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Personal growth ,life-coaching,positive and transpersonal psychology , education for all,INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE. HAPPINESS, WELL-BEING,WISDOM, HARMONY, COMMITMENT TO LIFE MISSION AND VALUES

22/03/2009

Love, health, communication

More People in Love Than Previously ThoughtBy Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 20 March 2009 09:15 am ET

Romeo and Juliet would approve: A new study found that romantic love can stand the test of time.

Though it is widely held that romance and sex must ultimately yield to friendly companionship over time, new research found that's not the case. Instead about 13 percent of people reported high levels of romance in their long-term relationships, in a new study published in the March issue of the journal Review of General Psychology.


Researchers analyzed data from surveys of more than 6,000 people, including some in newly-formed pairs and many in marriages of more than 20 years. The scientists found that a surprisingly high number of people were still very much in love with their long-term partners, though the researchers drew a distinction between romantic love, which can endure, and passionate or obsessive love, which often fades after the beginning of a relationship.

"I think generally, in the literature, love has been measured as passionate love, so I think that's one reason for this widely-held assumption that love had to fade in relationships," said Bianca Acevedo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who authored the study while she was a graduate student at Stony Brook University. "The obsessive component is generally combined with the romantic component. Thought of that way, it looks like it's diminishing, but if you assess the romantic love differently than the obsessive component, it happens for a greater proportion than what was generally thought."

Romantic love has the same intensity, engagement and sexual chemistry as passionate love has, but without the obsession, Acevedo said. Passionate love, on the other hand, includes feelings of uncertainty and anxiety.

The new findings could help inspire couples to strive for better relationships, rather than resigning themselves to the inevitability of falling out of love, Acevedo said.

"Being in the mindset that [long-term romance] is probably not something to shoot for might be discouraging to some people," she told LiveScience. "They might think, 'This is probably as good as it gets.' I think it's important for people to at least know that it could be attainable."

What's the trick?

Acevedo and her advisor Arthur Aron are interested in finding out how some couples manage to keep the romance alive. So far, research indicates that it often has to do with pure hard work.

"These people are often very relationship focused," Acevedo said. "Their relationship is something that is very central to their lives, something they spend time on, work on, really care about. They seem to resolve conflicts relatively efficiently and smoothly."

Aron's previous studies suggest that couples who want to give romance a boost can benefit from doing new and challenging activities together. These novel experiences stimulate brains to create the neurochemicals dopamine and norepinephrine, which are also created during the early, exhilarating stages of romantic love.

Evolutionary benefits of love

Researchers debate whether people are really meant to stay in love throughout their lives. Helen Fisher, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, has suggested that passionate love is maladaptive if it lasts too long.

"When people are in the early stages of romantic love, it's very hard for them to focus on other things," Acevedo explained. "They are constantly thinking about the other person. They have a lot of energy; they can stay up all night talking to each other. This can be very metabolically costly, and it's not efficient when it comes to work and relationships. I think this fits in well with the idea that the obsession component has to fade. It's unsustainable to be like that over the years while raising children and having jobs."

However, a certain level of love is beneficial, she said. Having a partner who increases your happiness and comfort is certainly a healthy thing, and being able to trust and rely on someone in difficult situations can improve a person's success in life.

Medical research has demonstrated the physical benefits of loving relationships. People who report being in positive relationships have been shown to be healthier, less stressed, and to have stronger immune systems. And some studies even suggest happily married people live longer than their single counterparts.

Instant Messages Reveal Relationship HealthBy Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer

posted: 23 January 2009 08:09 am ET

The words that flow from our fingers to loved ones could say more than we think. The more frequently women use the pronoun "I" in their instant messages (IM), the more satisfied they are with their partners, a new study finds.

The guys also reported higher satisfaction in couples where the gal used "I" a lot in IMs.

While past psychological studies have analyzed couples and their communication techniques in lab settings, the new study, published last month in the journal Personal Relationships, relied on real-life scenarios.

"Instant messages are a great way to get at how people communicate in the real world," said lead study researcher Richard Slatcher of UCLA.

Great, happy, love

Slatcher and his colleagues analyzed 10 days of instant-message conversations from nearly 70 U.S. couples who had been dating for about one and a half years and had an average age of 19. The couples also answered questions about relationship satisfaction. Six months later, the couples indicated whether they were still dating. After six months, about 60 percent of couples were still dating while the others had broken up.

The researchers read through the conversations, noting the context of the IM threads. Then, they used a linguistic word count program to analyze the conversations' pronouns and words with emotional content.

Among pronouns in IMs, couples used "I" nearly 20 times more frequently than "we." And of the emotion words, all couples were most likely to use positive words.

"We found that the extent to which people used positive emotion words like 'great,' 'happy,' 'love,' tended to be happier in their relationships and to stay in their relationships for a longer period of time," Slatcher said.

Women who IMed with lots of "I's" were 30 percent more likely to stay in their relationships compared with other women.

Signs of comfort

The "I"-laden instant messages could indicate women were talking about themselves and were comfortable doing so with their partners, Slatcher said.

"Women tend to be more emotionally expressive in general and tend to be more disclosing in general," Slatcher told LiveScience. "So this finding suggests that beyond women wanting to disclose more and disclosing more in their everyday life, that when they do disclose more in their relationships, they're happier in those relationships."

He added, "An alternative explanation might be that you are not so enmeshed in your relationship that you have lost yourself completely," Slatcher said.

"What's really unique about this study is the way in which it captures naturally occurring discourse and discourse that's not a response to a particular type of situation," said Denise Solomon, professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State University, referring to perhaps less telling lab studies set up to evaluate specific couple interactions.

"It's not these significant couple interactions that other research has focused on; it's really everyday talk," said Solomon, who was not involved in the research. "I thought that was a really important feature of the study."

Other findings included:

For women, the more they used so-called positive negations, such as "not happy," the less satisfied they and their partners were in the relationship.
The more men used positive sarcasm, such as "oh great," the less satisfied they were in their relationships and the more likely that relationship would split.

For both men and women, the use of negative emotions, such as "angry," wasn't related to their relationship satisfaction or stability.
Slatcher said the million-dollar question is whether using certain words when communicating with a partner leads to healthier relationships or that the most satisfied couples speak to each other, say, with certain pronouns and emotion words.

If couples could get a boost from changing how they speak to each other, "that's big news," Slatcher said, as the finding has implications for couples' therapy.

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