Proponents of cohabitation say that it gives couples a chance to try each other out before making a big commitment.
But studies show that couples who live together before marriage are less likely to be together 20 years later.
This infographic by MyMove.com and posted at visual.ly illustrates data from the Census and a University of Virginia marriage expert.
Check it out:
When Elle Zober, 37 discovered the text message that revealed her husband's affair with a 22-year-old woman in April, she had no idea she'd find herself at the center of a media storm just four months later.
A self-employed photographer and artist, Zober, who finalized her divorce in June, didn't see the point in paying for pricey realtor signage when she and her ex decided to sell their Beaverton, Ore. home.
She made one herself––with a twist.
"Husband left us for a 22-year-old...House For Sale by scorned, slightly bitter, newly single owner," the sign read. Readers were directed to a website with the home listing, along with a few more details of her ex's transgressions.
"I put the sign up at 1 o'clock on Friday on Facebook and I had the local news in my yard by 5," she told Business Insider Tuesday. "And I'm not really sure how we wound up here or how we wound up doing interviews. I don't think I'm what people expect."
They might expect exactly what the sign advertised: A woman bitter and broken enough that she decided to smear her husband in broad daylight.
Instead, there is Zober, who said the sign was not only partially paid for by her ex but nothing more than a funny way to get their house off the market and make light of an otherwise "catastrophic" experience.
"The affair wasn't fun and the end of my (10-year) marriage wasn't funny. It was catastrophic," she said. "But (my ex) is a funny guy and I like to think I'm funny, too. We live in Portland. People here make bacon donuts. It's just a different place...we really weren't expecting the media attention."
Instead of interested buyers, media have been ringing her phone off the hook with calls starting as early as 3 a.m., Zober said. She's spent less time discussing bedroom dimensions than she has defending allegations that she put her two children, ages 3 and 7, at risk with all the press.
"That's a little silly because the kids are already living through it, having to pack up all their toys and leave their house. The sign is irrelevant to that process," she said. "(My daughter) just turned 3 a month before (the affair) happened and I don't want to waste her year of 3 curled up in a ball crying about what some guy did to me. I don't want to be that person. I don't want my kids to have that mom."
For all intents and purposes, the divorce has been exceedingly civil. Zober and her ex split the renovations to their home before putting it on the market and he's helping cover the mortgage and utilities until it's sold.
"He's doing more than his part financially that way," she said.
And though Zober's not sure whether the media attention will actually help them pull off a sale, she and her children are living with relatives until she's back on her feet.
"You either wallow or you move forward," she said. "I don't really have a lot of time to worry."
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At the Delivering Alpha conference we went up to Bill Ackman, the CEO and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, and asked him where he was last night.
That's because the hedge fund manager had purchased a table at the REACH "Take 'Em To School Poker Tournament," but he didn't show up.
Ackman told us that he hosted a "singles party" at his apartment last night.
About 180 people attended the event.
Reuters Svea Herbst-Bayliss also reports that Ackman and his wife Karen go through their Rolodexes and invite singles to this event in their home.
What's more is the hedge fund manager apparently already has a pretty solid matchmaking record.
Back in 2011, the New York Observer reported that Ackman "claims to have yenta’d at least four marriages."
Maybe there will be more to come.
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Here are a bunch of quick facts about happiness and life success that you probably had no idea about, but probably should.
Many of these tips may seem counterintuitive, but rest assured that their backed up by data and scientific studies.
Whatever your gift philosophy, you may be thinking that you would be happier if you could just spend the money on yourself – but according to a three-part study by Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin, and Michael Norton, givers can get more happiness than people who spend the money on themselves.
Liz, Lara and Mike approached the study from the perspective that happiness is less dependent on stable circumstances (income) and more on the day-to-day activities in which a person chooses to engage (gift-giving vs. personal purchases).
To that end, they surveyed a representative sample of 632 Americans on their spending choices and happiness levels and found that while the amount of personal spending (bills included) was unrelated to reported happiness, prosocial spending was associated with significantly higher happiness.
Our research is simply about documenting a fact: since the 1970’s, women’s self-reported happiness has fallen, relative to that of men. This seems paradoxical, given the tremendous strides made by the women’s movement. We report this fact, test that it is a robust finding, and suggest that future research may help sort out whether it reflects how the women’s movement affected women’s hedonic state; whether it reflects the differential impact on women of some broader social trend; or if instead it is telling us something about the (un)reliability of happiness data.
From Eric Barker's Barking Up The Wrong Tree. Follow him on Twitter.
Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert:
Some of the things Grandma told you were exactly right. Find a nice boy, settle down: good advice. It turns out marriage is a cause of happiness. Grandma might have told you to find a good job and make some money. That advice is not terrible advice. More money makes you happy, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for you, and once you’re in the middle class, more money does very little. The last piece of advice grandmothers give is children. There are virtually no studies demonstrating a positive correlation between children and happiness, and most studies show a small negative correlation. By and large, people with children are less happy.
From Eric Barker's Barking Up The Wrong Tree. Follow him on Twitter.
China’s 'leftover women’ are considered on the shelf if they're still single at 28
In case you hadn’t noticed, Chinese women have become quite a force to be reckoned with in recent years. According to Forbes magazine, 11 of the 20 richest self-made women in the world are Chinese, and now 19 per cent of Chinese women in management positions are CEOs, the second highest percentage worldwide (after Thailand’s 30 per cent).
In fact, so undeniable is the rise of women in China that there is even a phrase for their sudden blossoming: yin sheng, yang shuai, which means the female (yin) is on the up, while the male (yang) is on the way down. But there’s one thing that’s holding them back – and even making them ditch their careers altogether – and that’s the fear of being single.
Unfortunately for China’s women their new-found confidence has incited a backlash from men, the government and even their own families. The popular Chinese label shengnu (leftover women), regularly perpetuated in state-controlled media and on internet message boards, refers to women who are smart, successful and moneyed but still not married by the age of 28. That’s right: in China, if you're 30, female and single, you’re considered well and truly on the shelf.
'I always dread Chinese New Year,’ says Yang Ziyang, a 32-year-old talent agent earning in excess of one million RMB (£100,000) a year, 'because that’s when my extended family come over to the house and they all want to know why I’m not married yet. I tell them it’s because I have standards that I’m not willing to lower.’
Touching an expensive-looking bangle on her wrist, she goes on, 'I think my parents understand a bit more – they just want me to be happy – but my aunties always say things like, “Oh, do you remember that girl you went to school with? She got married last year and now she’s pregnant!” It's very frustrating.’
Wu Manling, 30 and a magazine editor, agrees. 'My mother tried to have a serious talk about me being “leftover” a while ago. I told her that I wasn’t going to rush into marrying just anyone, that my happiness doesn’t only come from my relationships but from my work. I have my own value and can make my own social connections. But I know they’re just worried,’ she says, hinting at the other big issue at play. 'Because I’m an only child it’s harder, as they are relying a lot on me.’
Women born under China’s one-child policy, introduced in 1979, face enormous pressures to succeed academically from parents whose own aspirations were thwarted under the Mao regime.
Meanwhile, their grandparents – many of whom can still remember mass famine – are piling on the expectations, too. They are keen not only to see their granddaughters marry well (traditionally the only route to financial security) but also, mindful that the country has no social safety net, to have a large family to look after them in old age.
'The Chinese family is getting smaller and smaller and so the pressure on young women today is huge,’ says the social historian Simon Gjeroe. 'There’s a very large older population in China that by sheer weight of numbers is winning the pressure war. If women don’t get married and have a child then in the eyes of their more conservative parents and grandparents they haven’t achieved harmony and they’ve failed.’
It doesn’t help that educated young women are barely given a chance to find a husband until it’s supposedly too late. 'While you’re at university your parents constantly discourage you from having relationships; they tell you to focus on your studies,’ continues Wu Manling.
'Then, when you finally graduate at the age of 25, you’re suddenly expected to know how to find a rich boyfriend who has a car and a house. But by then you only have two or three years before you’re branded a shengnu. If you don’t manage it within that small window of time they worry and fuss. It’s ridiculous.’
'There’s no question that a lot of women rush into marriage with the wrong person,’ says Leta Hong Fincher, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Her research suggests that it’s the constant pestering from families that is causing successful women in their late twenties to make major sacrifices.
'At that point in their lives a lot of women who are highly educated, attractive and successful will start to really worry about getting married. I’ve met women who actually quit their jobs because they thought they’d find it easier to attract a husband, which is very frightening. Those who didn’t give up work entirely were turning down promotions.’
The author and social commentator Zhang Lijia knows exactly what she thinks about the term shengnu. '[It’s] extremely insulting! It’s a ridiculous term! There are many countries where men don’t like strong women,’ she points out, 'but Chinese men particularly so. If a Chinese man is successful he will be looking for a woman who is young and beautiful, not someone who is well educated.’ She pauses before laughing heartily. 'Chinese men think educated women aren’t as easy to control!’
She may have a point. Internet chatter about shengnu came to a head last March when a young woman called Long Si Yu and 15 of her friends posted an online music video admonishing men for not having their own house or car.
There are currently 118 men to every 100 women in China – that’s an excess of more than 30 million. But Yu was arguing that the actual reason Chinese men can’t find girlfriends is their laziness, and the fact that they are looking for a breed of subservient woman that no longer exists.
'If you don’t have a car and you don’t have a house, please move aside don’t block my way,’ chimes one girl in the video. 'I also have a car, I also have a house, and [money] in the bank. So if you’re not as capable as I am, don’t depend on me. I am not your mother,’ says another.
Within 48 hours of posting their video on Youku – China’s version of YouTube – their song had been viewed 1.5 million times, and garnered tens of thousands of negative comments. 'What kind of women are these?’ read one typical male rant. 'I say women in the old days were better.’
'We were just having fun,’ claims Yu, 24, when asked why she made the video. 'Men have always asked so much of us. We want them to know that we have standards now, too.’
This is something that Gong Haiyan, the female founder of the country’s biggest dating website, knows only too well. In 2003 Gong was 27, single and dissatisfied with the online dating services available at the time.
Taking matters into her own hands, she set up the matchmaking site Jiayuan ('Beautiful Destiny’) to help women like her, and within three months had met her husband via the site. With more than 58 million registered users, the site has given her a clear picture of what constitutes 'the ideal woman’ in the eyes of a Chinese male.
'The most popular woman is the traditional, angelic type,’ she says. A faint smile crosses her lips as she admits that many search for women with 'large breasts and slim figures’, adding, 'The most common profession searches are for girls who are teachers or nurses, as men think those women will be able to educate and care for their children well.’
By contrast, says Gong, women’s requirements are multiplying all the time, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. 'The key things women search for on our site are a man’s height, salary and whether or not he owns a car or a house. Certainly, if women’s requirements were lower we would have a higher match-success rate. It’s very hard to satisfy women in China these days.
'In Beijing, only 12 per cent of men using the site own their own house, so almost all the women on the website are trying to choose from this 12 per cent. That makes it very difficult.’
So are Chinese women showing a worryingly shallow attitude towards love? Zhang Lijia says that it’s not that simple. 'China’s rapid economic reform has certainly brought lots of opportunities,’ she explains. 'But the income gap between men and women has increased as a result of that reform. It’s no wonder that women want to marry a rich man when so many resources are still not equally available to them.’
Recent changes to home-ownership laws have put women at an even greater disadvantage. When couples divorce, the marital property now belongs solely to whomever took out the mortgage. In China, this is almost always the husband or the husband’s parents. This means that even if a woman makes substantial contributions towards the purchase of a house and its mortgage she could be left with nothing on divorcing.
Hong Fincher suggests that this may be what is stirring many women, especially in the cities, to action. 'It has always been the tradition that a son’s parents help him buy a house when he marries. In many instances parents will hand over their life savings to their son because they see it as crucial to buy him a home – but the parents are not doing that for their daughters.
'Women previously thought they had to have a man to take care of them, but I’ve found that many no longer think that way. Because of the change in the law they know that if they do marry a man with a house it doesn’t benefit them, so there’s a growing trend of young women trying to make it on their own.’
Jennie Kang, 25, an assistant marketing director for an American fast-food chain, says this is exactly why she won’t compromise on finding a husband who appreciates her for who she is. Smart, eloquent and striking, she says she can’t see herself being a housewife, like her mother’s generation. 'I still want to develop my own career, fulfil my own destiny. The truth is, I’d be bored and feel insecure if I wasn’t economically independent.’
Asked if she thinks her high standards have become a barrier to her happiness, Yang Ziyang explains, 'Some of my friends tease me about my requirements being too high, but I want equality from a marriage and it’s hard to find Chinese men who offer that. I’ve been at work all day, too, so why should I do the washing-up, the cooking and look after the baby as well?’
Additional reporting: Lily Wang
The mysterious finance man that television superstar Katie Couric has been dating for the last few months is a partner at Brown Brothers Harriman, The New York Posts' Page Six reports.
The former "Today" host's new beau is 49-year-old John Molner, the head of M&A at Brown Brothers Harriman.
They were introduced by friends and are said to be "very happy together," according to Page Six citing unnamed sources.
Prior to joining Brown Brothers Harriman, Molner worked in the investment banking division of the First Boston Corporation.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with honors from Trinity College. He also graduated from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, according to his bio.
Couric, 55, previously dated financier Brooks Perlin, who has worked at Keels Capital Management and Pequot Capital Management and is 17 years her junior.
SEE ALSO: 9 Super Hot Celebrities Who Have A Thing For Wall Streeters >
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While many relationship counselors (or friends that think they are relationship counselors) will say the best way to get over a couple clash is to "forgive and forget," a new study of married couples indicates that when it comes to serious problems, sometimes you and your honey just need to hash it out.
There is a hidden cost of the "forgiveness" part of the "forgive and forget" equation, the researchers said. Forgiveness may hurt the relationship in the long run, even if moving on keeps things calm in the moment.
"We all experience a time in a relationship in which a partner transgresses against us in some way. For example, a partner may be financially irresponsible, unfaithful, or unsupportive,” study researcher James McNulty, of Florida State University, says in a press release from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. "When these events occur, we must decide whether we should be angry and hold onto that anger, or forgive.”
In his study, McNulty found that a few factors come into play to determine whether to go the forgiveness route or the yelling route. He explains:
"Believing a partner is forgiving leads agreeable people to be less likely to offend that partner and disagreeable people to be more likely to offend that partner,” he says. Additionally, he says, anger can serve an important role in signaling to a transgressing partner that the offensive behavior is not acceptable. "If the partner can do something to resolve a problem that is likely to otherwise continue and negatively affect the relationship, people may experience long-term benefits by temporarily withholding forgiveness and expressing anger.”
The work is a part of a larger study of what makes some relationships work when others fail. McNulty will be giving a talk today, August 2, at the American Psychological Association Annual meeting in Orlando, Florida.
"This work suggests people need to be flexible in how they address the problems that will inevitably arise over the course of their relationships,” McNulty says. "There is no 'magic bullet,' no single way to think or behave in a relationship. The consequences of each decision we make in our relationships depends on the circumstances that surround that decision.”
Showing off one's playful side is a strategy men and women have developed to make themselves more appealing to potential mates, a new survey suggests.
A team of US academics surveyed 250 undergraduate students and found that both sexes list "sense of humour", "fun loving" and "playful" among the most important characteristics they look for in a potential long-term partner.
The results could explain why humans continue to play throughout their lives, while most other animals stop doing so when they reach adulthood, the researchers said.
Playful behaviour may provide an evolutionary benefit by displaying desirable qualities such as non-aggressiveness or youthfulness to potential long-term partners, they explained.
Lead author Prof Garry Chick, head of the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management at Penn State, said: "Humans and other animals exhibit a variety of signals as to their value as mates.
"Just as birds display bright plumage or colouration, men may attract women by showing off expensive cars or clothing. In the same vein, playfulness in a male may signal to females that he is nonaggressive and less likely to harm them or their offspring.
"A woman's playfulness, on the other hand, may signal her youth and fertility."
The study built on a previous survey which asked participants about 13 different characteristics which people may find desirable in a long-term partner.
They added three new traits – "sense of humour", "fun loving" and "playful" – to the original survey and found that they ranked second, third and fourth as traits that women look for after "kind[ness] and understanding".
Men ranked a sense of humour as the highest priority, with a fun-loving nature third and playfulness fifth, while putting physical attractiveness only ninth, according to the study in the American Journal of Play.
Prof Chick said: "It seems to us that signalling one's virtues as a potential long-term mate through playfulness is not far-fetched.
"Our results suggest that adult playfulness may result from sexual selection and signal positive qualities to potential long-term mates."
Billionaire hedge fund titan George Soros, 82, is engaged to his 40-year-old girlfriend Tamiko Bolton.
Check out their engagement pictures below taken by Myrna Suarez this weekend in Southampton.
SEE: Meet Tamiko Bolton, George Soros's New Fiancee >
SEE ALSO: This Is The Engagement Ring George Soros Gave Tamiko Bolton >
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Two-thirds of people about to wed end up having second thoughts about the decision, a new study in the Journal of Family Psychology found.
The problem? The study found that people who have these kinds of doubts are more likely to get divorced. Maybe more of us should follow our guts.
The researchers, led by Thomas Bradbury from the University of California, Los Angeles, surveyed 464 recently married spouses (232 couples) from the Los Angeles area. The researchers asked each husband or wife individually if they had troubles with 'cold-feet' before the wedding and collected other information about their relationship.
They found that about two-thirds of the couples had at least one partner that got anxious about the impending betrothal.
Specifically, 47 percent of husbands and 38 percent of wives came down with cold feet during their engagement period.
They then followed up with the couple every 6 months for 4 years to see how these new nuptials turned out — surveying them on how satisfied they were with their marriage and if they were still with their partner.
About 12 percent of the couples ended up getting divorced by the 4-year-mark. They found a trend toward higher divorce rates in both men and women who had reported cold feet, but only the female trend was significant.
Only 8 percent of wives who didn't have cold feet ended up divorced, while 19 percent of the marriages in which the wives fretted over their marriage were divorced by their fourth anniversary.
Only 8 percent of wives who didn't get cold feet ended up divorced, while 19 percent of the marriages in which the wives fretted over their marriage were divorced by their fourth anniversary.
(The numbers were 9 percent and 14 percent for husbands, respectively.)
In their analysis they controlled for multiple factors that could lead to increased divorce rates, including having divorced parents and how difficult they rated their engagement.
"Taken together, the results indicate that premarital doubts are not simply an instance of feeling anxious before a major event or something to be worked through, but a sign of possible trouble ahead," the researchers write in the paper, published online Sept 3. "This appeared to be less true for men, consistent with our prediction that women’s greater attunement toward relationship problems would render their doubts more diagnostic."
They also noticed that, of intact couples, those who reported cold feet were less satisfied with their marriages to begin with and their marital happiness stayed lower over time.
A couple notes on the study: They didn't get specifics on the degree to which any given person had doubts or the types of doubts that they had about their impending wedding, and the information on their doubt was collected AFTER their weddings, so its possible the after-wedding bliss (or lack of) could have changed their interpretations of their "doubts."
The data were also collected almost 20 years ago, so recent evolution of relationships — say, more couples living together — may mean different results would be found in studies of more recent marriages.
Getting comfortable with communicating about sex may translate to benefits in the bedroom — especially if the lines of communication are open during the act.
New research finds that comfort with sexual communication is directly linked to sexual satisfaction. People who are more comfortable talking about sex are also more likely to do so while having sex, the researchers found. Nonetheless, that difference doesn't fully explain why the sexually chatty are happier with their erotic lives.
"Even if you just have a little bit of anxiety about the communication, that affects whether you're communicating or not, but it also directly affected their satisfaction," said study researcher Elizabeth Babin, an expert on health communication at Cleveland State University in Ohio.
The anxiety "might be kind of taking them out of the moment and therefore reducing the overall satisfaction they experience during their encounters," Babin told LiveScience. [6 (Other) Great Things Sex Can Do For You]
Talking about sex
How people talk about sex is an important topic for public health researchers. After all, people who are uncomfortable asking their partners to wear a condom may be at higher risk of having unprotected sex and exposing themselves to sexually transmitted infections. Communication is also key to having enjoyable sexual encounters, Babin said.
But little research has delved into what keeps people from talking about their likes and dislikes while in bed, she said.
"In order to increase communication quality, we need to figure out why people are communicating and why they're not communicating," Babin said.
To do so, Babin recruited 207 people, 88 from undergraduate classes and 119 from online sites, to complete surveys about their apprehension about sexual communication, their sexual satisfaction and the amount of non-verbal and verbal communication they felt they enacted during sex. For example, participants were asked how much they agreed with statements such as, "I feel nervous when I think about talking with my partner about the sexual aspects of our relationship," and "I feel anxious when I think about telling my partner what I dislike during sex."
The participants, whose average age was 29, also responded to questions about their sexual self-esteem, such as how good a partner they felt they were and how confident they were in their sexual skills.
Communication without words
The surveys revealed that apprehension in talking about sex can spoil one's sexual enjoyment, with that anxiety linked both to less communication in bed and less satisfaction overall. Unsurprisingly, less sexual communication apprehension and higher sexual self-esteem were both associated with more communication during sex.
Communication during sex, in turn, was linked to more sexual satisfaction. Nonverbal communication was more closely linked to satisfaction than verbal communication, Babin reported online in August in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Nonverbal cues may seem safer, Babin said.
"It could be perceived as being less threatening, so it might be easier to moan or to move in a certain way to communicate that I'm enjoying the sexual encounter than to say, 'Hey, this feels really good, I like that,'" Babin said. "That might seem too direct for some people."
Babin next plans to research couples to get both sides of the story and to find out how couples' communication styles mesh with their sexual satisfaction. The end goal, she said, is to give therapists and sex educators tools to help them teach people how to talk about sex more openly with their partners.
Sexual communication "is a skill," Babin said. "And we're not all well-trained in that skill."
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
Want to improve your relationships? Then stick your cellphone in your pocket.
A new study from the University of Essex found that people feel less close to each other when a cellphone is present, even if it isn't being checked constantly.
Hiding a cellphone can improve feelings of closeness, trust, and empathy — particularly when trying to have a meaningful conversation, the New York Daily News reported.
The "hookup culture" is helping women gain the independence they need to take over the world.
Most scholars think the phenomenon of young people replacing serious relationships with casual ones hurts women, but the opposite is true, according to Hanna Rosin's new book The End of Men: And the Rise of Women
Seeing relationships in a more casual light actually helps young women free themselves of relationships that might keep them from their professional goals, Rosin told us in an interview.
"We tend to be myopic when we think about the hookup culture but we tend to miss that avoiding getting tied down in relationships that influence your career decisions is critical to success when you're that young," Rosin said.
Her book explains further:
To put it crudely, now feminist progress is largely dependent on hook-up culture. To a surprising degree, it is women--not men--who are perpetrating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. Today's college girl likens a serious suitor to an accidental pregnancy in the nineteenth century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it thwart a promising future.
Rosin's book comes out September 11.
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We feel like we know Louis Bacon, Steve Schwarzman and Jamie Dimon to a certain extent because we read about them in the news all the time.
But we really don't know much about their wives at all, and that feels a little odd.
We've found that many of the hedge fund honchos, private equity titans and bank CEOs are married to some really remarkable women.
During our research, we found a fashion designer, an economist, several entrepreneurs and philanthropists.
Now let's meet Wall Street's wives.
Name: Penny Gorman (Pendleton Dedman)
About: She graduated from Smith College and worked in investment banking, according to a wedding announcement in the New York Times.
Name: Judith Dimon (Judith Ellen Kent)
About: Jamie Dimon and Judith met while they were at Harvard Business School. They were married in 1983, according to a New York Times' wedding announcement.
She's earned her bachelor's degree from Tulane University and her master's degree in organization psychology from Catholic University.
The Dimons have three daughters -- Julia, Laura and Kara Leigh.
Name: Laura Blankfein (Laura Susan Jacobs)
About: She graduated from the Fieldston School and magna cum laude from Barnard College, and received her law degree from Georgetown University, according to an engagement announcement in the New York Times.
She's a former corporate lawyer and worked at Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon in New York.
The Blankfeins have three children -- Alex, Jonathan and Rachel.
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A report that aired on Monday night on “NBC Nightly News” claims that a broken heart is a medical syndrome that can be as lethal as a heart attack or a stroke.
Most people have watched a relative or friend pass away not long after the death of a loved one, as if their grief became too great a burden to bear.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researcher Dr. Ilan Wittstein alleges that sudden emotional stress, such as a breakup, a sudden shock, the death of a loved one or even a car accident can produce physiological changes that mimic those of a heart attack.
Heart attacks are called by blockages in the heart or the vascular tissue around it. This phenomenon, however, called broken heart syndrome, is more accurately described as the heart being stunned.
Women in their 60s and 70s are particularly vulnerable to this type of cardiac event, which occurs when the sudden rush of adrenaline and other stress hormones experienced in shock causes part of the heart muscle to spasm while another section balloons outward, suspending the flow of blood. In about one in three cases, the condition is serious enough to kill without medical attention.
“It can be very serious,” said Wittstein. “People can die from it – no question.”
“Even though the heart is not permanently damaged, the heart is a pump and if that pump is suddenly stunned and can’t pump, than the whole body isn’t getting the blood flow that it needs, so the sickest examples of broken heart syndrome have been critically ill in the intensive (care) unit.”
The syndrome can also “weaken the heart muscle, lower blood pressure, cause fluid in the lungs and even clinical heart failure,” said the Gazette of Montreal.
Ninety percent of the patients studied so far have been women, but anyone under stress is vulnerable. Wittstein said that the best treatment for the disorder is time.
“Time is simply needed for recovery,” he said. “Once patients get through the first couple of days, the heart improves on its own.”
Watch the report, which aired on the NBC Nightly News on Monday, Sep. 24, and is embedded below:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Starting a new company is brutal. It's time consuming; you become dead to your friends for weeks at a time, and it can be so grueling that you forget to eat or shower.
So one Quora user asked the logical question:
Can (or should) you have a girlfriend and start a company at the same time?
Most of the top responders thought you could do both.
The highest voted response stated that yes, if you date someone who is supportive, you can have a boyfriend or girlfriend in your startup's infancy. Depending on your significant other's job and connections, he or she may even be able to make valuable introductions for you and your startup.
If you don't have a supportive significant other, you probably shouldn't be dating that person, startup or not.
Other responders were skeptical:
"My own experience of being a former girlfriend of a guy who joined a Start-up was not-so-great," one wrote. "It meant less time together, not receiving emotional support (even when it was directly sought), listening to negativity all the time...sometimes I felt like I was his plaything, that he would only pay attention to me when it suited his needs."
Head over to Quora for the full debate >
People have a lot of opinions about money.
In our “Money Mic” series, we hand over the podium to someone with a strong opinion on a financial topic. These are their views, not ours, but we welcome your responses.
Today, one woman discusses her deep misgivings about her marriage, why she resents being the sole breadwinner and how her dynamic with her husband affects their kids.
Money is emotional and sensitive, so please respect that each person makes individual choices. For things you can do in a similar situation to strengthen your relationships and talk about money, keep reading.
I can’t even remember when my husband stopped working.
And frankly, I don’t have time to think about it, between my full-time job and my fledgling business, volunteering at an after-school program to help teenagers prepare for the professional world and mothering two children.
But when I do think about it–when I think about all the times I come home to see evidence of his entire day’s activities cluttering the coffee table, or when I have to take our shared car to work and strand him at home because he doesn’t feel like getting up to drive me–I’m angry.
Why should he get everything, when I do everything?
The idea of a wife being the primary or sole breadwinner is a relatively new one (though a new study shows that over half of American women are household breadwinners), but speaking as that sole earner: I don’t like it.
How We Got Here
My husband and I met on my first day of work, at a job with a local utility company that I got right out of high school. That job paid for me to attend college, and I still work there to this day. It took him two weeks to work up the courage to ask me out, and we’ve been together ever since, about 20 years.
I bought my house before we were married, so although he lived with me, I was the sole owner. In 2001, I took a new position and he left the utility company to care for our daughter after a surgery–I supported that, for obvious reasons. After, he re-entered the workforce to work for a friend’s mortgage company, where he made half of his previous salary.
Then, when the economy crashed in 2008, the mortgage company failed and my husband was out of a job. Since he would be home, he took on the role of Mr. Mom (though he hates when I call him that): cooking, cleaning occasionally and being there for our two children, who are now 7 and 16. Our kids are older now, and while I’d like him to go back to work, he isn’t interested.
While he was transitioning, so was I. I started my own party-planning company. Now, I work a 9-5 job at the utility company so the family has health insurance and a steady paycheck. Then, I work nights and weekends to supplement my income with party planning, which is my real passion.
I would love to do my event planning (a job my husband hates because it takes me away from the house) full-time … but right now, we need my income to pay all of our bills. I don’t have money for an emergency fund, and my husband couldn’t support us if my business didn’t pan out. Unfortunately, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
He’s Happy With His Unemployment … and His Secret Money
Considering that my volunteer work means I look into job opportunities for young people and help them with skills such as writing their résumés, I’m in the perfect place to help my husband with his job search.
He’s been unemployed now for four years, and is supposedly looking. He says that the economy is terrible and that there are no jobs, but I remind him there are job fairs and temp agencies. I forward job opportunities to him, but he has other arguments against getting a job: The kinds of jobs available (things like working for a local transportation company) are “humiliating”; there are no jobs to be had.
Those excuses are buoyed by the fact that he has money. From where, I don’t know, because he won’t tell me (frustrating, huh?). He thinks I’ll disapprove … which I will, if he’s getting it from his indulgent, retired parents or through gambling with his friends, both of which are possibilities. His money goes toward groceries for the family, car maintenance, hanging out with friends and personal items, like clothes. He actually doesn’t hide his spending from me, but he never tells me exactly what things cost.
My Finances vs. His
We don’t share bank accounts. I contribute to my retirement savings and our children’s college fund, as well as pay the mortgage and the bills. He contributes to none of these things, and has at this point drained his retirement savings–but I couldn’t tell you how much that was to begin with, because he’s not open about it.
I have no savings otherwise, because all my money is needed to support our household.
I see our gender dynamic playing out in our children: Our teenage daughter is a hard worker who does her chores, participates in extracurriculars like debate team and interns with my event planning company. Our young son rarely does his chores or homework, but expects to get everything he asks for, when he asks for it.
He sees that his father doesn’t work for things, and he doesn’t, either. Plus, when I try to give him tough love, his father or grandparents cave in when I’m not around. Part of it is that he’s so young, but I worry he doesn’t have a male role model to teach him the value of hard work.
What Next?
Ideally, my husband and I would contribute equally to the household expenses. Even if he could cover half the mortgage, I would be happier. Right now, we can’t afford to go on a family vacation or renovate the kitchen, which needs some work. My husband knows how much his disinterest in working bothers me, and so does the rest of my family. (Except the children–I don’t want them to feel like I do, like their dad isn’t doing what he should for them.)
I do feel like I’m at a breaking point.
I’ve told him before that he needs to move out, but after 20 years, he knows how to apologize, promise he’ll change and keep me from pursuing a separation or divorce. My friends say that if he was married to anyone else, he wouldn’t get away with this. They say it makes me a pushover, and I’m puzzled by it, too.
I’m non-confrontational and generally very laid-back, but I have no problem standing up for myself … except when it comes to my charming, lazy husband.
Sometimes I think of getting divorced, but we live in Pennsylvania, which means legally he’ll likely be entitled to half of our assets from the marriage–half of my assets. I try so hard to be upbeat and not let this bother me, but on our last anniversary, I started telling him how I felt about his lack of contribution and motivation, and nothing has changed since then.
Our next anniversary is coming up fast … and I’m not sure we’ll make it.
Note: Since Jessica told us her story, her husband has taken a job with the above-mentioned transportation company and now contributes $150 per week to household expenses–but she is suspicious about the amount and he refuses to show her his paycheck.
Editor’s Note:
We’re very grateful that Jessica has opened up to us and shared this very personal story. Please respect her willingness to share and be sensitive in your comments.
What should she do? LearnVest CFP® Sophia Bera suggests, “Sounds like they could really use couple’s therapy! She should either ask her husband to come to counseling with her or start going by herself so she can figure out what she wants to do. This is so emotionally charged that it’s not even about the money at this point. If he’s hiding money from her, that’s financial infidelity and he leaves her in a tough spot.”
What about advice for other couples struggling with income disparity? Sophia says, “When there’s a large income discrepancy, we generally recommend each person put the same percentage of his or her income in a joint checking account to cover the household bills. That way, one isn’t using half her salary for rent while the other only uses 10%.” If you’re consistently disagreeing with your loved ones about money, it’s probably time for a “Money Talk.” Read this for more ideas on how to combine finances with a partner.
If you think your money disagreements are getting in the way of your relationship, consider speaking to a therapist, counselor or Certified Financial Planner® to help you sort out your differences and make a plan that will work for both of you.
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Divorce rates are far higher among “modern” couples who share the housework than in those where the woman does the lion’s share of the chores, a Norwegian study has found.
In what appears to be a slap in the face for gender equality, the report found the divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50 per cent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work.
“What we’ve seen is that sharing equal responsibility for work in the home doesn’t necessarily contribute to contentment,” said Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study entitled “Equality in the Home”.
The lack of correlation between equality at home and quality of life was surprising, the researcher said.
“One would think that break-ups would occur more often in families with less equality at home, but our statistics show the opposite,” he said.
The figures clearly show that “the more a man does in the home, the higher the divorce rate,” he went on.
The reasons, Mr Hansen said, lay only partially with the chores themselves.
“Maybe it’s sometimes seen as a good thing to have very clear roles with lots of clarity ... where one person is not stepping on the other’s toes,” he suggested.
“There could be less quarrels, since you can easily get into squabbles if both have the same roles and one has the feeling that the other is not pulling his or her own weight.”
But the deeper reasons for the higher divorce rate, he suggested, came from the values of “modern” couples rather than the chores they shared.
“Modern couples are just that, both in the way they divide up the chores and in their perception of marriage” as being less sacred, Mr Hansen said. “In these modern couples, women also have a high level of education and a well-paid job, which makes them less dependent on their spouse financially.
They can manage much easier if they divorce,” he said. Norway has a long tradition of gender equality and childrearing is shared equally between mothers and fathers in 70 per cent of cases.
But when it comes to housework, women in Norway still account for most of it in seven out of 10 couples. The study emphasised women who did most of the chores did so of their own volition and were found to be as “happy” those in “modern” couples.
Dr Frank Furedi, Sociology professor at the University of Canterbury, said the study made sense as chore sharing took place more among couples from middle class professional backgrounds, where divorce rates are known to be high.
“These people are extremely sensitive to making sure everything is formal, laid out and contractual. That does make for a fairly fraught relationship,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
“The more you organise your relationship, the more you work out diaries and schedules, the more it becomes a business relationship than an intimate, loving spontaneous one.
“That tends to encourage a conflict of interest rather than finding harmonious resolutions.” He said while the survey applied to Norway, he was confident the results would be the same in the UK.
“In a good relationship people simply don’t know who does what and don’t particularly care. “Unless marriage is a relationship above anything else, then whenever there are tensions or contradictions things come to a head. You have less capacity to forgive and absorb the bad stuff.”
The survey appeared to contradict another recent one across seven countries including Britain that found that men who shouldered a bigger share of domestic responsibilities had a better sense of wellbeing and enjoyed a better work-life balance.
The researchers expected to find that where men shouldered more of the burden, women’s happiness levels were higher. In fact they found that it was the men who were happier while their wives and girlfriends appeared to be largely unmoved.
Those men who did more housework generally reported less work-life conflict and were scored slightly higher for wellbeing overall.
Experts suggested that, while this may be partly because they felt less guilty, the main reason could be that they had simply learnt the secret of a quiet life.
It's a common complaint among Botox patients and those who interact with them: The wrinkle-zapping injection dulls a person's ability to convey emotion through facial expressions.
Sure, this can be bad news for interpersonal relationships — but it may actually be an asset for battling depression, according to a new study.
Here's what you should know:
How was this study conducted?
Researchers selected 30 participants suffering from major depression. Half were given five injections of Botox between and just above the eyebrows while the other half were given placebo injections in the same places. After six weeks, health care professionals ranked the patients' depressive symptoms — including sullen mood, insomnia, and weight loss — and reported back to researchers.
What did researchers find?
Patients who were injected with the placebo had a 9 percent reduction in depressive symptoms, while patients injected with Botox had a 47 percent decrease in symptoms. Such mood elevations held steady throughout the rest of the 16-week study period for both groups.
Why is this?
We already know that muscles in your face communicate your emotions to other people. But this study suggests that these facial muscles are also instrumental in regulating your own mood. How? The study's author, M. Axel Wollmer, a psychiatrist from Switzerland's University of Basel, posits that Botox helps block negative feedback "from the facial musculature to the brain, which may be involved in the development and maintenance of negative emotions." Essentially, your facial muscles might not just tell other people how you feel — they might tell your brain how you feel, too. And because Botox relaxes those muscles, it may prevent your face from telling your brain that you're blue.
