A healthy and invigorating marriage is something all couples should strive to maintain, regardless of age or years married. High-spirited relationships are often envied by others, but more critically, you will prevent the mundane tasks of daily life from thwarting long-term happiness. However, both spouses have to put forth deliberate effort to prevent a marriage from going stale.

During the honeymoon phase (which, by the way, lasts less than a year), couples focus most their attention on their significant other. They never imagine a time when anything else could vie for their attention. Men and women alike abound with energy and spontaneity during this “incubation” period.

Now, fast-forward a few years: spouses have a career, the family has grown by one or more children, and the laundry basket is overflowing—not exactly romantic.

How Do You Preserve That Surreal Newlywed Feeling?

Well . . . it starts with the realization that your marriage is worthy of the commitment you made when you said, “I do.” Also, all foolish notions have to be put to rest. Only in movies and romance novels do men and women communicate without talking, or have romantic rendezvous without thought or planning. Contrary to popular belief, love takes effort.

Luckily, there are many simple ways to keep the romance alive in your marriage and demonstrate your continuing love for your spouse.

Simple Actions That Will Light a Spark in Your Marriage

1. A Special Dinner

Make reservations at their favorite restaurant for no particular occasion. You be the designated driver and let them enjoy a few drinks. Or, if money is a bit tight, plan a picnic or a special meal at home with a flavorful—but reasonably priced—bottle of wine.

2. Movie Night

Take your spouse to the movie theater and let them take pleasure in a show of their choosing. You may not enjoy love stories or action movies, but marriage is about compromise. Again, if money is tight, rent a movie and make a big bowl of buttery popcorn. The point is to make your partner feel good.

3. A Weekend Alone

If you have children, make plans for them to stay with relatives for the weekend. Use your imagination. Spend the weekend ordering takeout and practicing bedroom gymnastics, make reservations at an exclusive bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere, or take a skiing trip to the mountains—even if you don’t ski.

4. Surprise Each Other

One of the best aspects of a new relationship or being newly married is the constant element of surprise and novelty. At this point, you know so much about your spouse, and it takes quite a bit to surprise him or her. But why not think up a way to truly catch your spouse off guard (in a good way). For example, have the kids gone when your spouse comes home from work to have an intimate dinner and finish things off in the bedroom? When was the last time you wore lingerie, left him a love note or sent her a bouquet of flowers for no reason? It’s time to get creative.

5. Look at Old Pictures

Sit together and go through old photos or albums. Reminisce about your memories. Reflect upon your history together and places you have been together. Share some laughs and maybe even cry some tears.

6. Make Out

Flashback to when you were a teenager or when you first met each other. Make out just for fun. If it leads to that then great. But the point is to do something fun and different that will get the dopamine flowing again.

7. Do Something Different

Take the initiative, just like you did when you were dating, to plan a fun date or a new activity. Do not do anything that you usually do. It’s time to get creative. Perhaps a museum exhibit, an art show, an escape room, or a lecture on a fascinating topic? Approach your spouse with excitement when you say where you are taking him or her.

Notice what all these ideas have in common: they take thought and planning.

Nothing ​zaps the spark out of your marriage like taking each other for granted. So show your spouse you’re committed to maintaining a healthy relationship. Whether it’s a particular gift (lingerie, flowers, power tools, etc.) or a note placed in the briefcase, continually make an effort. Why not become the envy of all your friends. More importantly, demonstrate to your children how healthy, loving, and committed parents conduct themselves. In the end, everyone will benefit from your happy marriage.

By Marni Feuerman

The Cycle of Hurt

A cycle that many married couples fall into when a hurt occurs in their marriage is to clam up about the issue, withdraw from one another, dwell too much on the hurt, hold onto a grudge, walk on eggshells around one another, dig in their heels on the issue, allow bitterness to build, and end up in a cold war and deep disillusionment.

The Secret

If you are hurt by something your spouse said or didn’t say or something your spouse did or didn’t do, in order to save your marriage, you must talk about the situation and hurt.

According to Gerald Foley in Courage to Love … When Your Marriage Hurts, “Marriages often break down because of an accumulation of hurts from indifference, insensitivity, retaliation, physical abuse, criticism, nagging, or hurting the other to get attention. When we get hurt, the pain makes us turn in on ourselves, focusing on the pain rather than on the other person. The one who is hurt and the one who did the hurting both need healing.”

Feelings

Negative feelings often tag along when you are hurt. These feelings can bring with them more hurtful thoughts. Without talking about what is going on inside of you, the hurt can continue to grow. Here is a list of feeling words to help you get started in learning how you feel:

Denial
Resentment
Wounded
Discouragement
Anger
Mistrust
Beaten Down
Alarmed
Cold
Loneliness
Emptiness
Attacked
Used
Lost
Cautious
Tired
Broken
Torn
Defeated
Scorned
Rejected
Defensive

Unintentional Hurts

Although unintentional hurts are really too numerous to list and what hurts one person won’t hurt another, here are some common ways couples hurt one another without meaning to cause pain.

Being Thoughtless
Forgetfulness
Insensitivity
Unkindness
Hurtful Teasing
Selfishness
Controlling
Silent Treatment
Ignoring Your Spouse
Apathy

Intentional Hurts

Intentional hurts are when you hurt your spouse, you know you are doing it, and you continue to do it. These hurts often occur in the midst of arguments, clashes with each other, and misunderstandings.

An example of creating an intentional hurt is if you decide to watch porn even though you know it is causing your spouse distress. Other ways you can intentionally damage your marriage include:

Spending too much time on computer games, social media, volunteer tasks, or work.
Lying about your finances or having an affair.
Not being helpful with chores around the house or not being willing to take care of your children.
Avoiding talking about sex problems, in-law matters, friendship concerns, your differences, and other unresolved issues.
Showing a lack of respect for your spouse.
Sabotaging your marriage.
Being irresponsible.
Not keeping your promises.

More of What You Should Do

Discover what causes the hurt.
Talk about it.
Listen to each other.
See a professional marriage counselor.
Be forgiving and let go of the hurt.
Don’t leave things between the two of you unsaid. If you do nothing when hurts occur, you will eventually drift apart. Don’t let emotional withdrawal become part of your marriage.

What Other Marriage Experts Have to Say About Hurt in Marriage

“Talk to find answers rather than to blame or hurt your spouse … The reason to discuss problems is to find better ways to make the marriage work.” – H. Wallace Goddard, Kathleen Rodgers, Strengthening Your Marriage

“When we bury our conflicts instead of facing them, when we stuff our pain instead of dealing with it, a process is set in motion. You may think you get rid of conflict by burying it, but you are burying it alive and it will continue to haunt you. Avoidance will eventually lead you toward a place you don’t one to go: emotional divorce … The marriage dream you once shared will die a slow and painful death.” – Gary Rosberg, Barbara Rosberg, Healing the Hurt in Your Marriage

“Allow your partner to be imperfect. One wise lady said that she decided to allow her husband ten faults. When he did something that bothered her, she said, ‘Well, there’s one of his faults. I can live with it.'” – H. Wallace Goddard, Kathleen Rodgers, Strengthening Your Marriage

“One of the keys to a successful marriage is to appreciate the strengths. Every marriage has problems. But by using your strengths wisely you can continue to make the marriage stronger.” – H. Wallace Goddard, Kathleen Rodgers, Strengthening Your Marriage

“All couples face difficulties, and all couples have differences. These differences may center on money, in-laws, religion, or any other area of life … When one or both marriage partners insist on ‘my way or not at all,’ they are moving their marriage toward winter. Winter may last a month, or it may last thirty years.” – Gary Chapman. The 4 Seasons of Marriage: Secrets to a Lasting Marriage

By Sheri Stritof

New research suggests that warm and loving relationships with parents help children grow into compassionate adults.

I was running errands this weekend with my preschooler, who operates at a leisurely pace under nearly all circumstances. Clutching my shopping list, I headed straight for the produce section as soon as I entered the grocery store. He decided to stop at the floral section. He picked out a bouquet, placed it in our shopping cart, and said, “This one is beautiful for you, Momma.”

My son reminded me that love is a good reason to pause—and a recent study by psychologist Mirka Hintsanen and her colleagues reminds us all that experiencing love in childhood can help kids grow into compassionate adults.

For over three decades, researchers have followed over 2,700 three to 18 year olds in Finland as part of the ongoing Young Finns Study. At the start of the study in 1980, their parents completed questionnaires about their relationships with their children on two dimensions of love: warmth and acceptance. They measured warmth with items like, “I enjoy spending time with my child” and “My child enables me to fulfill myself.” The survey on acceptance measured parents’ tolerance and intolerance of their children and included three items: “I become irritated when being with my child,” “In difficult situations, my child is a burden,” and “My child takes too much of my time.”

The researchers kept circling back to the same children as they grew into adults, from ages 20 to 50 years old, measuring their compassion with questions like, “It gives me pleasure to help others, even if they have treated me badly” and “I hate to see anyone suffer.”

Overall, the researchers found that compassion rose from young to mid-adulthood—and that this growth seemed to slow down between mid- to later adulthood. The current study also found that the children of emotionally warm parents grew into more compassionate adults. What’s more, this link held regardless of children’s gender, when they were born, their challenging behavior during childhood, their parent’s socioeconomic status, and their parents’ mental health.

Surprisingly, when these same factors were considered, parents’ acceptance of their children did not predict their children’s compassion in adulthood. According to this three-decade study, it was warmth that made the difference down the road.

These findings are in line with previous research linking greater parental warmth to greater empathy, sympathy, and caring in children, and they reinforce attachment theory research that suggests sensitive and responsive parenting may underpin kindness in our children. That makes sense, because children who are securely attached to their parents have a better understanding of emotions and have greater emotional agility—they manage and cope better with strong emotions. These are important abilities for compassion to flourish: recognizing that another person is suffering and having the capacity to relieve suffering in the presence of that intense emotional awareness.

When the researchers compared parent-child relationships in younger (three- to nine-year-old) and older (12- to 18-year-old) children, they found that parents’ warmth led to adult compassion in both age groups, but it mattered even more for younger children compared to adolescents.

The practical implication: When children are very young, that’s when they most need your warm and loving embrace. The results also suggest that the early experience of love from parents has enduring implications for compassion in adults. “Parents should be given support and information on the significance of the warmth of parent-child-relationship[s] for the development of compassion in their children,” explain Hintsanen and her colleagues.

Later that afternoon, love was a good reason to pause again. During our bike ride, my preschooler stopped suddenly when he noticed an earthworm wriggling in a puddle on the bike path that remained after a rain storm. He called to me and said, “We can help him. Let’s put him in the dirt.” I joined him earnestly in his compassionate rescue effort—with love.

BY MARYAM ABDULLAH

At times, does that emotion quickly escalate to anger? You are not alone. You shouldn’t live with it, though.

Beyond improvements to your general mood and happiness, taming your anger can have important benefits to your health. Constant stress and aggravation is linked to a range of issues including overeating, insomnia and depression, and angry outbursts increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Despite how common it is for us humans to become annoyed and angry — from road rage to air rage and work frustrations to parenting — there are few easy solutions. Maybe we’ve just accepted outsize irritation as a part of life, or maybe simple answers are antithetical to a problem that can be ingrained.

Easily getting bent out of shape, even angry, is my problem, too. It was happening more than I wanted and was cumulatively stressing me out, which is why, a couple of years ago, I set a goal to come up with an easy system, based on sound psychology, that I could employ in moments of annoyance.

Anger “is like a blazing flame that burns up our self-control,” the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. I aimed to teach myself how to rob it of oxygen and snuff it out.
“We all have a ‘fight or flight’ trigger,” explained Dr. Mark Crawford, a clinical psychologist. “It is adaptive. Some of us have a more sensitive one than others. However, the good news is that we can almost ‘reprogram’ this by techniques like breathing and particularly mindfulness

Below are the 10 simple steps I use to give perspective to, and gain distance from, unbridled irritation and anger. Employing them has significantly reduced the number of instances in which I get irritated, or at least has shortened their duration.

It’s important to note that these are progressive steps. I rarely need to escalate through all 10.
Many smaller annoyances (someone cutting in line, traffic jam, kids not listening) can be tackled with just the first step. Others (unfair parking ticket, public rudeness) may send you halfway up the steps. And bigger situations (a blow-up with a family member, being denied a promotion at work) may require the collective effort of them all before it is defused.

You may also find it more effective to change the order, or a step itself.

Step one: 10 breaths

At the first moment you realize you are experiencing annoyance or anger, just breathe. Ten slow, deep, even breaths do wonders. Sometimes, the annoyance will have passed in just that time.

Even if it hasn’t, the breaths still help. Diaphragmatic or abdominal (as opposed to shallow) breaths, in which you breathe from deeper inside your belly and fill your lungs, deliver more oxygen to your body, which stabilizes blood pressure and helps invoke your body’s relaxation response.

t may help to add a mantra (“I have the patience of the Buddha” is one I like to use when the kids’ bedtime-delaying tactics are keeping me from relaxing on the couch) or a calming image to hold in your mind. I sometimes accompany my 10 breaths with a memory of a surfer I once watched paddling into the sunset of the Pacific Ocean. He is often capable of pulling my annoyance out to sea with him.

Step two: Explain it to yourself

If the breaths don’t make a dent, try explaining what’s happening to yourself. “I’m annoyed right now because …” is a good sentence to finish. Articulating the issue changes your response from emotion to logic.

The explanation itself may be all you need, either because it creates an even longer mental break from the situation than just breathing or because when you say it to yourself, it makes more sense. It may even sound petty or even funny.

Step three: Walk a meter in their shoes

Make use of this step when another person is part of the reason you are upset. Try hard to see the situation from their reality and invent a subjective theory for why they did what they did.
Your theory will probably be rooted in a cause that’s benign or about them, not you. Next time someone cuts you off in traffic, maybe you can think about an emergency that might be affecting their behavior.

Step four: Role model grace

Think beyond the annoyance, or annoying person, and focus on your own behavior. By thinking of how you can be a model for grace under pressure, you help yourself to become one.
What would the most diplomatic, logically thinking version of yourself do next? Do that. It may help to think of a cool, calm and collected pop culture icon such as James Bond, Ellen Ripley, Cary Grant, Pam Grier or Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Step five: This too shall pass

Whatever it is that is getting your goat, it is temporary and manageable. You won’t always feel this way. It’s just a question of how long.

Acknowledging that your annoyance is finite and in your control, and that the winds of change will blow again in your favor (sooner or later), helps frame the scope of the problem, no matter how large.

Step six: What really matters?

How important is the matter upsetting you? How does it stack up against the things in life that you know matter? What is important (loved ones are a good example) can be the antidote to what troubles you now — as long as you can bring them to mind in this moment.
Turn your attention in that direction, and you won’t just be distracted but connected to something more important that brings you happiness. Scrolling through the photo stream on your phone is a quick way to do this.

Step seven: A funny thing happened on the way

Whatever the annoyance, make a joke about it, even if it’s a bad one. If you can find some grain of humor in the situation, smiling, laughing and even being silly can all defuse anger and annoyance. It’s not psychologically possible to experience two emotions at once.
This technique is great when my child is making me wait to brush her teeth because she “has” to brush her stuffed penguin’s teeth first.

Even if you’re not feeling it, the fake-it-until-you-make-it trick of smiling to boost happiness really works.

Step eight: Seek solutions

If you’ve made it this far up the steps and you are still really peeved, here’s a good (if seemingly obvious) question to ask yourself: “Is there something I can do to make it better?” Even if the answer is a small step that may not seem that effective, just taking action gets you out into the frame of acting, not reacting.

If you can then come up with a successful solution, so much the better. You will be the agent of change that fixes the situation and discover that you have more power than you think. Just pause to make sure your solution won’t create another problem. (Hint: Sleep on that angry email response.)

If you can’t come up with anything, that’s useful, too. Knowing that you can’t change something is the first step in accepting it. Cue the Serenity Prayer.

Step nine: Trust in time

In the future, it is possible that you will see this particular anger-causing situation differently. Look at past problems and see how they’ve been a catalyst for change or even a blessing in disguise. You may even look back at a difficult situation with fondness, humor or gratefulness (for having overcome it). It’s worth keeping in mind that what seems bad now won’t always be so.

Step 10: Call a lifeline

If you’ve hit No. 10, it’s time to talk about the frustration with someone you trust who is not involved in the situation. Start by telling them what you did in the previous steps and why they didn’t fully work.

Another person, by definition, gives you an alternate perspective; the more outside your frame they are, the better. If they are a good friend or mentor, they will indubitably have advice tailored to you and your situation that has eluded you.

There are also professionals to talk to, especially if you feel that anger is often out of your control. Reflect on the severity and frequency of your anger, because an expert may be what you need if these episodes are disrupting your life.

There is one more step, but it’s a bit dramatic and not so simple. It’s an Eskimo custom of dealing with anger, as noted in Rebecca Solnit’s surprisingly fascinating book on the history of walking, “Wanderlust.”

Walk in one direction for as long as you are aggrieved. When the emotion finally evaporates, drop a stick on the ground and head back, creating a physical manifestation “bearing witness to the strength or length of the rage.”

It not only combats the anger, it is also good for your heart. Exercise in general is good for reducing stress and anger.

By David G. Allan

I’m often asked when couples should consider therapy. It’s common for one partner to be unhappy, feel disconnected or feel that their needs for intimacy aren’t being met.

But rather than communicate about it, that partner may open up a metaphorical window with someone else and begin an affair. By the time the couple comes to therapy, the affair itself becomes the main topic, and its underlying causes are often ignored.
The same scenario rings true for other sources of contention, from financial disagreements to sexual concerns. It’s clear that couples shouldn’t wait until they’re in crisis mode to come to therapy, but what should they do?

When is the right time to see a therapist?

Couples should seek therapy long before they think they “need” to. Most experts believe that therapy can be an important part of your relationship. “Most issues within a couple start small and then grow in size when they don’t get resolved. This is where therapy can help, by giving tools and techniques to improve conflict resolution,” explained Kristie Overstreet, a licensed mental health counselor. “The majority of couples that I work with say that they should have started therapy years earlier.”

“There are three sides to every story: his side, her side and the truth,” psychotherapist Kimberly Resnick Anderson agreed. “An objective third party can be just the ticket when couples feel they can no longer communicate effectively.”

Rather than viewing therapy as the solution to a crisis, look at it as an integral aspect of a healthy life, suggested Ashley N. Grinonneau-Denton, marriage and family therapist.
“Every couple should take preventive measures to maintain health in their relationship, just like going to the gym,” she said. “If couples don’t work their relational and emotional ‘muscles,’ they become un-toned, weak and create more of a chance of damage being done to their relationship.”

What happens during couples therapy?

Although every therapist is different, there are some commonalities. The first session typically involves the therapist getting to know you, discussing the areas of the relationship they hope to improve and setting goals.

Some, but not all, therapists will assign homework for the couples to work on before the next session. “Ideally, most of the work gets done, in my experience, outside of my office,” psychotherapist Samantha Manewitz said.

What problems can benefit from therapy?

Couples come to therapy for any number of reasons, but in my experience, in addition to infidelity, the greatest issues include sex, communication, money and major life changes such as getting married or starting a family. Couples therapy is also a good idea if one of you is coping with an issue that might be affecting your relationship.

Therapy can provide a safe space to talk about sensitive topics such as sex. “Just like folks can get caught in a negative relational cycle, couples can often also get stuck in a negative sexual cycle,” said Michael Moran, a certified sex therapist. “I tell couples that when the sex they’re having is worth having, they’ll have more of it. And so we need to explore what blocks exist to creating that place between them.”

Communication is also a big concern for couples. But simply talking with each other more isn’t the answer. “There is communication, and then there’s effective communication,” explained Sara Nasserzadeh, a psychologist. “Both parties need to feel heard, soothed, respected and cared for first. We analyze old communication patterns and then replace them with feasible and more effective ones. These are all worked out collaboratively with the couple and within the context of their everyday life.”

You might also consider couples therapy to help support you at times of major life change and transition. “Getting married, becoming parents for the first time, moving, changing jobs, losing jobs, becoming empty-nesters, coping after extramarital affairs, recovering from addiction, caring for aging parents — all of these transitions can destabilize a couple’s equilibrium,” Anderson said. “Therapy affords couples an opportunity to negotiate these transitions with as little disruption as possible and to explore and honor what a particular transition means to each partner.”

And don’t discount the value of couples therapy in helping you and your partner dig yourselves out of a rut.

“Therapy allows couples to talk through their feelings and articulate how their relationship may not be meeting their expectations,” said James C. Wadley, a licensed counselor. “More often than not, there is some common ground that may have enabled them to be in the relationship. ‘Feeling stuck’ can shift if both parties are willing to compromise in a way so that individual needs are met.”

By Ian Kerner

You buy a sports car, start hitting the gym and have an affair: It’s the stereotypical midlife crisis, one we’ve seen played out both onscreen and in real life.

Although not everyone acts out middle-age angst in such a way, many of us do experience a reckoning or longing as we approach midlife, the feeling of hitting a wall and wondering if there isn’t more to life — and in, particular, to marriage.

I often see this phenomenon in my own practice, as one or both partners begin to question their relationship. Even in younger couples, disagreements over classic issues such as finances, parenthood and sex can lead to concerns that they may not be on the same page regarding many of life’s greatest stressors and demands.

But are such couples headed for divorce, or are they simply mired in difficulties that could be better navigated together?

In her new book, “The Rough Patch: Marriage and the Art of Living Together,” psychologist Daphne de Marneffe argues that it’s often entirely possible for couples to weather these and other bumps in the road, coming out stronger on the other side.

According to de Marneffe, it’s not only common but natural for today’s couples to experience rough patches. In the past, marriage was often an economic arrangement based on a division of labor and child-rearing. Now, we want a partner in love, too. And we live longer than ever. “We aspire to close, intimate marriages, but emotions can be complicated and inconvenient,” she explains. “We want to have it all in a relationship, but that can be challenging.”

Here, she shares some advice for couples trying to get out of midlife rough patches, as well as for younger couples hoping to avoid them altogether.

Develop your communication skills

Good communication is key, de Marneffe says — not just the ability to discuss critical relationship issues but to know what you want and express that. “We get hung up on the idea of having a lot in common with a potential partner,” she says. “That’s all well and good, but your ability to communicate in a healthy way is more important.”

You might be uncomfortable expressing your needs and desires at first, but learning how is the single most beneficial step you can take. And you’ll probably save yourselves some unnecessary arguments when you realize that you can’t expect your partner to be a mind-reader.

Work on yourself

It’s tempting to expect our partners to change to suit our preferences, but the tough work in marriage starts with yourself: If you don’t know what you want or how to articulate that, how can you expect your partner to know? Work at it on your own or with a therapist to learn how to express your emotions.

“I’m suggesting a paradigm shift in the way we view relationships,” de Marneffe says. “It’s not all about your partner — it’s about changing yourself, too.”

Talk about big issues early on

In “The Rough Patch,” de Marneffe gives advice for tackling a variety of major relationship demands, including one of the biggest issues for many couples: money.

Of course, when you’re newly in love, hashing out finances is hardly sexy. “Money seems far too mundane to discuss for couples in the first blush of romance, but it can be a huge source of stress,” she says. “Good communication skills will help you talk sooner rather than later about difficult subjects, including financial concerns.”

Learn to listen

Self-awareness and self-responsibility are critical ingredients to a successful marriage, de Marneffe says. Even if you’re still in the process of working on your own issues, simply expressing that to your partner can make a difference in your relationship.

For instance, if you tend to interrupt your partner or act dismissive of their feelings, you can acknowledge that you’re aware of the problem and are trying to change. “You can say, ‘I know that how I act affects you, I’m sorry, and I’m working on it,’ ” she says. “Your partner will feel heard and understood — and that’s what we all want.”

Redefine success

If you’ve both given it your best shot and have concluded that you’re not just in a rough patch, there’s no shame in parting ways. “Not every divorce is a failure,” de Marneffe says. “Some divorcing couples understand each other better than some married couples do. If you can come to a compassionate and responsible decision about your relationship, sometimes that’s better for everyone.”

By Ian Kerner

A new study shows that when people are on their phones, they smile less, affecting their ability to connect with others.

Mobile phones are ubiquitous. Stand in line at any grocery store or sit in any hospital waiting room, and you see people staring at their phones, presumably catching up on news or work or just relieving their boredom.

This seems innocuous enough. But could being on our phones affect our ability to connect with the people around us? A new study aimed to answer that question.

Researcher Kostadin Kushlev and his colleagues asked pairs of college students, who were strangers to each other, to come into a small lab waiting room—either with or without their phones. They were given no other instructions, but were told the researchers were running a bit late and they needed to wait. While waiting, their faces were secretly videotaped. Afterwards, the students reported how they felt and how much they interacted with the other participant, if at all.

Independent coders studied videotapes of the faces of pairs who interacted, measuring how often they smiled, how genuine the smiles were, and how much of the time they spent smiling during their wait. The results? People with phones exhibited fewer smiles overall (and fewer genuine smiles), and spent 30 percent less of the time smiling than people who didn’t have their phones with them, signaling less interest in connecting with others.

“Smiling is a really powerful social lubricant. When somebody smiles at you, that indicates approachability,” says Kushlev. “Our research suggests that phones might actually be impeding this very important approach-related behavior that serves to create new social ties.”

What a smile does

Why would people smile less when they have their phones?

Kushlev isn’t sure, but his prior research has found that people with phones find their interactions less enjoyable and less meaningful. The same may have been true in this situation, though the participants didn’t report feeling significantly worse off after their waiting period was over—maybe not a surprise, given that the wait was only 10 minutes. Still, smiling is an unbiased, measurable indicator of happiness, perhaps more reliable than filling out a survey.

Besides indicating happiness, a smile also communicates to others that you’re interested in them and trustworthy. So, if phones make us smile less when we’re out and about in public, it could thwart our ability to form “weak ties”—connections with neighbors, colleagues, and other non-intimates in our community—that have been shown to have a profound effect on our health and happiness.

“Phones might actually have an effect on well-being because we know that interacting, even with strangers, and just having random interactions improves our well-being and makes us feel more connected,” says Kushlev.

Though his experiment was designed only to analyze smiling in pairs, Kushlev and his colleagues also noted that thirty-two participants with phones didn’t interact at all in the waiting room—while only six people without phones didn’t interact. That lends credence to the hypothesis that there’s something about having a phone with you that impedes connection with strangers overall.

This is not the first study to find that phones have pernicious impact on social interactions.

Indeed, some past research has shown that phones interfere with social conversation and our capacity to engage in activities requiring cognitive focus, which could affect our motivation to engage. Kushlev believes that looking down at our phones could be what explains these results, because looking down sends a signal of disinterest and stalls conversations. Or, he says, it could be that cell phone use drains our cognitive capacity so that we’re less able to follow conversations or to interpret others’ social signals.

How phones are changing our relationships

Does this mean we should eschew our phones whenever we’re out and about? Maybe not, says Kushlev.

“There’s lots of research that shows phones can help people meet basic psychological needs, maybe make you feel competent, and that can be good for well-being,” he says. In his study, he argues, people might have chosen to talk to a friend or to read an article that could have made them happier, if they’d known how long they’d be waiting.

He’s not advocating that phones are bad or social impediments, in general. In fact, he says, they can sometimes help us form and improve social ties, like when we use dating apps like Tinder to meet people or when we use them to connect with family who are far away. But he does think that pulling out your phone in public can often be a cop-out, done to avoid any potential awkwardness that can occur in socializing with strangers.

“It’s this intermittent use of cell phones that can be a problem—where you look at your phone, the conversation doesn’t go anywhere, and you’re sending a signal that there are more important things to do than to talk to someone else,” he says.

Instead of relying on your phone to distract you from discomfort, he suggests turning off notifications or using apps that determine what messages you see when you’re out in public. That way, you don’t miss out on what’s going on around you or on making new connections. You can still use cell phones wisely, he argues, if you better understand their upsides and downsides and take steps to manage them better.

“The point isn’t that phones are ruining our lives,” he says. “The point is that phones are changing the ways that humans have met and created relationships and formed new social bonds throughout evolution. And that’s important to know.”

BY JILL SUTTIE

Science Says to Ask Them These 36 Questions. Love is more than a feeling; it’s a choice.

Relationships are hard. They can bring out the best in us, yes, but also the worst. They test the very essence of our beings: our capacity for forgiveness; our ability to trust (both ourselves and another); the true extent of our self-love; the strength of our boundaries; and the power of attachment.

Anything that can help bring us together, then, should be explored. And one scientific finding about love rises above others in the literature, if only for its rom-com level of magic.

Yes, I’m talking about the study made famous by the viral New York Times article by psychologist Mandy Len Catron. It not only outlined the original study, but backed it up by revealing that Catron herself had tested the concept … and fallen in love with her question-answering companion.

The original research was conducted by psychologist Arthur Aron at Stony Brook University. He split participants up into two groups, then had people pair up to talk to one another for 45 minutes. One group made small talk; the other received a list of 36 questions they went through one at a time — a list that got increasingly more personal. They then shared four minutes of sustained eye contact.

If there was ever a question of whether you can generate intimacy in a lab setting, it was answered by this study. Six months later, one of the pairs was in love. When they got married, they invited the whole lab staff to the ceremony.

When Catron, author of the New York Times piece, did the questions with an acquaintance, she wasn’t totally prepared, especially for the eye contact at the end:

“[T]he real crux of the moment was not just that I was really seeing someone, but that I was seeing someone really seeing me. Once I embraced the terror of this realization and gave it time to subside, I arrived somewhere unexpected.”

The unexpected place? It was a state of being more than anything, and one that led to more connection than perhaps either thought possible.

“I wondered what would come of our interaction. If nothing else, I thought it would make a good story. But I see now that the story isn’t about us; it’s about what it means to bother to know someone, which is really a story about what it means to be known.”

We all want to be known. We want to be known by our friends, our colleagues, our family members, even our neighbors. We want to be seen for what we have to offer, what we provide, for who we are.

But the person we often crave to feel most known by is our partner. This is the person with whom we share the most intimate details of our lives (not to mention our bodies). It’s the person who sees us at our best and our worst. The one who knows our history and is a primary part of our future.

We want them to know us — really know us, and these questions can help. As Catron says, “Most of us think about love as something that happens to us,” she said. “We fall. We get crushed. But what I like about this study is how it assumes that love is an action.”

There are lots of ways to celebrate upcoming Valentine’s Day. This year, consider doing something different. If you’re not in a relationship, propose doing this experiment with someone you’ve always thought was interesting but have yet to take the leap with. What do you have to lose?

And if you’re in a relationship, skip the fancy dinner or other high-pressure, conventional thing.

Instead, grab a bottle of wine and make the choice to commit to the magic of the questions. Allow the vulnerability of the answers to carry you even closer together. Take on the challenge of revealing yourself even more deeply to the person you cherish most in the world, and revel in the soul-deep connection that can ensue.

Take action.

Fall in love.

Set 1

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Set 2

13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

Set 3

25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling _______.”
26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share _______.”
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it.

Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

By Melanie Curtin

A new study suggests that trustworthy people have a surprising thing in common—their propensity for guilt.

Throughout our daily lives, we are tasked with deciding in whom we should place our trust—whether we’re predicting if a friend is likely to pay us back, evaluating whether a politician will keep their campaign promises, or choosing a romantic partner.

But how can we tell if someone is trustworthy? In a paper published recently in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found a somewhat surprising clue: people’s tendency to experience guilt.

The researchers asked 401 adults from the United States to fill out a questionnaire measuring their guilt-proneness in different situations, as well as several other traits, and then play a short online game. In this game, Player 1 is given $1, which they can choose to give to Player 2. Any money given to Player 2 is then automatically increased. Player 2 can then decide whether to keep all of the money (breaking the trust Player 1 placed in them) or behave in a trustworthy way by returning a portion of the money to Player 1.

In the study, participants were all assigned to be Player 2, and Player 1 (someone collaborating with the researchers) always gave them $1 (which was increased to $2.50). Participants could then choose whether to keep the full $2.50 or return half of the money to Player 1. The researchers found that more guilt-prone people were more likely to share the money with Player 1. In fact, in follow-up studies, guilt-proneness predicted trustworthiness better than other personality traits the researchers measured (the Big Five).

Lead author Emma Levine, assistant professor at the University of Chicago, and her colleagues write, “When deciding in whom to place trust, trust the guilt-prone.”

Why might guilt lead to trustworthy behavior? In several of the studies, the researchers found that the key linking the two was a sense of interpersonal responsibility: People who were guilt-prone also reported feeling an obligation to act in ethical and responsible ways while interacting with their partner in the game. The emotion of guilt is provoked when individuals recognize a wrongdoing they have committed, and people who are guilt-prone tend to avoid engaging in behaviors that might harm or disappoint others (behaviors that would make them feel guilty). If they do commit a wrongdoing, guilt motivates them to take action to try to make things right again.

Previously, much of the psychological research on trust focused on what makes people trusting—for example, how factors such as gratitude can promote trust. Research has also looked at the numerous benefits of trust, from its role in building relationships to its effects on society and the economy.

However, there’s an important limitation to the benefits of trust—when trust is misplaced, and directed towards individuals who are untrustworthy, it can lead trusting people to be exploited. This study fills an important gap in helping us identity the people who deserve our trust.

So how can we use this research to determine if someone is trustworthy? One way to do this might be to observe how they respond to past transgressions and whether they appear to experience remorse, Levine explains. Another way is to ask them to describe a difficult dilemma they faced in the past, suggests coauthor Taya Cohen, associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University. This is particularly telling, Cohen and her colleagues have found, because it allows us to see if they are concerned about the effects their actions have on others (in other words, whether they have a sense of interpersonal responsibility).

Guilt may be an uncomfortable feeling, but this research helps remind us why it exists. Not only does it motivate us to make amends, but it may also be a signal to the people around us that we can be relied upon.

BY ELIZABETH HOPPER

We all face hard times in life—it’s part of the human condition. Whether we lose a loved one, face sudden unemployment, or find ourselves caught in a natural disaster, the consequences of adversity can be dire, including increased stress, depression, and anxiety, and poorer physical health.

But a recent study published in Emotion shows that living through difficult setbacks like these may have an unexpected benefit: compassion. Results from the study indicate that people who experience more severe adversity are more empathic, leading to greater compassion and a higher likelihood of taking action to relieve the suffering of others.

People who experience more severe adversity are more empathic, leading to greater compassion and a higher likelihood of taking action to relieve the suffering of others.

Researchers Daniel Lim and David DeSteno of Northeastern University identified participants from different walks of life and had them fill out online questionnaires measuring their empathy—the ability to take the perspective of others, as well as empathic concern for others—and their compassionate disposition—how much they generally feel compassion for others. They also reported on their experience with hardship and trauma, including the severity, frequency, and recency of their adversity. After filling out the surveys, the participants were told they could donate all or part of their participation fee to the Red Cross, giving the researchers a quantitative measure of compassionate action.

Analyzing the data, Lim and DeSteno found that the severity of adversity experienced by participants correlated with higher levels of empathic concern and compassion, as well as larger donations to the Red Cross. In addition, the higher levels of empathic concern predicted increases in compassion, but not the other way around, suggesting that empathic concern is important for compassion and that the two are distinct phenomena.

“I tend to think of empathic concern as the motivation to care about the welfare of others, and compassion as the actual feeling state that occurs when in the moment,” says DeSteno. “They are clearly tied together, but we can differentiate between them.”

Adversity = Empathy = Compassion

So, why would adversity prompt empathy and compassionate action? According to DeSteno, helping others builds social connections, which in turn are important for healing and relieving suffering. So, if we respond to adversity with empathy, which leads to compassion, we are inadvertently helping ourselves.

If we respond to adversity with empathy, which leads to compassion, we are inadvertently helping ourselves.

“If you understand the suffering of others, it motivates you to have compassion and want to help them, which builds strong social bonds, which is a way of allowing yourself to become more resilient,” says DeSteno. It’s kind of a natural, unconscious mechanism humans have for overcoming adversity, he says.

He points to studies conducted after Superstorm Sandy hit New York City and after the devastating earthquake in Japan. Researchers found that, after allowing for differences in the amount of damage sustained in different areas, the neighborhoods that rebounded most quickly from these disasters were characterized by the highest belief that neighbors cared for each other and that they could count on each other’s help to get through.

“We see empathy and compassion as short-term costs in giving resources, whether it’s time, energy, or emotional resources, to build stronger social relationships,” says DeSteno. “Sure, adversity can cause longstanding problems for some people; but for the majority, it enhances empathy, which then enhances prosocial abilities long-term.”

It’s interesting to note that neither frequency nor recency of adversity correlated with empathy or compassionate action. That’s probably due to the fact that frequency, in comparison to severity, doesn’t impact our psyche as much, says DeSteno—small and frequent hardships just don’t move us as much as a more devastating event. And, as for recency, it takes time to heal from adversity, and that may impact empathy…at least initially.

“It makes sense that, closer to the throws of having suffered adversity yourself, it would be harder to have the resources or the wherewithal to take on or think about others,” says DeSteno.

But, the more severe the adversity, the more we need to rely on our community to help us out, and that means acting prosocially. Especially in conditions where we might not have the means for getting ourselves back on track—perhaps because of a lower socioeconomic status or more devastating loss, for example—we need each other to recover. This may explain why some studies have found that people of lower socioeconomic status exhibit higher levels of empathy and compassion in general, says DeSteno.

“One could argue that those from lower social classes are more likely to face certain kinds of adversity,” argues DeSteno. “If you’ve faced more hardship, you recognize—even if it’s unconsciously—the need to rely on others for support, and empathy and compassion are a way to build that support.”

What does this all mean for the rest of us? Not that we ignore the problems associated with adversity, but that we keep in mind there are ways we can prepare ourselves better for it. Even if we don’t think we’re going to suffer in the near future, we can always build our resiliency by making social bonds a priority. And compassion has a role to play.

Even if we don’t think we’re going to suffer in the near future, we can always build our resiliency by making social bonds a priority.

“I recommend compassion highly,” says DeSteno. “I always recommend investing in other people, because the short-term cost is worth the long-term gain you’ll get back in building strong relationships.”

By Jill Suttie