, but in a few years he might prefer steak. I can get on board with that."

No, I'm talking some pretty serious life changes. Remember, if you're going to spend decades together, some really heavy s--- will hit (and break) the fan. Among major life changes people told me their marriages went through (and survived): changing religions, moving countries, death of family members (including children), supporting elderly family members, changing political beliefs, even changing sexual orientation and in a couple cases, gender identification.

Amazingly, these couples survived because their respect for each other allowed them to adapt and allow each person to continue to flourish and grow.

"When you commit to someone, you don't actually know who you're committing to. You know who they are today, but you have no idea who this person is going to be in five years, ten years, and so on. You have to be prepared for the unexpected, and truly ask yourself if you admire this person regardless of the superficial (or not-so-superficial) details, because I promise almost all of them at some point are going to either change or go away."

- Michael

But this isn't easy, of course. In fact, at times, it will be downright soul-destroying.

Which is why you need to make sure you and your partner know how to fight.

8. Get good at fighting

"The relationship is a living, breathing thing. Much like the body and muscles, it cannot get stronger without stress and challenge. You have to fight. You have to hash things out. Obstacles make the marriage."

- Ryan Saplan

John Gottman is a hot-s--- psychologist and researcher who has spent over 30 years analyzing married couples and looking for keys to why they stick together and why they break up. Chances are, if you've read any relationship advice article before, you've either directly or indirectly been exposed to his work. When it comes to, "Why do people stick together?" he dominates the field.

What Gottman does is he gets married couples in a room, puts some cameras on them, and then he asks them to have a fight.

Notice: he doesn't ask them to talk about how great the other person is. He doesn't ask them what they like best about their relationship.

He asks them to fight. Pick something they're having problems with and talk about it for the camera.

And from simply analyzing the film for the couple's discussion (or shouting match, whatever), he's able to predict with startling accuracy whether a couple will divorce or not.

But what's most interesting about Gottman's research is that the things that lead to divorce are not necessarily what you think. Successful couples, like unsuccessful couples, he found, fight consistently. And some of them fight furiously.

He has been able to narrow down four characteristics of a couple that tend to lead to divorces (or breakups). He has gone on and called these "the four horsemen" of the relationship apocalypse in his books. They are:

1. Criticizing your partner's character ("You're so stupid" vs "That thing you did was stupid.")

2. Defensiveness (or basically, blame shifting, "I wouldn't have done that if you weren't late all the time.")

3. Contempt (putting down your partner and making them feel inferior.)

4. Stonewalling (withdrawing from an argument and ignoring your partner.)

The reader emails back this up as well. Out of the 1,500-some-odd emails, almost every single one referenced the importance of dealing with conflicts well.

Advice given by readers included:

Never insult or name-call your partner. Put another way: hate the sin, love the sinner. Gottman's research found that "contempt" - belittling and demeaning your partner - is the number one predictor of divorce.

Do not bring previous fights/arguments into current ones. This solves nothing and just makes the fight twice as bad as it was before. Yeah, you forgot to pick up groceries on the way home, but what does him being rude to your mother last Thanksgiving have to do with anything?

If things get too heated, take a breather. Remove yourself from the situation and come back once emotions have cooled off a bit. This is a big one for me personally, sometimes when things get intense with my wife, I get overwhelmed and just leave for a while. I usually walk around the block 2-3 times and let myself seethe for about 15 minutes. Then I come back and we're both a bit calmer and we can resume the discussion with a much more conciliatory tone.

Remember that being "right" is not as important as both people feeling respected and heard. You may be right, but if you are right in such a way that makes your partner feel unloved, then there's no real winner.

But all of this takes for granted another important point: be willing to fight in the first place.

I think when people talk about the necessity for "good communication" all of the time (a vague piece of advice that everyone says but few people seem to actually clarify what it means), this is what they mean: be willing to have the uncomfortable talks. Be willing to have the fights. Say the ugly things and get it all out in the open.

This was a constant theme from the divorced readers. Dozens (hundreds?) of them had more or less the same sad story to tell:

"But there's no way on God's Green Earth this is her fault alone. There were times when I saw huge red flags. Instead of trying to figure out what in the world was wrong, I just plowed ahead. I'd buy more flowers, or candy, or do more chores around the house. I was a "good" husband in every sense of the word. But what I wasn't doing was paying attention to the right things. She wasn't telling me there wasn't a problem but there was. And instead of saying something, I ignored all of the signals."

- Jim

9. Get good at forgiving

"When you end up being right about something - shut up. You can be right and be quiet at the same time. Your partner will already know you're right and will feel loved knowing that you didn't wield it like a bastard sword."

- Brian

"In marriage, there's no such thing as winning an argument."

- Bill

To me, perhaps the most interesting nugget from Gottman's research is the fact that most successful couples don't actually resolve all of their problems. In fact, his findings were completely backwards from what most people actually expect: people in lasting and happy relationships have problems that never completely go away, while couples that feel as though they need to agree and compromise on everything end up feeling miserable and falling apart.

To me, like everything else, this comes back to the respect thing. If you have two different individuals sharing a life together, it's inevitable that they will have different values and perspectives on some things and clash over it. The key here is not changing the other person - as the desire to change your partner is inherently disrespectful (to both them and yourself) - but rather it's to simply abide by the difference, love them despite it, and when things get a little rough around the edges, to forgive them for it.

"Everyone says that compromise is key, but that's not how my husband and I see it. It's more about seeking understanding. Compromise is bulls---, because it leaves both sides unsatisfied, losing little pieces of themselves in an effort to get along. On the other hand, refusing to compromise is just as much of a disaster, because you turn your partner into a competitor ("I win, you lose"). These are the wrong goals, because they're outcome-based rather than process-based. When your goal is to find out where your partner is coming from - to truly understand on a deep level - you can't help but be altered by the process. Conflict becomes much easier to navigate because you see more of the context."

- Michelle

I've written for years that the key to happiness is not achieving your lofty dreams, or experiencing some dizzying high, but rather finding the struggles and challenges that you enjoy enduring.

A similar concept seems to be true in relationships: your perfect partner is not someone who creates no problems in the relationship, rather your perfect partner is someone who creates problems in the relationship that you feel good about dealing with.

Christopher Furlong / Staff / Getty Images

But how do you get good at forgiving? What does that actually mean? Again, some advice from the readers:

When an argument is over, it's over. Some couples went as far as to make this the golden rule in their relationship. When you're done fighting, it doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong, it doesn't matter if someone was mean and someone was nice. It's over. It's in the past. And you both agree to leave it there, not bring it up every month for the next three years.

There's no scoreboard. No one is trying to "win" here. There's no, "You owe me this because you screwed up the laundry last week." There's no, "I'm always right about financial stuff, so you should listen to me." There's no, "I bought her three gifts and she only did me one favor." Everything in the relationship is given and done unconditionally - that is: without expectation or manipulation.

When your partner screws up, you separate the intentions from the behavior. You recognize the things you love and admire in your partner and understand that he/she was simply doing the best that they could, yet messed up out of ignorance. Not because they're a bad person. Not because they secretly hate you and want to divorce you. Not because there's somebody else in the background pulling them away from you. They are a good person. That's why you are with them. If you ever lose your faith in that, then you will begin to erode your faith in yourself.

And finally, pick your battles wisely. You and your partner only have so many f---- to give, make sure you both are saving them for the real things that matter.

"Been happily married 40+ years. One piece of advice that comes to mind: choose your battles. Some things matter, worth getting upset about. Most do not. Argue over the little things and you'll find yourself arguing endlessly; little things pop up all day long, it takes a toll over time. Like Chinese water torture: minor in the short term, corrosive over time. Consider: is this a little thing or a big thing? Is it worth the cost of arguing?"

- Fred

10. The little things add up to big things

"If you don't take the time to meet for lunch, go for a walk or go out to dinner and a movie with some regularity then you basically end up with a roommate. Staying connected through life's ups and downs is critical. Eventually your kids grow up, your obnoxious brother-in-law will join a monastery and your parents will die. When that happens, guess who's left? You got it ... Mr./Mrs. Right! You don't want to wake up 20 years later and be staring at a stranger because life broke the bonds you formed before the s---storm started. You and your partner need to be the eye of the hurricane."

- Brian

Of the 1,500 responses I got, I'd say about half of them mentioned at some point or another one simple but effective piece of advice: Don't ever stop doing the little things. They add up.

Things as simple as saying, "I love you," before going to bed, holding hands during a movie, doing small favors here and there, helping with some household chores. Even cleaning up when you accidentally pee on the toilet seat (seriously, someone said that) - these things all matter and add up over the long run.

The same way Fred, married for 40+ years, stated above that arguing over small things consistently wears you both down, "like Chinese water torture," so do the little favors and displays of affection add up. Don't lose them.

This seems to become particularly important once kids enter the picture. The big message I heard hundreds of times about kids: put the marriage first.

"Children are worshipped in our culture these days. Parents are expected to sacrifice everything for them. But the best way to raise healthy and happy kids is to maintain a healthy and happy marriage. Good kids don't make a good marriage. A good marriage makes good kids. So keep your marriage the top priority."

- Susan

Readers implored to maintain regular "date nights," to plan weekend getaways and to make time for sex, even when you're tired, even when you're stressed and exhausted and the baby is crying, even when junior has soccer practice at 5:30 a.m. the next day. Make time for it. It's worth it.

Oh, and speaking of sex ...

11. Sex matters ... a lot

"And you know how you know if you or her are slipping? Sex starts to slide. Period. No other test required."

- Anonymous

I still remember back in college, it was one of my first relationships with a cute little redhead. We were young and naive and crazy about each other. And, because we happened to live in the same dorm, we were banging like rabbits.

It was everything a 19-year-old male could ask for.

Then after a month or two, we hit our first "rough patch" in the relationship. We fought more often, found ourselves getting annoyed with each other, and suddenly our multiple-times-per-day habit magically dried up. And it wasn't just with her, but with me. To my surprised adolescent male mind, it was actually possible to have sex available to you yet not want it.

It was almost, like, sex was connected to emotions. For a dumb 19-year-old, this was a complete shocker.

That was the first time I discovered a truth about relationships: sex is the State of the Union. If the relationship is good, the sex will be good. You both will be wanting it and enjoying it. When the relationship is bad - when there are unresolved problems and unaddressed negative emotions - then the sex will often be the first thing to go out the window.

This was reiterated to me hundreds of times in the emails. The nature of the sex itself varied quite a bit among couples - some couples take sexual experimentation seriously, others are staunch believers in frequency, others get way into fantasies - but the underlying principle was the same everywhere: both partners should be sexually satisfied as often as possible.

But sex not only keeps the relationship healthy, many readers suggested that they use it to heal their relationships. That when things are a bit frigid between them or that they have some problems going on, a lot of stress, or other issues (i.e., kids), they even go so far as to schedule sexy time for themselves. They say it's important. And it's worth it.

A few people even said that when things start to feel stale in the relationship, they agree to have sex every day for a week. Then, as if by magic, by the next week, they feel great again.

Cue the Marvin Gaye tunes.

12. Be practical and create relationship rules

"There is no 50/50 in housecleaning, child rearing, vacation planning, dishwasher emptying, gift buying, dinner making, money making, etc. The sooner everyone accepts that, the happier everyone is. We all have things we like to do and hate to do; we all have things we are good at and not so good at. TALK to your partner about those things when it comes to dividing and conquering all the crap that has to get done in life."

- Liz

Everyone has an image in their mind of how a relationship should work. Both people share responsibilities. Both people manage to finely balance their time together with the time for themselves. Both pursue engaging and invigorating interests on their own and then share the benefits together. Both take turns cleaning the toilet and pleasuring each other and cooking gourmet lasagna for the extended family at Thanksgiving (although not all at the same time).

Then there's how relationships actually work.

Messy. Stressful. Miscommunication flying everywhere so that both of you feel as though you're in a perpetual state of talking to a wall.

The fact is relationships are imperfect, messy affairs. And it's for the simple reason that they're comprised of imperfect, messy people - people who want different things at different times in different ways and oh, they forgot to tell you? Well, maybe if you had been listening, a------.

The common theme of the advice here was be pragmatic. If the wife is a lawyer and spends 50 hours at the office every week, and the husband is an artist and can work from home most days, it makes more sense for him to handle most of the day-to-day parenting duties. If the wife's standard of cleanliness looks like a "Home & Garden" catalog, and the husband has gone six months without even noticing the light fixture hanging from the ceiling, then it makes sense that the wife handles more of the home cleaning duties.

It's economics 101: division of labor makes everyone better off. Figure out what you are each good at, what you each love/hate doing, and then arrange accordingly. My wife loves cleaning (no, seriously), but she hates smelly stuff. So guess who gets dishes and garbage duty? Me. Because I don't give a f---. I'll eat off the same plate seven times in a row. I couldn't smell a dead rat even if it was sleeping under my pillow. I'll toss garbage around all day. Here honey, let me get that for you.

On top of that, many couples suggested laying out rules for the relationship. This sounds cheesy, but ultimately, it's practical. To what degree will you share finances? How much debt will be taken on or paid off? How much can each person spend without consulting the other? What purchases should be done together or do you trust each other to do separately? How do you decide which vacations to go on?

Have meetings about this stuff. Sure, it's not sexy or cool, but it needs to get done. You're sharing a life together and so you need to plan and account for each person's needs and resources.

One person even said that she and her husband have "annual reviews" every year. She immediately told me not to laugh, but that she was serious. They have annual reviews where they discuss everything that's going on in the household that they like and don't like and what they can do in the coming year to change it.

This sort of stuff sounds lame but it's what keeps couples in touch with what's going on with each other. And because they always have their fingers on the pulse of each other's needs, they're more likely to grow together rather than grow apart.

13. Learn to ride the waves

"I have been married for 44 years (4 children, 6 grandchildren). I think the most important thing that I have learned in those years is that the love you feel for each other is constantly changing. Sometimes you feel a deep love and satisfaction, other times you want nothing to do with your spouse; sometimes you laugh together, sometimes you're screaming at each other. It's like a roller-coaster ride, ups and downs all the time, but as you stay together long enough the downs become less severe and the ups are more loving and contented. So even if you feel like you could never love your partner any more, that can change, if you give it a chance. I think people give up too soon. You need to be the kind of person that you want your spouse to be. When you do that it makes a world of difference."

- Chris

Out of the hundreds of analogies I saw these past few weeks, one stuck with me. A nurse emailed saying that she used to work with a lot of geriatric patients. And one day she was talking to a man in his late 80s about marriage and why his had lasted so long. The man said something like, "relationships exist as waves, people need to learn how to ride them."

Upon asking him to explain, he said that, like the ocean, there are constant waves of emotion going on within a relationship, ups and downs - some waves last for hours, some last for months or even years. The key is understanding that few of those waves have anything to do with the quality of the relationship - people lose jobs, family members die, couples relocate, switch careers, make a lot of money, lose a lot of money.

Your job as a committed partner is to simply ride the waves with the person you love, regardless of where they go. Because ultimately, none of these waves last. And you simply end up with each other.

"Two years ago, I suddenly began resenting my wife for any number of reasons. I felt as if we were floating along, doing a great job of co-existing and co-parenting, but not sustaining a real connection. It deteriorated to the point that I considered separating from her; however, whenever I gave the matter intense thought, I could not pinpoint a single issue that was a deal breaker. I knew her to be an amazing person, mother, and friend. I bit my tongue a lot and held out hope that the malaise would p as suddenly as it had arrived. Fortunately, it did and I love her more than ever. So the final bit of wisdom is to afford your spouse the benefit of the doubt. If you have been happy for such a long period, that is the case for good reason. Be patient and focus on the many aspects of her that still exist that caused you to fall in love in the first place."

- Kevin

I'd like to take a moment to thank all of the readers who took the time to write something and send it to me. As always, it was humbling to see all of the wisdom and life experience out there. There were many, many, many excellent responses, with kind, heartfelt advice. It was hard to choose the ones that ended up here, and in many cases, I could have put a dozen different quotes that said almost the exact same thing.

Exercises like this always amaze me because when you ask thousands of people for advice on something, you expect to receive thousands of different answers. But in both cases now, the vast majority of the advice has largely been the same. It shows you how similar we really are. And how no matter how bad things may get, we are never as alone as we think.

I would end this by summarizing the advice in one tidy section. But once again, a reader named Margo did it far better than I ever could. So we'll end with Margo:

"You can work through anything as long as you are not destroying yourself or each other. That means emotionally, physically, financially or spiritually. Make nothing off limits to discuss. Never shame or mock each other for the things you do that make you happy. Write down why you fell in love and read it every year on your anniversary (or more often). Write love letters to each other often. Make each other first. When kids arrive, it will be easy to fall into a frenzy of making them the only focus of your life ... do not forget the love that produced them. You must keep that love alive and strong to feed them love. Spouse comes first. Each of you will continue to grow. Bring the other one with you. Be the one that welcomes that growth. Don't think that the other one will hold the relationship together. Both of you should assume it's up to you so that you are both working on it. Be passionate about cleaning house, preparing meals and taking care of your home. This is required of everyone daily, make it fun and happy and do it together. Do not complain about your partner to anyone. Love them for who they are. Make love even when you are not in the mood. Trust each other. Give each other the benefit of the doubt always. Be transparent. Have nothing to hide. Be proud of each other. Have a life outside of each other, but share it through conversation. Pamper and adore each other. Go to counseling now before you need it so that you are both open to working on the relationship together. Disagree with respect to each other's feelings. Be open to change and accepting of differences. Print this and refer to it daily."
Like this article? Read my book! It's called "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F---: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I polled 1,500 people about their best relationship advice - and everyone said the same thing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hey, guess what? I got married two weeks ago. And like most people, I asked some of the older and wiser folks around me for a couple quick words of advice from their own marriages to make sure my wife and I didn't s--- the (same) bed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The same technological and economic developments that are pulling couples apart are also making geographic separation less stressful and more enjoyable.

Alessandra De Cristofaro

The love life of Stanley Davidge, a 25-year-old network administrator for a national restaurant chain, is absolutely extraordinary.

Almost all day, Davidge, who lives in South Carolina, is in touch with his girlfriend, Angela Davila, who lives in Virginia and is job hunting. Despite being separated by a six-hour drive, they "shoot the bull and stuff" over FaceTime when Davidge has a break at work, they call each other in the car, and they watch TV together at the end of the day using a website that lets them share a screen. "It's almost like being in the same room together," he says of their tandem streaming.

The way Davidge and Davila maintain their relationship won't impress anyone familiar with the internet and smartphones. But, considering the fullness of human history, it is astounding that two people in separate places can keep up such a rich relationship without much financial or logistical hassle-and think nothing of it.

It's hard to say for sure whether long-distance relationships are more common than they were a generation or two ago, though some scholars suspect they are. "They're there, and we think they're on the increase," says Laura Stafford, a communication scholar at Bowling Green State University who has studied long-distance relationships.

But the many forms that long-distance relationships take make them really hard to count: Couples (married or not) might live apart because they attend different colleges, they have jobs in different cities (or countries), one or both of them are in the military, one or both of them are in prison, or one or both of them have moved to take care of an aging parent. Further complicating matters, these arrangements can be relatively short in duration or last for years.
Read: What does it mean to be 'ready' for a relationship?
Still, there are two notable indications that more couples may be living apart these days. First, in a government survey, the number of married Americans 18 and older who reported that they live apart from their spouse rose from roughly 2.7 million in 2000 to roughly 3.9 million in 2017, though, frustratingly, the survey didn't ask any of those millions why they weren't living together. And second, according to the Pew Research Center, the share of "internet users with recent dating experience" who said they'd used the internet or email to keep up with a partner long distance jumped from 19 percent to 24 percent from 2005 to 2013. That's a decent-size increase, though, a Pew researcher cautioned, it can't be stated with any certainty how long or why those couples were apart. Some respondents could well have been thinking of the time they emailed their partner while away on a business trip.

Exact numbers aside, what's certain is that long-distance relationships-a term I'll use from now on to refer to couples living apart voluntarily-are different today than they were not just 500 or 50 years ago, but even 15. As economic and technological developments are prying more couples apart geographically, some of those same developments are making those couples' love lives more closely resemble those of couples who live in the same place. The distance is still there, but it feels shorter and shorter.

Before videochat, before long-distance phone calls, there were letters. Written correspondence is how, historically, lovers have exchanged meaningful information over long distances. The exchanges of the Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning are classics of their genre, elegantly revealing the contents of their authors' minds and hearts. "All-so into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew," Robert wrote in the first letter of their correspondence, in 1845. The fantastically graphic letters that James Joyce wrote to his lover in the 1900s were classics in another way -his sign-off in one was, "Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird!"

As those nicknames attest, written expressions of adoration could be colorful and evocative. They could also, as a medium, leave a lot to the imagination. With letters, "you can actually have really powerful emotions and intimacy," says Jeff Hancock, a communication professor at Stanford University. "All you have are each other's words, so you can really imagine the other person in the best possible light."

Related Stories

While the telephone was invented in the mid-19th century, it wasn't until the 1940s and '50s, Hancock told me, that the technology was considered to be suitable for pleasure instead of just business. But in those early days, lengthy calls to far-flung loved ones were still too pricey for many people. Robert Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University, remembers that when he was in college in the late 1950s and early '60s, one minute of calling cross-country cost about $3, which was more than the average hourly wage at the time. (That works out to about $26 a minute in today's dollars after adjusting for inflation.)

In the year following his college graduation, Gordon studied at Oxford, and his then-fiancée finished up her senior year of undergrad back in Boston, where they'd met. During this transatlantic phase of their relationship, they only wrote letters and never talked on the phone. "Telephone calls for long-distance relationships were simply not part of the discussion until-and I remember exactly when this switched, because I saved all my letters, and I know when the letters stopped-and that's 1970, '71," he says. (The particular cutoff year for any given person would probably have had to do with that person's disposable income.)

The next major development in romantic communication, of course, was the internet. Email, instant messaging, and videochatting, once widely adopted, made it feasible and affordable for couples to share even the most trivial details of their lives in real time, as often as they wanted. It was almost the opposite of writing a letter in, say, the early to mid-19th century, the goal of which was often to capture the most important things that had happened since the last letter. "The mundane information that we are able to exchange with each other is vitally important to [long-distance] relationships, and that gets lost a lot in letters of the past," says Jason Farman, a media scholar at the University of Maryland who has studied the history of communication technologies.

Such mundane transmissions were what helped Jess Lam, a 29-year-old dentist in Los Angeles, get through four years of long distance with her boyfriend. She told me that after a typical day at dental school, she'd get home, cook dinner, and then start up an hours-long session of what she calls "background Skype"-keeping a videochat open with her boyfriend while the two of them went about their evenings, interacting occasionally. "We wouldn't be paying attention to each other all the time, but we could see each other on the screen and say hi, so we always were connected in that way," she told me.

"Background Skype" is something many long-distance couples do today. In Farman's eyes, the practice helpfully "allows the banal to come to the surface," contributing to "a level of intimacy that I don't think people of previous eras had on the same scale."

More analog interactions still hold appeal, though. Stanley Davidge, the network administrator who watches TV with his long-distance girlfriend, says sending old-fashioned mail also helps them feel close. "I'll fold up some origami stuff for her every couple months and just send her a letter out of the blue," he told me. "She really likes that."

And the existence of technology doesn't guarantee constant connection. Alex Bettencourt and Frantz Salomon have been together for three years, married for one, and long distance the whole time. Bettencourt lives in Boston, Salomon in Jacmel, a seaside town in Haiti. They see each other about twice a year, text every day, and try to videochat once a week. But that doesn't always work out. "If we want to talk on the phone, if cell signal is not good down there, or the power is out or something, that changes things," Bettencourt told me. The longest the couple has had to go without any contact at all is about a week-the inconsistency is a challenge, Bettencourt said, but it now seems normal enough.

Obstacles to communication are also common for many military couples. Montoya Warner, a 23-year-old living in the state of Washington, says that when her wife went to boot camp, it was "seven months of very minimal communication." (The boot camp would normally have lasted only two or three months, but Warner's wife sustained a hip injury that stretched out the time.) At the beginning, some "bad apples" in her wife's platoon sometimes cost everyone else their phone privileges, so phone calls between them were restricted to once every two or three weeks.

Overwhelmingly, the dozen or so people I interviewed about their relationships for this story said they'd prefer to be long distance now, as opposed to 20 or 50 years ago. "I can text, talk, and play games with my partner, who lives across the Atlantic Ocean, and it almost feels real," said one. "If this was 150 years ago, I would have to wait, like, three months to get a letter from the Pony Express and by the time I got it, she might've died of cholera or something," said another.
Read: What life was like in America 100 years ago
It seems obvious that it would be better to be able to communicate at the speed of the internet, rather than waiting on the Pony Express for word from your beloved. But it's worth noting that the communication speeds of previous eras probably seem more miserable to us today than they actually were for people at the time. Farman says that less-instantaneous exchanges weren't "necessarily perceived as out of the ordinary, or less immersive." It's more from a backward-looking perspective that these media seem unbearably slow.

In fact, Farman says, "My initial impulse is that if you were to ask people in almost any other era of history if they prefer to be in long-distance relationships at that time or in the past, they would all have the exact same answer. You understand your communication networks for keeping in touch as being far superior to what came before." Now is always the best time, whenever now is.

When a couple is considering going long distance, immersive and real-time communication technologies might make the distance seem more manageable. But a variety of larger forces-involving labor markets, geography, and gender norms-are also putting certain couples in the position of having to make that choice in the first place. The apparent boom in long-distance relationships seems spread unevenly among demographics.

One society-wide trend suggests that on the whole, couples are less likely to experience long-distance dilemmas than they used to: The percentage of Americans who moved between states in a given year decreased by more than half from the 1970s to 2010. Nowadays, four-fifths of American adults live a couple of hours or less by car from their parents.

But something interesting is going on with the remaining fifth: Education and income are the two strongest predictors of moving far from home. This pattern, in combination with the large increase in the number of women pursuing careers over the past half century, suggests that geography might exert the most pressure on a particular type of couple -dual-income, well educated, professionally minded. In the past, couples were more likely to accommodate only one partner's job-usually the man's. Laura Stafford, the Bowling Green researcher, says that "almost certainly we've seen a rise" in long-distance relationships between people pursuing careers in separate places.

Read: The five years that changed dating
Danielle Lindemann, a sociologist at Lehigh University, notes that the Census Bureau's data on married couples who live apart don't indicate whether jobs are the reason for partners' different locations. "The unsatisfying answer is that nobody can really say with certainty that [long-distance marriage] is more prevalent than it has been in the past," she says, "but everybody who studies this agrees that it probably is." (Indeed, she published a book on the subject, Commuter Spouses: New Families in a Changing World, earlier this year.)

The pressure to live apart for work can be especially acute for younger couples who are still establishing careers, and the job market in academia-in which full-time jobs are both relatively rare and scattered about the country-is a telling case study. Shelly Lundberg, an economist at UC Santa Barbara, says that today's newly minted Ph.D. couples have a hard time balancing their relationships and their work. "Juggling location choices is really fraught for these young people, and many of them end up separated, sometimes on different continents, for years before they manage to find something that works," she says.

This represents a shift, Lundberg notes: "In my cohort"-she earned her doctorate in 1981-"the women basically gave up. They would find the best job for their husband or their male partner, and they would take a lecturer job or something else." Today, she says, "the women are more ambitious, and so the decision to take jobs in different places, at least temporarily, has become much more common."

Lundberg says that what's going on in academia might be a microcosm of what's going on with highly educated professionals more broadly, many of whom experience "very intense up-or-out career pressure in the early years of [working]." She thinks that more long-distance relationships would be a predictable consequence of "the intra-household tension caused by equalizing ambitions" between men and women. And the internet only eases career-driven geographic splits: The same communication technologies that enable romantic intimacy also make it easier to work remotely while visiting one's partner.

Analyzing census data from 2000, the economist Marta Murray-Close found that married people with a graduate degree were more likely to live apart from their spouse than those who had only an undergraduate degree. Among 25-to-29-year-olds, 3 or 4 percent of those holding only a bachelor's degree lived apart from their spouse; the rate for those with a master's or doctorate degree was 5 or 6 percent. "As you move up the education chain," Murray-Close told me, "you're also probably increasing the likelihood of having jobs that are concentrated in particular geographic areas." And, further, being well educated typically means that the costs-as in, the forgone wages-of not pursuing one's best job options are much higher.

Murray-Close has also found that there is a gender dynamic to these patterns: When men in heterosexual married couples have an advanced degree, as opposed to just an undergraduate degree, the couple is more likely to move somewhere together. For women, though, having an advanced degree makes it more likely that the couple will live separately. "I argue that family location choices are analogous to marital naming choices," Murray-Close wrote in a 2016 paper. "Husbands rarely accommodate wives, whatever their circumstances, but wives accommodate husbands unless the cost of accommodation is unusually high."

Another broad demographic pattern that might encourage professional long-distance relationships is that having a bachelor's degree correlates with getting married later in life, which leaves a stage of life after college-perhaps a few years, perhaps as long as a decade-that can be cordoned off for career development before starting a family.

When I talked with Madison VanSavage-Maben, a 27-year-old living in Wake Forest, North Carolina, she was in the final week of her long-distance relationship with her husband, Alex. They'd been living in different places for four years, in part because she went into the specialized field of orthotics and prosthetics, which limited her options for grad school. "We're so excited," she told me. "It finally feels like we can start our lives together. You definitely, in distance, develop two separate lives that you hope can come together at some point."

The week before she started living with her husband, VanSavage-Maben was excited to start thinking about all the things the two of them had been putting off, from the small ("even silly things, like we haven't bought any permanent furniture") to the big ("Who knows if we would already have [had] children?"). "Everything happened on time for us," she concluded. "We were able to put our careers first and get to a place where now we can have the future we always wanted."

It can even be the case that as coupled long-distance 20-somethings pour themselves into their education and career, there's a strange sort of relief in being apart. Lauren, a 24-year-old social-work graduate student in Boston, has been dating her boyfriend, who's getting a degree of his own in North Carolina, for more than a year. (She asked not to have her last name published, because of the sensitive nature of her work.)

"Not a lot has been incredibly hard for us, because we're both in school, so we're both really busy," she said. "I tend to think that sometimes if he just lived here, we would have a more difficult relationship." More difficult, she means, in the sense that if they were in the same place, they might spend less time together than they'd like, but wouldn't have as good of a reason for it as they do when living apart-the distance, in a way, excuses the priority they give to their schoolwork.

Lauren doesn't prefer it this way, but their relationship still works well enough, just as it does for many of the other couples making life decisions based on the ambitions of two different people-ambitions that, if fulfilled, can require their bodies to be in two different places.

Going long distance is a convenient option for a certain kind of modern couple, but how well does it really work, romantically speaking, to live in different places? Communication researchers have long been interested in "non-proximal" relationships as a way of exploring whether being physically in the same place is even a necessary ingredient of intimacy. Generally speaking, a few decades' of research indicates it isn't.

"Long-distance relationships can actually have these very powerful emotional and intimacy dynamics that we sort of don't expect," said Jeff Hancock, the Stanford professor. When I asked him whether long-distance relationships are harder to maintain, he pointed out that tons of "co-located" relationships come to an end-just look at the divorce rate. "It's not like there's something golden about physically co-located relationships in that sense," he said. "Just being co-located doesn't guarantee success, just like being at a distance isn't a guarantee that it dies."

Though long-distance relationships differ in so many different ways that it's reductive to lump them together, two paradoxical findings commonly emerge in the research on them: People living in different places than their partner tend to have more stable and committed relationships-and yet, when they do finally start living in the same place, they're more likely to break up than couples who'd been co-located all along.

A possible key to resolving this paradox has to do with how couples think about each other when they're apart. Laura Stafford, the Bowling Green researcher, studied long-distance relationships involving one or more college students in the 2000s. (College students are perhaps the best represented constituency in the distance literature, because they are easy for academic researchers to find, and it's common for them to be dating someone not enrolled at their school.) Stafford found that long-distance partners were more likely to idealize each other: They receive less information about their significant other, and so their imagination fills in the rest, often in a positive way.

Relatedly, they also tended to fight less. This was in part because there was less to fight about; arguments about dirty dishes are unlikely to arise when each partner's sink is in a different city. But it was also in part because they couldn't find a good time to fight: Couples rarely wanted to work through conflict remotely, via phone calls, texts, or email, but then also felt that their precious time spent together in person shouldn't be "wasted" on difficult conversations. These couples were more likely to avoid conflict and withhold their honest opinions. "It's like [they] were stuck in this honeymoon phase," Stafford says.

This dynamic serves couples well when they're apart, in that they think highly of their partner and argue with them less. Indeed, Stafford has found that long-distance couples report being more in love than those in the same place.

But the same things that help hold a long-distance relationship together make it harder to maintain once the geographic gap closes. In a 2007 study, Stafford and UC Santa Barbara's Andy Merolla found that about one-third of couples in their sample, who had been dating long-distance for two years, broke up within three months of moving to be in the same place. Upon their reunion, Stafford says, "They learned 10 times as much negative information about their partners as they did positive: I didn't remember how sloppy he was, I didn't remember how inconsiderate he was, I didn't remember how much time he spends on the phone."

Essentially, each member of the relationship has to relearn what it's like to live alongside the other. And also, what it's like to live alongside anyone: "The number-one problem or issue that long-distance couples said they faced when coming back together was a loss of autonomy," Stafford says.

But thanks to the omnipresence of mobile devices, capacious data plans, and reliably speedy internet service, it's possible that technological advancements in the past decade have fundamentally altered these unfortunate patterns for the better. Many long-distance couples today are able to stay in constant touch wherever they are, and the communication technologies available to them allow them to share even the most mundane details-the sorts of things there was less room for in letters, long-distance phone calls, and previous incarnations of the internet. Those mundane details can create closeness, while also letting people see a fuller, less idealized version of their partner.

Crucially, this technological shift also gives couples more opportunities to talk about big stuff as well. A 2011 study that looked at the way young, technologically-fluent long-distance lovers used videochat found that, unlike in previous studies, those couples mostly weren't shying away from potentially charged subjects, and as a result saw more of who their partner truly was. "We hypothesize that this reduced idealization is largely due to the manner in which our participants appropriated the video link to simulate shared living and to promote behaviors more similar to face-to-face relationships," the researchers wrote. (This fits with the experience of the couples I talked with, many of whom said they don't avoid difficult conversations, and frequently reserve them for videochat.)

But there are some things that communication technologies are unable to overcome. Physical touch can't be replicated through a screen, though the 14 people in long-distance relationships who were interviewed for the 2011 study certainly tried to. They said that while videochatting, they'd blow kisses to each other, spread out their arms as if hugging their partner, or faux-hug the device they were using. "One participant even said his partner would stroke his head and shoulder by cupping her hand around his video image and moving it up and down," the researchers observed.

Alex Bettencourt says that some of the hardest moments of being apart for months are when "you're having a hard day at work and you want to come home and have a hug." Indeed, "lack of physical intimacy" was the most commonly cited challenge in a survey of long-distance partners commissioned by a company that makes sex toys that can move in response to remote data inputs.

Perhaps that sort of innovation is welcome: Just two participants in the 2011 study engaged in "full cybersex activities" with any regularity. For one, it became a powerful way to build intimacy, but for the other, it was a symbol of separation-"they realized more fully that they couldn't actually touch each other and this caused them to miss each other more." A couple others gave it a shot but found it "awkward." The rest explained that shyness and privacy concerns were factors, or that having sex through a screen didn't feel vital to maintaining their relationship.

There are other constraints imposed by geography that technology can't do much about. Stafford notes that an important part of getting to know a partner is seeing how that person treats other people, and no amount of one-on-one videochatting would help in this regard. She foresees this remaining a problem "until we all have bodycams."

Relatedly, communication technologies don't give people a good sense of their partners' surroundings. "When we're in the same physical space, one of the things that happens is we're synced up on all kinds of things," Jeff Hancock said. "We're synced up on the weather, we know when the garbage has got to get taken out, I can see when you're happy or stressed or whatever. When you're not in the same physical space, all of that requires work." Many of the people I talked with said that being long distance had turned them into better communicators, so this challenge seems to be a place where an old-fashioned technology-language-can step in to fill the gap.

Many important determinants of long-distance-relationship satisfaction are often things that couples have little power over. Research has suggested that couples tend to be less stressed and more content if they know when the non-proximal portion of their relationship will end, and if the long-distance period is a year or less. And being coupled but apart can fundamentally change how people experience their daily lives, forcing them to negotiate an in-between state of being not quite alone and not quite together.

Deciding how to spend time can be difficult when on one's own. "After an hour without somebody else with me [at a party], it's like, Why am I here? " said Stanley Davidge. "I'd rather be at home watching Netflix with her." He described having a social life caught strangely between what people do when they're single and what people do with a partner. "If she was here," he told me, "I would be going out more. Or if I was single, I would be going out more."

The consequences of geographic separation can be felt even when a couple is temporarily in the same place. Timothy Nagle-McNaughton, a 22-year-old doctoral candidate in New Mexico, articulated something I heard from a few others in long-distance relationships-that there's a feeling that time spent together is extra meaningful and needs to be made the most of. "There's definitely that pressure to make the visit count, to have some fun social event lined up," he told me. But there is pleasure, he found, in the low-key: "Sometimes you just want to shack up in the dorm room and just be with each other and watch movies and cook together."

It could be that navigating a long period of distance gives some couples tools that will help them deal with future conflicts, large and small. Nagle-McNaughton and his girlfriend, Diana Magaña-Contreras, started living together about six months ago. He sounded thrilled to be doing even little things like shopping for groceries with her, and thinks the fact that they stayed together bodes well for their future. "If we can live through four years of long distance, fighting over whose turn it is to take out the garbage is basically nothing," he said.

Being in a long-distance relationship often means operating within a set of limitations beyond one's control. But there are things that individual people can do to counteract the downsides. I polled several researchers who have studied the subject, and their suggestions can be condensed to the following list: Communicate over a variety of platforms to make up for the constraints of each (and write letters, which can serve as nice physical reminders of the relationship). Come up with a plan for how and when to have hard conversations. Share small, mundane details and, when possible, everyday experiences, such as streaming a movie together. Make time for both routine check-ins and spontaneous conversations. And remember that living together might be an adjustment.

This set of advice is tailored to the communication technologies of the present day, and it's not clear how long it'll be applicable. It's possible that, decades from now, fully immersive virtual-reality simulations and haptic suits might finally render geography irrelevant in love. But the tools for interacting today-the videochatting, the text and picture messaging, the co-streaming sites-are honestly pretty great, even if the grandchildren of today's long-distance couples might not be able to fathom how they made it work.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The same technological and economic developments that are pulling couples apart are also making geographic separation less stressful and more enjoyable. The love life of Stanley Davidge, a 25-year-old network administrator for a national restaurant chain, is absolutely extraordinary.

# data[].attributes.body
Link to checklist for Journal Check #1

# data[].attributes.body
Link to checklist for Journal Check #2

# data[].attributes.body
Link to checklist for Journal Check #3

# data[].attributes.body
Watch this clip from the television show "Blackish" and identify Gottman's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling).

Don't limit your analysis to verbal responses-- consider how they are interacting nonverbally as well.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"I have no idea what we're fighting about!" - black-ish

# data[].attributes.body
Beware the Listening Machines

When dolls and friendly robots can listen and respond to what people say, where's the line between personal assistance and mass surveillance?
by Ethan Zuckerman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When dolls and friendly robots can listen and respond to what people say, where's the line between personal assistance and mass surveillance?

Ally Song / Reuters

One of my great pleasures in life is attending conferences on fields I'm intrigued by, but know nothing about. (A second pleasure is writing about these events.) So when my friend Kate Crawford invited me to a daylong "Listening Machine Summit," I could hardly refuse.

What's a listening machine? The example of everyone's lips was Hello Barbie, a version of the impossibly proportioned doll that will listen to your child speak and respond in kind. Here's how The Washington Post described the doll back in March: "At a recent New York toy fair, a Mattel representative introduced the newest version of Barbie by saying: 'Welcome to New York, Barbie.' The doll, named Hello Barbie, responded: 'I love New York! Don't you? Tell me, what's your favorite part about the city? The food, fashion, or the sights?'

Barbie accomplishes this magic by recording your child's question, uploading it to a speech recognition server, identifying a recognizable keyword ("New York") and offering an appropriate synthesized response. The company behind Barbie's newfound voice, ToyTalk, uses your child's utterance to help tune their speech recognition, likely storing the voice file for future use.

And that's the trick with listening systems. If you can imagine reasons why you might not want Mattel maintaining a record of things your child says while talking to his or her doll, you should be able to imagine the possible harms that could come from use-abuse or interrogation of other listening systems. ("Siri, this is the police. Give us the last hundred searches Mr. Zuckerman asked you to conduct on Google. Has he ever searched for bomb-making instructions?")

As one of the speakers put it (we're under Chatham House rules, so I can't tell you who), listening machines trigger all three aspects of the surveillance holy trinity:

1. They're pervasive, starting to appear in all aspects of our lives.

2. They're persistent, capable of keeping records of what we've said indefinitely.

3. They process the data they collect, seeking to understand what people are saying and acting on what they're able to understand.

To reduce the creepy nature of their surveillant behavior, listening systems are often embedded in devices designed to be charming, cute, and delightful: toys, robots, and smooth-voiced personal assistants. Proponents of listening systems see them as a major way technology integrates itself more deeply into our lives, making it routine for computers to become our helpers, playmates, and confidants. A video of a robot designed to be a shared household companion sparked a great deal of debate, both about whether we would want to interact with a robot in the ways proposed by the product's designers, and how a sufficiently powerful companion robot should behave.

If a robot observes spousal abuse, should it call the police? If the robot is designed to be friend and confidant to everyone in the house, but was paid for by the mother, should we expect it to rat out one of the kids for smoking marijuana? (Underlying these questions is the assumption that the robot will inevitably be smart enough to understand and interpret complex phenomena. One of our best speakers made the case that robots are very far from having this level of understanding, but that well-designed robots were systems designed to deceive us into believing that they had these deeper levels of understanding.)

Despite the helpful provocations offered by real and proposed consumer products, the questions I found most interesting focused on being unwittingly and unwillingly surveilled by listening machines. What happens when systems like ShotSpotter, currently designed to identify shots fired in a city, begins dispatching police to other events, like a rowdy pool party (just to pick a timely example)? Workers in call centers already have their interactions recorded for review by their supervisors-what happens when Uber drivers and other members of the 1099 economy are required to record their interactions with customers for possible review? (A friend points out that many already do as a way of defending themselves from possible firing in light of bad reviews.) It's one thing to choose to invite listening machines into your life-confiding in Siri or a cuddly robot companion-and something entirely different to be heard by machines installed by your employer or by local law enforcement.

A representative of one of the consumer regulatory agencies in the United States gave an excellent talk in which she outlined some of the existing laws and principles that could potentially be used to regulate listening machines in the future. While the U.S. does not have comprehensive privacy legislation in the way many European nations do, there are sector-specific laws that can protect against abusive listening machines: the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, HIPA, and others. She noted that electronic surveillance systems had been the subject of two regulatory actions in the U.S., where Federal Trade Commission protections against "unfair and deceptive acts in commerce" led to action against the Aaron's rent-to-own chain, which installed privacy-violating software in the laptops they rented out, capturing images of anyone in front of the camera.

FTC argued that this was a real and concrete harm to consumers with no offsetting benefits, and Aaron's settled, disabling the software. I found the idea that existing regulations and longstanding ideas of fairness could provide a framework for regulating listening machines fascinating, but I'm not sure I buy it. Outside of the enforcement context, I wonder whether these ideas provide a robust enough framework for thinking about future regulation of listening systems, because I'm not sure anyone understands the implications of these systems well enough to anticipate possible futures for them. A day thinking about eavesdropping dolls and personal assistants left me confident only that I don't think anyone has thought enough about the implications of these systems to posit possible, desirable futures for their use.

Over the past thirty or more years, we've seen a particular Pushmi-Pullyu pattern of technology regulation, to borrow a species from Doctor Doolittle. Companies invent new technologies and bring them to market. Consumers occasionally react, and if sufficient numbers react loudly enough, government regulators investigate and mandate changes. There's a sense that this is the correct process, that more aggressive regulation would crush innovation before inventors could show us the benefits of their new ideas. But this is a model in which regulation is a very modest counterweight to market forces. So long as a product is on the market, it's engaged in persuading people that a new type of behavior is the new normal. When Apple brought Siri to market, it engaged in a multi-front campaign to persuade people that they should regularly speak to a computer to make appointments, order dinner, check traffic conditions, and seek advice. Apple was able to lower barriers to adoption by making the product a pre-installed part of their very popular phone, making it available for free, and heavily advertising the new functionality. Even the wave of jokes about the limits to Siri's speech recognition capabilities and feature films that seek to complicate our relationships with digital entities serve the purpose of calcifying "the new normal," this idea that people talk to their phones and share sensitive information with them, and that's just the way things are now.

Perhaps at some point, we'll see a lawsuit challenging Apple's use of Siri data. Perhaps Apple will offer different financing packages for a future iCar with lending rates determined by a personality profile generated, in part, by a purchaser's interactions with Siri. Empowered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, regulators might get involved and demand that credit decisions be made only using transparently disclosed, challengeable fiscal data, not correlations between one's taste in takeout food and creditworthiness. Fine. But in the ensuing years, Apple has already won: We're talking to our phones, sharing our lives, generating terabytes of data in the process. The problem with this approach to regulation is that we rarely, if ever, have a conversation about the technological world we'd like to have.

Do we want a world in which we confide in our phones? And how should companies be forced to handle the data generated by these new interactions? (At the Listening Machine Summit, smart policy people in the room had suggestions like "robot privilege." Such protection would behave like attorney/client privilege-prohibiting law enforcement from luring robots into making a person testify, requiring in-line "visceral" notice of privacy risks in these systems, banning price discrimination based on privacy protected data, and reforming the "third-party directive.") These questions, a friend points out, aren't regulatory questions, but policy ones. The challenge is figuring out how, in our current, barely functional political landscape, we decide what technologies should trigger pre-emptive conversations about whether, when, and how those products should come to market.

If my example of Siri affecting your credit score seems either fanciful or trivial, consider the NSA's expansive data collection programs as revealed by Edward Snowden. Again, we're seeing pushmi-pullyu regulation in which branches of the intelligence community got out way ahead of popular opinion and congressional oversight, and is only now being modestly pulled back.

There's encouraging news from the world of synthetic biology, where a powerful new technology for gene manipulation called CRISPR is promising to revolutionize the field. CRISPR makes it vastly easier to cut the DNA within an organism, which allows biologists to remove genes they don't want and add genes they do. (Turns out that the cutting is the hard part: DNA's self-repair mechanisms mean you can introduce sequences you'd like incorporated within DNA, and the cell's DNA-patching systems will include your sequence as a patch.) By itself, CRISPR is provoking lots of thought about what sorts of genetic manipulation are appropriate and desirable. But a further idea- the gene drive -is leading to impassioned debate within the scientific world. It's possible to make CRISPR inheritable, which means that not only can you change the genome in an organism, but you can make it virtually certain that its offspring will inherit the genomic change. (Inherited changes generally propagate slowly through a population, as only half the offspring inherit the change. But if you make a change on one half the chromosome and put CRISPR on the other half, the offspring either inherits the changed gene, or CRISPR, which will then make the change.) The upshot is that it could well be possible to engineer a species of mosquitoes that couldn't pass on malaria, or that simply couldn't reproduce, ending the species as a whole. But who gets to make these decisions?

The good news is that there's both a precedent of executive authority to ban certain lines of research, and a robust tradition of debate within the scientific community that seeks to influence this policymaking. Smart people are making cases for and against gene drive, and I've had the pleasure of talking to scientists trying to make gene drive possible who are genuinely thrilled to be having public conversations about whether, when, and how the technology should come into play.

We need a better culture of policymaking in the IT world. We need a better tradition of talking through the "whethers, whens, and hows" of technologies like listening machines. And we need more conversations that aren't about what's possible, but about what's desirable.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Ethan Zuckerman is the director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT and an associate professor in the Practice at MIT Media Lab. He is the author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Eavesdropping Barbie Dolls and Other Listening Machines

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When dolls and friendly robots can listen and respond to what people say, where's the line between personal assistance and mass surveillance? One of my great pleasures in life is attending conferences on fields I'm intrigued by, but know nothing about. (A second pleasure is writing about these events.)

# data[].attributes.body
Describe a time when you have engaged in mindless listening with your person.  What information does your person present that you do not have to expend cognitive effort processing?

Did you ever forget a significant date or detail that caused a conflict in your relationship with your person? Describe how this error in memory affected your relationship.

What barrier to listening to you come up against the most when you are listening to your person? (see pgs. 251-253)

Describe an instance when your partner gave you advice that was helpful.  Review the guidelines for offering advice on pgs. 269-270 and see if you recognize any that your person followed. You can also consider an instance when your partner gave you advice that wasn't helpful.

Does your person have different attitudes, beliefs, and values than you do? If so, what are the differences in your attitudes, beliefs, and values? What impact does this have on your listening style? Are you able to discuss these issues and listen to each other? Or do you avoid these contentions?

# data[].attributes.body
In our sender-oriented society, listening is often overlooked as an important part of the communication process. Yet research shows that adults spend about 45%  of their time listening, which is more than any other communicative activity. In some contexts, we spend even more time listening than that. On average, workers spend 55% of their workday listening, and managers spend about 63% of their day listening.

Listening is one of the most important skills to have in interpersonal and professional relationships.  This week, we will explore the research on listening as it pertains to your interests and/or your future career.

1. For HJ 13, you will search the databases at the Auraria Library to find a scholarly journal article on the topic of LISTENING + [your future career]. Example: LISTENING + NURSING

Scholarly (also known as peer-reviewed) journals are written by experts in their fields.  Scholarly journal articles have undergone a rigorous review process and are considered one of the most credible sources of research.

2. You can find scholarly journal article sources by utilizing the Auraria Library's "START MY RESEARCH" tool.

For screenshots on how to do this, keep scrolling!

3. In your journal , provide a brief summary of the article and the skills/techniques offered for effective listening in your career field/discipline.

For more information on how to effectively read a research article, click here.

Do not simply read the abstract-- read the entire article!

Be sure to include an MLA or APA citation of the article with your journal submission.

Instructions on how to find a scholarly journal article:

1) https://library.auraria.edu

2) Enter your search terms into the START MY RESEARCH toolbar on the home page.

3) Click "ARTICLES ONLY", and SEARCH

4) On the new page, click SCHOLARLY MATERIALS, INCLUDING PEER REVIEWED on the left-hand filters.

All of the articles on the search list are now considered scholarly journal articles, so choose any article you think speaks best to your future career.

Uncertain about your career choice?

See this website for a very in-depth list of possible careers with different college majors.

Here is a list of some of the oddest jobs.

Here is a list of the best jobs of 2019.

Most popular jobs for Millennials

20 Most popular jobs for college graduates

# data[].attributes.headline
Step 1: How to find a scholarly journal article utilizing the Auraria Library's "Start My Research" tool.

# data[].attributes.subject
Step 1: How to find a scholarly journal article utilizing the Auraria Library's "Start My Research" tool.

# data[].attributes.body
Click on the image below to make it bigger.

# data[].attributes.body
Click on the image below to make it bigger.

# data[].attributes.body
The purpose of this activity is to practice engaging in active listening in two different listening situations. [This is a preview of OPTION 2 for your Chapter 8 Essay for the Unit 2 Assignment]

1. Decide on an interaction where you want to listen for :

information

pleasure

evaluation

support.

2. Discuss the interaction that you have decided to journal on and what type of listening you are engaging in. (i.e., I'm going to listen for information during my History class-- Please do not copy this example-- choose a different interaction.)

3. In your journal, identify what barriers or obstacles to listening are present in this situation.  (see pgs. 251-255 for more information on the obstacles of listening)

4. Then, consider which of the strategies for more effective listening (pgs. 255-256) you can employ to become a better listener in this situation. Discuss in your journal.

# data[].attributes.body
Describe a time when your person displayed contradicting verbal and nonverbal messages. Which did you believe? The verbal or the nonverbal?

Do you know when your person is lying? What kinds of leakage (p. 218) do they display?

For 10 minutes, observe the way your person behaves.  Notice movements, mannerisms, postures, style of dress, etc.  Record your observations in your journal.  Discuss what you think these behaviors communicate.  (i.e., if they were yawning a lot-- are they bored? tired? sleepy after a big meal?)

Are you and your person from the same or different cultures? Are you and your person the same or different genders? Discuss the differences in nonverbal communication according to the similarities/difference between you and your partner (pg. 222-224)

Read "The Way You Talk Can Hurt You?" on pg. 232 of your textbook.

Can you identify if your person speaks the way the author describes in this reading? If so, what is your reaction to them?

Describe the role that tone of voice plays in getting you to comply with requests and directives from others.

# data[].attributes.body
1. Go to a public space (train station, cafe, public park, riding the light rail, sports arena, bar, etc.) and observe the individuals inhabiting the space for 10 minutes.  The location must be off-campus.

2. While you observe, take notes and record what you see in your journal.

3. In addition to your notes, address the following questions:

1. What nonverbal behaviors did you witness (utilize the vocabulary learned in this chapter)?

2. How did the environment (bar, sports arena, light rail, etc.) impact the nonverbal communication utilized in this space?

# data[].attributes.body
Head's Up!

When reading Chapter 7, focus specifically on the vocabulary in pgs. 225-239. There will be a reading quiz in class on the vocabulary present in this chapter.

1) Watch Amy Cuddy's TED Talk

2) In your journal, respond to the questions below:

1) Provide a 100-200 word synopsis of the TED talk. Be sure to answer the following questions in your synopsis:

What does Dr. Cuddy research? What does her research prove? What strategy does she recommend for increasing testosterone and decreasing cortisol?

2) Even a forced smile makes you feel happy. So which comes first: the action or the feeling? Can they both come first? If so, which do you think is most effective? What other emotion(s) do you think you could create in yourself through body language?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are | Amy Cuddy | TED

# data[].attributes.body
The purpose of this activity is to practice giving honest and appropriate feedback.

1) List 1 person who you would like to give honest feedback to.  Consider and report: Their first name and a brief description of who this is (avoid last names)

2) What behavior of theirs bothers you or appeals to you? When does this bothersome or appealing behavior occur?

2) What emotions do you feel when this person enacts the behavior listed?

3) Make a statement, using owned language of how you feel.
Follow this format:
“When you ____, I feel ______.”

4) Carefully decide whether or not to disclose your feelings statement to this person.  In your journal, consider and report the worst case scenario and the best case scenario of each outcome of each situation.

# data[].attributes.body
1) Watch the "Freedom of Speech: Crash Course Government and Politics"

2) Read the information on hate speech below.

Hate is a term that has many different meanings and can be used to communicate teasing, mild annoyance, or anger. The term hate, as it relates to hate speech, has a much more complex and serious meaning. Hate refers to extreme negative beliefs and feelings toward a group or member of a group because of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or ability (Waltman & Haas, 2011). We can get a better understanding of the intensity of hate by distinguishing it from anger, which is an emotion that we experience much more regularly. First, anger is directed toward an individual, while hate is directed toward a social or cultural group. Second, anger doesn’t prevent a person from having sympathy for the target of his or her anger, but hate erases sympathy for the target. Third, anger is usually the result of personal insult or injury, but hate can exist and grow even with no direct interaction with the target. Fourth, anger isn’t an emotion that people typically find pleasure in, while hatred can create feelings of self-righteousness and superiority that lead to pleasure. Last, anger is an emotion that usually dissipates as time passes, eventually going away, while hate can endure for much longer (Waltman & Haas, 2011). Hate speech is a verbal manifestation of this intense emotional and mental state.

Hate speech is usually used by people who have a polarized view of their own group (the in-group) and another group (the out-group). Hate speech is then used to intimidate people in the out-group and to motivate and influence members of the in-group. Hate speech often promotes hate-based violence and is also used to solidify in-group identification and attract new members (Waltman & Haas, 2011). Perpetrators of hate speech often engage in totalizing, which means they define a person or a group based on one quality or characteristic, ignoring all others. A Lebanese American may be the target of hate speech because the perpetrators reduce him to a Muslim—whether he actually is Muslim or not would be irrelevant. Grouping all Middle Eastern- or Arab-looking people together is a dehumanizing activity that is typical to hate speech.

Incidents of hate speech and hate crimes have increased over the past fifteen years. Hate crimes, in particular, have gotten more attention due to the passage of more laws against hate crimes and the increased amount of tracking by various levels of law enforcement. The Internet has also made it easier for hate groups to organize and spread their hateful messages. As these changes have taken place over the past fifteen years, there has been much discussion about hate speech and its legal and constitutional implications. While hate crimes resulting in damage to a person or property are regularly prosecuted, it is sometimes argued that hate speech that doesn’t result in such damage is protected under the US Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees free speech. Just recently, in 2011, the Supreme Court found in the Snyder v. Phelps case that speech and actions of the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who regularly protest the funerals of American soldiers with signs reading things like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “Fag Sin = 9/11,” were protected and not criminal. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the decision, “We cannot react to [the Snyder family’s] pain by punishing the speaker. As a nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate” (Exploring Constitutional Conflicts, 2012).

3) Answer the questions below in your journal.

1. Do you think the First Amendment of the Constitution, guaranteeing free speech to US citizens, should protect hate speech? Why or why not?

2. Visit the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map” to see what hate groups they have identified in your state. Are you surprised by the number/nature of the groups listed in your state?

3. Briefly describe a group that you didn’t know about and identify the target of its hate and the reasons it gives for its hate speech.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Freedom of Speech: Crash Course Government and Politics #25

# data[].attributes.body
Step 1: Watch the video linked here. Watch until 24:11. You are welcome to watch the entire video, but the questions below are only relevant to the first 24 minutes of the video.
Step 2: Answer the following questions:

1) How do elephants express emotion?
2) True or False. The chimpanzee is genetically closer to a human than to a gorilla.
3) What is the chimpanzee doing while he signs in American Sign Language?
4) Why did the chimpanzee show gratitude to the humans?
5) If we take this video as fact, it challenges positions of scholars whose research on emotional expression is based on the assumption that only humans express emotions, not animals.
What do you think? Are humans unique in their interpersonal abilities to express emotion? Do you think that animals are able to express emotion? Provide at least one reason why you might think animals DO have emotions and one reason why you might think they DO NOT have emotions.

Note: Question #5 will prime us for a debate in class, so be prepared to discuss!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Discovery Channel   Why Dogs Smile And Chimpanzees Cry

# data[].attributes.body
Describe a time when you and your person have had a misunderstanding due to language. What was the misunderstanding? What language did you use that was confusing? Or, what language did they use that was confusing?  It might be helpful to go back through text messages, as this is when a lot of misunderstandings happen.

Identify at least two pragmatic rules that govern the use of language in one of your relationships. (think inside jokes)

Do you adapt your speech style to communicate with your partner? How do you engage with the process of convergence, if so?

Recall at least two situations in which you used emotive language as if it was a description of fact and not an opinion. A good way to recall these situations is to think of a recent disagreement and imagine how the other people involved might have described it differently than you.

Are you and your person different genders? If so, consider how gender and culture impact your communication.

# data[].attributes.body
1. For the next 3 days, keep a “gratitude list.”  At the end of each day (before you go to sleep), list 5 things that you are grateful for.

2. When you are done writing this list each evening, identify and write 5 feelings that you felt during the day and 5 feelings you feel now that you are writing this list. (Feel free to utilize Table 5.1 in your textbook)

# data[].attributes.body
Do you and your person express emotions similarly or differently?

In what circumstances do you or don't you show your feelings? Does your person show their feelings in the same circumstances?

Describe a time where you or your person did not follow social norms when expressing emotions-- how did this make you feel?

Read the "Ethical Challenge" on pg. 157.  How might your relationship with your person change if you acted more moderately?

Read the "Ethical Challenge" on pg. 157. Are there any situations in your life where more extreme forms of emotional expression are both moral and effective?

What guidelines have you and your person set with regards to emotional expression? Do you openly express emotion? Or do you hide emotions?

# data[].attributes.body
Analyze how the tendencies described in this chapter have distorted your perceptions of 'your person', and hence your communication. (See pg. 120 for tendencies of perception.)

Which of the influences of perception affect your communication with 'your person'? Can you describe a specific time where your perception was influenced and affected your interaction with 'your person'? (see pg. 112 for influences on perception)

Describe a time when you and 'your person' had a disagreement about a viewpoint (see pg. 134 for an example).  Employ the pillow method to analyze the disagreement and find merit in both positions.

# data[].attributes.body
How does the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy from Chapter 3 relate to the interpretation step in the perception process? Provide examples.
Think and write deeply! Provide specific examples from your life that support your argument.

# data[].attributes.body
1. Read pgs. 85-100
2. In your journal, discuss a time when either you self-disclosed too much or a friend/family/member co-worker self-disclosed too much. Reflect on how this made you feel (as either the sender/receiver). Also, address which guidelines of self-disclosure (pgs. 91-94) were broken.

# data[].attributes.body
1) Complete the Myers Briggs Personality Test. <-- link here

2) Record proof of your completion of the personality test. You can print out a screenshot of your results or show an image to your instructor on the day of submission.  You must submit some type of proof that you completed the personality test.

3) Review the description of your personality.  For your homework, bring in proof of completion and write a response to the following questions:

1. Summarize the description of your Myers Briggs personality type.

2. What are the characteristics of this type?

3. Do you believe you fit the type? Why or why not? Provide specific examples from your life to support the responses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Personality types

Understand others

In our free type descriptions you'll learn what really drives, inspires, and worries different personality types, helping you build more meaningful relationships.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free personality test, type descriptions, relationship and career advice | 16Personalities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Personality types In our free type descriptions you'll learn what really drives, inspires, and worries different personality types, helping you build more meaningful relationships.

# data[].attributes.body
Each week, you are tasked with completing a relationship journal.  After the first journal check, I've decided to provide prompts for each week's journal. FOLLOWING ANY OF THE PROMPTS ARE OPTIONAL. You are welcome to use one as inspiration, or if you have something else you want to write about , go for it!

"Your person"= the individual you have chosen to reflect upon for the duration of the course.

RJ 3 Prompts:

Speculate how your current level of self-esteem affects your own communication style and relationship with "your person."

Is "your person" an ego-booster or an ego-buster? (see page 68- Pause and Reflect)

Is self-disclosure in this relationship reciprocated (see pg. 93-94)

Is there something you've been wanting to self-disclose to this person but haven't done so? If so, use this space to discuss it and draft the self-disclosure following the guidelines in the text.

Have you or "your person" ever used lying, equoviating, or hinting? What was that experience like?

# data[].attributes.body
Complete the Pause and Reflect: How Do You Use Social Media? on page 58 of your textbook.
Rate the 6 statements, determine your score, and answer the 2 questions provided.

# data[].attributes.body
Think of a person you know who you think possesses a high level of communication competence. What makes you think this? What communication characteristics do they have that you might want to have yourself?

# data[].attributes.body
Identify a relationship to reflect upon for the course of the semester. You can choose a friend, family member, significant other, or work relationship, but it must be an individual whom you have continuous contact with.
We will take a qualitative approach to define interpersonal communication. A qualitative approach includes five distinct characteristics that distinguish interpersonal communication from impersonal communication: 1) uniqueness (social rules and social roles), 2) irreplaceability, 3) interdependence, 4) disclosure, 5. intrinsic awards. Discuss how the relationship you have chosen meets the 5 characteristics listed above.

# data[].attributes.body
Communication is repeatedly ranked as one of the most important skills for employees.  Hiring managers are looking for future employees who have the ability to speak and listen effectively.  Think about your future career and discuss what kind of communication skills this career will require.

If you aren't sure of your future career, you are welcome to discuss your current job or a job that you would be interested in having (i.e., tour guide, journalist, etc.)

Be sure to read "On the Job: Communication and Career Success" on page 8.

# data[].attributes.body
Reflect on the relationship you chose in Relationship Journal 1.
Relationship journals will not change over the course of the semester. Your goal is to reflect upon a chosen relationship.
I suggest that you employ some of the skills you are taught in our class in your relationship and write about your experiences.
You do not have to include any information that is too personal.
Relationship journals are evaluated for completion.

# data[].attributes.body
Follow the instructions below to format your journal for the semester:

1. On the first page of your journal, write your name, the course number (COM 125: Interpersonal Communication), and Fall 2019

2. Leave pages 2 and 3 blank for your Table of Contents

1. Table of Contents will include the title, date, and page number of your journals. Complete the Table of Contents as we move through the semester. After you complete journal assignments, go back to your table of contents and add the entry.

2. The Table of Contents will label journals utilizing the acronyms below.

1. Daily Journals = DJ

2. Homework Journals = HJ

3. Lecture Notes = LN

4. Relationship Journals = RJ

3. Number the pages of your journal. I recommend that you only write on one side of the page (not on both sides of the page). You are welcome to leave several pages in the back of your journal blank (with no page numbers) just in case you find yourself needing a spare piece of paper and can rip it from your journal.

4. Each time you write a new journal entry, begin it on a new page.  At the top of the page, include the appropriate journal label (DJ, HJ, LN, or RJ) and the date.

# data[].attributes.headline
Homework Journal #1: Create a Learner Profile

# data[].attributes.subject
Homework Journal #1: Create a Learner Profile

# data[].attributes.body
1. Format your journal by following the instructions above.

2. For Homework Journal #1, create a profile of yourself.  In your profile, be sure to include:

1. 5 words or images to describe you.

2. Any information that will help us get to know you-- your major, future career, previous courses taken at CCD, where you are from, etc.

3. Discussion of your learning goals in this course

4. Sources of motivation for your success in this course, college, and/or your professional life.

5. A brief assessment of your own strengths and areas of improvement in terms of learning.

6. Preferred learning styles. See the image below for more information on the learning styles.

Your learner profile can include images, poetry, word clouds, a collage, or any other creative interpretations of the list above.

# data[].attributes.body
Description: One of the major requirements of this course is to develop and maintain a journal that demonstrates your individual participation and personal engagement with the class.  Your journal is not only a collection of notes from class lectures, but it is an opportunity to help you “think with yourself” on course topics and discuss personal reactions and questions about the subject matter of communication.  You will also be engaging in journal assignments to reflect on a specific relationship and observations of communication “in the wild.”

Evaluation: There are three specific types of entries that will be evaluated:

1. Daily Journals (DJ): Daily journal assignments take place during class.  Daily Journals may include a reading quiz or question, an activity we complete in class, or assist your preparation for a discussion.  Daily journals cannot be made up unless you have an excused absence for the class periods you missed. (5 points each)

2. Homework Journals (HJ):  Homework Journal Assignments take place outside of the classroom.  HJ Assignments are available on D2L and will be checked at the beginning of class on their due date.  HJs can be completed late, but only half credit will be earned. (10 points each)

3. Relationship Journals (RJ): Throughout the course, you will keep a journal of one (1) interpersonal relationship that you would like to maintain or improve.  You will write every RJ journal entry with this specific relationship in mind.  Every week, you will be required to choose a prompt associated with the concepts covered in the textbook and in class. You may write on one of those prompts, or another prompt in the chapter. You are welcome to refer back to previous chapters in your reflections.

You are welcome to take class notes in your journal.  Please label these as Lecture Notes (LN).  Lecture notes will not be evaluated.

Journals will be evaluated on the format, quality, quantity, and timeliness of your entries.  Journals will not be graded for spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc., but it is expected that you engage in critical thinking, cite the text where applicable, and reflect on your learning and progress in the course.

Purchase a journal especially for this class. If you do not have the ability or financial means to purchase a journal, please ask your instructor for a journal (she has extras you can use). Try to purchase a journal that speaks to you or represents you in some way, but a $.99 journal from the dollar store works too!

# data[].attributes.body
This is OPTIONAL and not required.

If you are interested in submitting your Unit 1 Examination for a re-grade, see the information below:

1) Receive your exam in class and review my feedback
2) From your feedback, develop an updated response to the essay questions you would like to be re-graded.
*Re-grades will not occur for multiple-choice, only Part 2 (essays) on the exam.
3) Submit your updated responses and your original responses in class on either:

Monday, October 14 MW classes

Tuesday, October 15 TR classes

4) Grading:
Half credit will be earned for accurate, updated responses.  For example, if you received a 10 point deduction on Question 1, you can update your response and earn 5 points back on Question 1 and your overall exam grade.

Again, this is OPTIONAL, and not required.