If your partner is struggling with a credit card balance and you have a little extra cash, you may be tempted to help them out.

Unfortunately, paying off someone else's debt often has unforeseen consequences.

There are many good reasons why you shouldn't do it and better ways to help your significant other become smarter about credit.

It could hurt you financially.

No matter how you slice it, helping with your partner's debt will affect your finances.

For example, cosigning on one of their loans or taking out a loan for them puts your credit score on the line. Giving them cash can also be risky. It's essential to have money set aside for emergencies, and especially if you're young, you may not have much to spare.

Never pay off your boyfriend or girlfriend's debt at the expense of your own financial security.

It might happen again.

Sometimes people need to learn their own lessons. If you pay off your partner's debt, ask yourself how likely they are to manage their money more responsibly in the future.

Without having to confront their spending, they may well end up in debt again — and if you're still together, they may expect you to bail them out.

Your relationship might not last forever.

No matter how secure you feel in your relationship now, there's a chance that it may not work out long-term. Consider how you'd feel, after it's over, if you had given your partner a major financial gift.

If you dated for two more years, would you consider it a good investment? What about two more weeks? There are no guarantees in relationships, so as you weigh the pros and cons of paying your partner's debt, keep the worst case scenario in mind.

You have good alternatives.

The best reason not to cover your partner's debt is that there are many other ways to help them become more financially secure, without jeopardizing your own future. First, you can model good money habits. Be willing to share your own credit report and budget, and show them how to cut their expenses.

Once they have a plan, suggest debt consolidation options, like balance transfer credit cards. If you want back-up, recommend a licensed credit counselor.

And while it's a bad idea to put your own money toward your partner's debt, you can help them put more of their own money toward it. Offer to pay when you both go out or pick up some groceries for them, as long as you see them devoting money toward their debt.

The bottom line.

Paying off your girlfriend or boyfriend's credit card debt is a bad idea — end of story. However, if you've married someone with credit card debt, you may want to approach the situation differently. Once your financial goals are linked, your partner's balance affects you as well, and it will hurt your chances of qualifying for a mortgage or other loans as a couple.

But you should still be helping, rather than carrying the whole load. Agree on a strict household budget and look into balance transfers and credit counseling. Then, once you're debt-free, you can spend your extra cash on your future, not your past.

SEE ALSO: How To Decide Which Debt To Pay Off First

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This question comes from a male reader who wanted to know the following:

“I seem to have a problem with sexual arousal and women I am emotionally attached to. When I met my wife, we were very sexually active, but that dwindled as we got deeper into our relationship. I thought at first maybe it was my age, but I have found myself aroused over female friends and acquaintances. The good thing is this has never developed into an affair but I would like to figure out what is wrong with me so that my wife and I can be intimate. This problem predates my wife and in the past, my girlfriends would have to at least pretend to indulge a fantasy of a threesome of them being intimate with someone else (dirty talk about it) just for me to get aroused. So I believe there is a correlation between arousal and degree of familiarity.”

The experience you described reminds me of a concept known as the “Coolidge Effect,” which suggests that when sexual interest begins to wane, it can be reawakened by the novelty of a new partner.

This phenomenon got its name from a popular anecdote about a visit that U.S. President Calvin Coolidge and his wife supposedly made to a chicken farm. The story goes something like this: 

“Mrs. Coolidge, observing the vigor with which one particularly prominent rooster covered hen after hen, asked the guide to make certain that the President took note of the rooster’s behavior. When President Coolidge got to the hen yard, the rooster was pointed out and his exploits recounted by the guide, who added that Mrs. Coolidge had requested that the President be made aware of the rooster’s prowess. The president reflected for a moment and replied, ‘Tell Mrs. Coolidge that there is more than one hen.’” [1]

The Coolidge Effect has been documented in several animal species. For instance, consider what we have learned from studies of rats: research has found that when a male rat is placed inside a cage with several female rats that are “in heat,” he will mate with all of them until he appears exhausted. However, if a new female is introduced to the cage, the male will often experience an immediately renewed interest in sex and begin mating with the new female [2].

The Coolidge Effect has been documented to some degree in human men as well. For instance, in one study, male participants were either exposed to constant or varied sexual stimuli while their level of sexual arousal was measured by a device that records changes in penile circumference [3]. The men who were repeatedly shown the same stimuli showed less arousal over time (i.e., they demonstrated habituation); in contrast, those who were exposed to varied stimuli maintained higher levels of arousal.

It is important to note that a similar, but somewhat less pronounced pattern also seems to occur among females. For instance, research on female hamsters has found that after mating with one male hamster until exhaustion, they demonstrate renewed interest in sex when a new male is introduced to the cage [4]. Also, research on human females has found that, just like men, they show some degree of habituation to repeated presentations of the same erotic stimulus [5]. So, the Coolidge Effect isn’t necessarily just a male phenomenon.

Together, this set of research findings tells us that losing sexual interest in the same partner over time and being excited by variety is not particularly unusual—in fact, I know many scientists who would argue that this may actually be normative. That said, it is important to keep in mind that not everyone loses sexual interest in the same person, and some people maintain very high levels of passion for the same partner for many years. Human sexuality is incredibly diverse, and nothing is ever true 100% of the time.  

So what can a couple do if the partners want to address a decline in sexual interest? One possibility would be to consider having an “open” or nonmonogamous relationship. Many couples practiceconsensual nonmonogamy, in which they explicitly permit some degree of outside sexual involvement. This can take many different forms (e.g., having an open relationship, swinging, an occasional threesome, etc.), and the couples who practice it tailor it to the comfort level of both partners. Of course, consensual nonmonogamy isn’t right for everyone--different types of relationships work for different people (remember what I said about nothing being true 100% of the time?). Only you and your partner can decide whether this is a viable option, and I should caution that the topic may very well be a nonstarter for your partner.

An alternative possibility is to maintain monogamy, but to try incorporating more novelty into both your relationship and sex life. Novelty can breed sexual excitement by facilitating the release of pleasurable brain chemicals. Research has found that the long-term couples who report having the most intense feelings for each other are those who engage in the most new and exciting activities together [6]. In other words, there may be other ways of stimulating that same level of sexual excitement that you receive from sexual variety by bringing more novelty into your relationship in other ways. Some couples may find that trying new things and sharing new experiences (sexual and otherwise) can reignite passion.

That said, if you and your partner are feeling distressed about your sex life, the best advice I can offer is to consider seeing a licensed sex or relationship therapist. Sexual desire discrepancies are one of the most common issues that prompt couples to seek counseling, and therapists are well equipped to deal with them.

[1] Hatfield, E., & Walster, G. W. (1978). A new look at love. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

[2] Wilson, J. R., Kuehn, R. E., & Beach, F. A. (1963). Modification in the sexual behavior of male rats produced by changing the stimulus female. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 56, 636.

[3] O'Donohue, W. T., & Geer, J. H. (1985). The habituation of sexual arousal. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 14, 233-246. 

[4] Lester, G. L., & Gorzalka, B. B. (1988). Effect of novel and familiar mating partners on the duration of sexual receptivity in the female hamster. Behavioral and Neural Biology, 49, 398-405.

[5] Kelley, K., & Musialowski, D. (1986). Repeated exposure to sexually explicit stimuli: Novelty, sex, and sexual attitudes. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 15, 487-498.

[6] O’Leary, K. D., Acevedo, B. P., Aron, A., Huddy, L., & Mashek, D. (2012). Is long-term love more than a rare phenomenon? If so, what are its correlates? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 241-249.

SEE ALSO: 10 Things You Should Know About Sexual Attraction

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Happiness — or subjective well-being, as academics call it — is largely a matter of the situations that you put yourself into.

According to new research, people who rank high in agreeableness put themselves into happier situations than everybody else.

It's a part of "emotion regulation," write authors Konrad Bresin of the University of Illinois and Michael D. Robinson of North Dakota State University.

One of the Big 5 personality traits, agreeableness is a measure of your personal warmth, or, put more negatively, it's a measure of how much you need to be liked by the people around you.

"The more agreeable someone is, the more likely they are to be trusting, helpful and compassionate,"LiveScience says, while "disagreeable people are cold and suspicious of others, and they're less likely to cooperate."

In a series of experiments, Bresin and Robinson showed that friendly, agreeable people try to avoid negative experiences.

• In one experiment, participants were asked to look at a series of positive and negative images, spending as much time as they'd like with each image. Most people spent more time with the negative images — except for the agreeable folks.

• In another experiment, participants were asked if they'd like to have an experience that's more or less positive or negative — an upbeat or a slow song, a documentary about a celebrity or about government corruption, a talk about baking cakes or dissecting a body. blog pointed out, "high agreeableness [participants] showed a strong preference for the positive: anthems, nation's sweethearts, and shortbreads."

In other words, pleasant people like pleasant things.

But problems can come with such pleasantries.

Research suggests that men with high agreeableness earn 18% less than their grumpier counterparts. Disagreeable women, the same study found, earn 5% more than their nicely behaved peers.

Similarly, Malcolm Gladwell has argued that entrepreneurial genius is often accompanied by disagreeableness. Prime example: IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad doesn't care about what you think of him— he cares about selling furniture.

SEE ALSO: Malcolm Gladwell Says IKEA Built A Multibillion-Dollar Brand Because Its Founder Had This Disagreeable Personality Trait

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Now that most of communication is accomplished through virtual channels, it is easy to lose sight of our real face-to-face relationships.

UCLA clinical professor of psychiatry Dr. Dan Siegel gives his five tips for keeping it real in the virtual-driven world we now live in. 

Produced by Justin Gmoser ; Additional camera by Alana Kakoyiannis

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Editor's note: The five steps are listed at the bottom of the post.

I had an opportunity to ask Robin Dreeke a few questions. Robin is in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s elite Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program and the author of "It’s Not All About Me."

Robin combines science and years of work in the field to offer practical tips to build rapport and establish trust. In this brief interview he discusses building relationships, how to approach someone you don’t know and ask for a favor, and the keys to establishing trust.

A lot of people are interested in strengthening and furthering relationships. How can people do this?

This is the most important aspect of everything we do in life. I’m going to give some light science behind each of my answers but to me it just explains the subjective simple explanations behind naturally great trusting relationships.

Both anecdotal (evidence) as well as science supports the fact that the greatest happiness is found in positive social interactions and relationships. The simplest answer to this is to “make it all about them.” Our brain rewards us chemically when we are able to talk and share our own views, priorities, and goals with others… long term, short term, etc. Our brain also rewards us when we are unconditionally accepted for who we are as a human being without judgement.

Both of these concepts are genetically coded in each of us (to varying degrees) because of our ancient survival instincts (ego-centrism) as well as our need to belong to groups or a tribe (tribal mentality for survival and resources). When you put these simple concepts together the answer is simple to understand, but oftentimes difficult to execute…. Speak in terms of the other person’s interests and priorities and then validate them, their choices, and who they are non-judgmentally. Some people do this naturally, for the rest of us you can build this skill and it eventually becomes second nature.

Trust is a foundation to most situations in life. How can we develop trust? What are the keys?

I can only answer from my own background and experience because trust is a very difficult thing to measure and define and each individual’s definition can vary and our brain takes in much more than verbal information when determining trust. For me and what I teach I start with what I said in question one. Trust first starts with a relationship where the other person’s brain is rewarding them for the engagement with you by doing what I outlined above.

Part two of my trust process is to understand the other person’s goals and keeping their goals and priorities on the top of my list of goals and priorities. By making the other person’s goals and priorities yours, trust will develop. Over time (some people faster than others) a need to reciprocate the kindness and relationship will build. In other words, trust is built faster and stronger when there is no personal agenda.

What’s the best way to approach someone you don’t know and ask them for a favor?

Using sympathy and seeking help is always the best. If you can wrap the help / favor you are looking for around a priority and interest of the individual you are engaging, the odds of success increase. Add social proof (i.e., others around you helping already or signed a petition etc.) and you increase it even more. Again, focus on how you can ask a favor while getting their brain to reward them for doing so.

What are some strategies to build rapport while giving a talk, presentation, or interview?

Ego Suspension / self-deprecating humor… Make it all about them! How is the information you are chatting about going to benefit them? Talk about the great strengths and skills they each have already and that all you hope to do is to have them understand their strengths even better and be able to pass them on to others more effectively if they want to. Validate every question and opinion non-judgmentally. If you don’t happen to agree, simply ask “that’s a fascinating / insightful/ thoughtful opinion… would you mind helping me understand how you came up with it?” Again, their brain will reward them on multiple levels for this.

I suspect you spend a lot of time trying to figure out if people are manipulating you or the situation? Can you talk about this? How can you tell when people are attempting to manipulate you?

I’ll start by saying I don’t like the word manipulate. The word tends to objectify people and removes the human being from the equation. When people feel they are objects, trust will not be built. I tend to not think of anyone trying to manipulate me but at times a very self-serving agenda becomes evident. This is what manipulation generally is…. a self-serving agenda where the other person feels used with no reciprocity.

When I notice that there may be an overabundance of a self-serving agenda (manipulation) I don’t judge the person negatively. I try to explore two areas in order to understand them better. (go back to my first answers here… this process begins to build a relationship and trust :)) I try to understand what their objective is and why that is their objective.

What are they trying to achieve, etc. I will also attempt to understand why they felt a certain way of communicating with me would be effective for them in the situation. I tend to ask questions to help them think about how they might be more successful in their objectives using other methods… such as I outlined above.

In other words, help them achieve whatever objective with me they had…. because wasn’t that their goal after all? :) See… keep it always coming back to them.

If you had to give a crash course in building a relationship with someone, what are the top 5 things people need to do? What carries the bulk of the freight so-to-speak?

1) Learn… about their priorities, goals, and objectives.
2) Place… theirs ahead of yours
3) Allow them to talk…. suspend your own need to talk.
4) Seek their thoughts and opinions.
5) Ego suspension!!! Validate them unconditionally and non-judgmentally for who they are as a human being.

If you haven’t already, check out Robin’s Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport With Anyone.

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SEE ALSO: 3 Brilliant Negotiating Tips I Learned From Steve Jobs

NOW WATCH: Psychologists Discovered How To Make People Like You

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If you're going to make it to the C-Suite, hard work is pretty much a given.

After all, there are only so many coveted executive positions to go around, and lots of talented people who want them. 

But while working your tail off is a good way to climb the ladder, putting in too many hours can hurt you once you get to the top, social psychologist Ron Friedman writes in an article for the Harvard Business Review. 

According to Friedman, people are measured by their technical performance at the beginnings of their careers, but as they become managers, they are increasingly judged by what they can accomplish using their interpersonal skills.

As a result, he says that working too hard can be dangerous because low energy, caused by not getting enough sleep, makes people more likely to misinterpret the body language of the people around them and more likely to be ensnared in verbal conflict. 

Friedman says overwork also hurts decision-making ability, an important skill for any manager, pointing to scientific research that shows people make worse choices when they are deprived of sleep.

"Overwork and the sleep deprivation it fosters prevent you from seeing problems clearly and identifying creative solutions," Friedman writes.

Finally, Friedman says that leaders who work too many hours set the expectation that their team members can never fully disconnect from their work. This, he says, makes people less engaged with their jobs, drains their emotional energy, and can even cause head and stomach aches.

"… when laboring non-stop becomes standard operating procedure, it's difficult for employees to feel like working hard is their choice,"he explains. 

Instead, he writes, overworked leaders should slowly try to create small habits that allow them to disconnect, like leaving their smartphones in another room when they get home at night, or taking up an active hobby like biking.

Read the full article here.

Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to tipoftheday@businessinsider.com. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.

SEE ALSO: 12 Public Speaking Habits To Avoid At All Costs

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Sometimes opposing adages fight to a draw: “Better safe than sorry” versus “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

But when it comes to “Opposites attract” versus “Birds of a feather flock together,” the data are in: We end up with partners like ourselves.

A study of 291 newlywed couples found spouses to be closer in values, religiosity, and political attitudes than would be predicted by chance [1]. 

Scientists have a term for this: positive assortative mating. (It’s negative assortative mating when opposites attract.)

The human species isn’t the only one that flocks together. A meta-analysis of assortative mating in animals based on traits such as size and color found that nearly all the assortment was positive [2]. Not that sorting by size and color is limited to animals: humans tend to marry people with a similar level of body fat [3], and online daters stick to their own race [4].

People also gravitate toward mates whose faces look like theirs. In one study, subjects who were presented with a series of photos were able to pair a woman’s image with that of her partner, based on facial similarities — even when only isolated features (noses, mouths, eyes) were displayed [5].

Friendly people apparently seek same: A field experiment in rural Senegal found spouses to have corresponding levels of generosity [6]. 

People with less desirable qualities also attract one another. Having bipolar disorder or major depression makes you more likely to marry someone else with an affective disorder [7]. Alcoholics, too, tend to pair up, with potentially disastrous results for their future offspring [8].

Perhaps most consequential, we sort ourselves by socioeconomic status. On this count, income similarity matters, but similar schooling seems to matter more, maybe because it strongly implies cultural commonalities [9]. The results of class-based mating are profound.

A 2014 study examined the growing tendency of Americans to partner with people of similar educational backgrounds, and found a clear connection between this shift and the growth in household income inequality between 1960 and 2005 [10].

Some of this sorting can be explained by shared environments. For example, religious people meet in church and wealthy people meet in college. Market forces also play a role: Couples match in attractiveness because the tens pair up, leaving the nines to settle for each other, and so on.

Still, we nonmodels make do. One study found that less attractive people realize certain dates are out of reach and adjust priorities accordingly, learning to value traits like a sense of humor [11].

A final factor in sorting is intrasexual competition. Take the mangrove snail: Males prefer larger females, and when two males mount a female’s shell, they fight it out, with the larger male winning the prize [12]. Tens with tens. Unfortunately, the loser can’t comfort himself by finding a mate who’s really funny.

The Studies:

[1] Luo and Klohnen, “Assortative Mating and Marital Quality in Newlyweds” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Feb. 2005)

[2] Jiang et al., “Assortative Mating in Animals” (The American Naturalist, June 2013)

[3] Speakman et al., “Assortative Mating for Obesity” (The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Aug. 2007)

[4] Lewis, “The Limits of Racial Prejudice” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nov. 2013)

[5] Alvarez and Jaffe, “Narcissism Guides Mate Selection” (Evolutionary Psychology, 2004)

[6] Tognetti et al., “Assortative Mating Based on Cooperativeness and Generosity” (Journal of Evolutionary Biology, May 2014)

[7] Mathews and Reus, “Assortative Mating in the Affective Disorders” (Comprehensive Psychiatry, July 2001)

[8] Grant et al., “Spousal Concordance for Alcohol Dependence” (Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, May 2007)

[9] Kalmijn, “Assortative Mating by Cultural and Economic Occupational Status” (American Journal of Sociology, Sept. 1994)

[10] Greenwood et al., “Marry Your Like” (American Economic Review, May 2014)

[11] Lee et al., “If I’m Not Hot, Are You Hot or Not?” (Psychological Science, July 2008)

[12] Ng and Williams, “Size-Dependent Male Mate Preference and Its Association with Size-Assortative Mating in a Mangrove Snail, Littoraria Ardouiniana” (Ethology, Oct. 2014)

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Wondering whether your relationship will go the distance?

Ask a friend.

That may sound counterintuitive. After all, you presumably have more information about your own romantic relationship than your college roommate, say. But you are also terribly biased.

Research has shown that each of us has a rosy view of our own relationship. Your friends, on the other hand, may be better able to see it for what it is.

A friend's perceptions of your romantic union, at least one study has found, are actually better than yours at predicting the fate of your relationship.

A Beautiful Illusion

Most of us harbor positive illusions about the people closest to us, especially those central to our own identities — like a romantic partner. In many ways, this isn't a bad thing: In fact, people who idealize their partners tend to have longer-lasting relationships.

But such a rosy view might also "cloud their judgement and influence their perceptions,"a team of psychologists from Purdue University and Southern Methodist University wrote in 2001. The result? People in love "predict that their relationship will last longer than it actually does."

For better or for worse, however, your friends are generally less invested in your relationship than you are, and therefore less likely to be biased in how they see it. Fortunately, you can use their expertise to your advantage.

Auspicious Beginnings?

In that 2001 study, Christopher Agnew, Timothy Loving, and Stephen Drigotas acknowledged that people are not so great at predicting how their own relationships turn out, and designed an experiment to find out whether people's "social networks"— at the time just an old-fashioned term for friends and acquaintances — could act as more reliable soothsayers.

The researchers focused on 74 couples who had been dating for a median of one year and asked them to list their individual friends and joint friends. (The small, non-diverse group of mostly college-aged participants means that the study's results are intriguing, but by no means the final say on all human relationships.)

They interviewed the couples about their relationships, and then they sent questionnaires to hundreds of their friends, asking them to share what they really thought about their friends' pairings.

Six months later, 15 of the 70 couples the researchers could still contact had broken up. 

A Crystal Ball

In general, the study suggests, your friends are not as psyched about your relationship as you are — at least if you're a 20-year-old college student. At the beginning of the experiment, the people in relationships said they were more committed and happy than their friends seemed to think they were.

"Given the amount of effort individuals put into their romantic endeavors, [they] are likely motivated to view their relationships in a positive light," wrote Loving, in a later analysis. "Otherwise, why would they be in them?"

However much your friends want you to be happy, it's not personal for them the way it is for you — and that distance turns out to be crucial. 

While "friends' perceptions [were] somewhat aligned" with what the couples themselves reported, "joint friends, her friends, and his friends all [perceived] relationship state as significantly more negative than the couple members themselves did," the researchers explained in the paper.

As it turned out, these glass-half-empty perceptions of the couples were "powerfully predictive" of the fate of the relationships. And the more couples blabbed to their friends about their relationships, the more accurate their friends' perceptions were. Meanwhile, the friends of the women in the pairings — most of whom were women themselves — seemed to be more in tune with their friends' relationships than both the couples themselves and their friends as a whole.

These findings, the researchers write, "are especially remarkable" since outsiders' impressions of relationships are based on secondhand knowledge and "considerably less information" than the couples have themselves. Of course, the authors note, couples have a "tremendous personal stake in the romance that clouds [their] judgement regarding it."

No Such Thing As A Sure Thing

Notably, the 2001 researchers did not actually ask participants whether they thought their friends' relationships would last. They simply asked participants for their impressions of each relationship, and then measured whether those impressions were predictive of the way the relationships turned out. (They were.)

In an earlier, smaller study, though, Canadian researchers found slightly different results: Students' roommates and parents were asked directly whether the student-couple would still be together after one year, and those confidantes were also able to make more accurate predictions than the students themselves.

That result seems to confirm that "ask a friend" may indeed be one good way to see into your relationship's future. But the couples in the Canadian study provided more accurate assessments of their own relationship's quality than did their parents and roommates, suggesting over-optimism even when they were cognizant of their relationships' realities.

Had the Canadian researchers simply looked at the outsiders' impressions of their roommates' relationships instead of asking for direct predictions, their findings would be in direct conflict with what the 2001 researchers found later; instead, it's a bit more muddled.

In 2006, Timothy Loving tried to make sense of some of this muddle with a larger follow-up study that looked at similar questions. He found that while the friends of female daters made accurate predictions about the future of their friends' relationships, "male daters' friends appear to have few unique insights" into their friends' romances. Perhaps, he suggests, women just disclose more to their friends, giving the male friends too little information to go on.

One of his key points though, is that there are too many variables to expect consistency, even among small samples that are roughly the same age. "Roommates" are not the same as "social network members" or "close friends," and it's reasonable to think that friends' predictive powers will vary depending on closeness. But Loving does suggest a question future researchers can ask the people in a relationship, to try to find the outsiders who will be most accurate and perceptive in their predictions: "Who knows you and your relationship best?"

If you're wondering what the future has in store for you and your plus one, it would be wise to set aside your rosy view and ask yourself that very question. Then, if you dare, ask that person what she really thinks about your relationship — and whether it will last.

SEE ALSO: Scientists Have Found A Surprising Key To Happy Relationships

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Here's a copy of the hand-written check fo $974,790,317.77 that Sue Ann Arnall, the ex-wife of oil magnate Harold Hamm, rejected because she's appealing for more money, via @CNBC.

Note that he didn't fill in the space for what the check is for. 

Harold Hamm's ex-wife has rejected a $974,790,317.77 hand-written divorce check. http://t.co/aPJb3pqY62pic.twitter.com/TMvfXgY7q1

— CNBC (@CNBC) January 6, 2015

They were married for 26 years. They divorced in November.

Hamm has an estimated networth of $7.8 billion, according to Forbes real-time calculations.

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John Whitbred didn't have a great Christmas holiday after his girlfriend announced she no longer wanted to get married.

All of the plans were set in place, including the honeymoon. So Whitbred, 32, decided to think fast and do something a little unconventional.

He auctioned off the trip to the Dominican Republic on eBay.

The catch? The buyer would have to go with Whitbred.

The Telegraph reports the Leicestershire man (who describes himself as "slim, 5'9in tall, with dark hair who enjoys a good laugh") is "looking for a female of any age with a good sense of humour to join him on the two-week break."

Whitbred's best friend, Craig Gibson, helped set up an eBay auction to find someone to travel with him.

They also created the hashtag "#girlfromthepublictodominicanrepublic" to help spread the word. 

just read #girlfromthepublictodominicanrepublic how fab would this be, such a great opportunity for someone to go on holiday. I wanna go!!

— Law Price (@Pricey8605) January 5, 2015

If only I was single! shame! I would have been awesome to go with! #girlfromthepublictodominicanrepublic

— Meena (@Manymoons13) January 6, 2015

After just a few days online, the bidding had already reached £1,800.

Read more about it on The Telegraph.

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Some people instantly make us feel important. Some people instantly make us feel special. Some people light up a room just by walking in.

We can't always define it, but some people have "it"— they're naturally charismatic.

Unfortunately natural charisma quickly loses its impact. Familiarity breeds, well, familiarity.

But some people are incredibly charismatic: they build and maintain great relationships, positively influence the people around them, consistently make people feel better about themselves — they're the kind of people everyone wants to be around… and wants to be.

Fortunately we can all be more charismatic, because charisma isn't about our level of success, or our presentation skills, or how we dress or the image we project — charisma is about what we do.

Here are ways you can be more charismatic:

1. Listen way more than you talk.

Ask questions. Maintain eye contact. Smile. Frown. Nod. Respond — not so much verbally, but non-verbally.

That's all it takes to show the other person they're important.

Then when you do speak, don't offer advice unless you're asked. Listening shows you care a lot more than offering advice, because when you offer advice in most cases you make the conversation about you, not them.

Don't believe me? Who is, "Here's what I would do…" about: you, or the other person?

Only speak when you have something important to say — and always define important as what matters to the other person, not to you.

2. Don't practice selective hearing.

Some people — I guarantee you know a few like this — are incapable of hearing anything said by the people they feel are somehow beneath them.

Sure, you speak to them, but that particular falling tree doesn't make a sound in the forest, because there's no one actually listening.

Incredibly charismatic people listen closely to everyone, and they make all of us, regardless of our position or social status or "level," feel like we have something in common with them.

Because we do.

3. Always put your stuff away.

Don't check your phone. Don't glance at your monitor. Don't focus on anything else, even for a moment.

You can never connect with others if you're busy connecting with your stuff, too.

Give the gift of full attention. That's a gift few people give. That gift alone will make others want to be around you and remember you.

4. Always give before you receive — knowing you may never receive.

Never think about what you can get. Focus on what you can provide. Giving is the only way to establish a real connection and relationship.

Focus, even in part and even for a moment, on what you can get out of the other person, and you show that the only person who really matters is you.

Just give. Be remarkably giving. Don't worry about whether you will someday receive.

5. Don't act self-important…

The only people who are impressed by your stuffy, pretentious, self-important self are other stuffy, pretentious, self-important people.

The rest of us aren't impressed. We're irritated, put off, and uncomfortable.

And we aren't too thrilled when you walk in the room.

6. …Since you know other people are more important.

You already know what you know. You know your opinions. You know your perspective and point of view.

That stuff isn't important, because it's already yours. You can't learn anything from yourself.

But you don't know what other people know, and everyone, no matter who they are, knows things you don't know.

That automatically makes them a lot more important than us because they're people we can learn from.

7. Shine the spotlight on others.

No one receives enough praise. No one. Tell people what they did well.

Wait, you say you don't know what they did well?

Shame on you — it's your job to know. It's your job to find out ahead of time.

Not only will people appreciate your praise, they'll appreciate the fact you care enough to pay attention to what they do.

And they will feel a little more accomplished — and a lot more important.

8. Choose your attitude — and your words.

The words you use affects the attitude of others — and it affects you.

For example, you don't have to go to a meeting; you get to go meet with other people. You don't have to create a presentation for a new client; you get to share cool stuff with other people. You don't have to go to the gym; you get to work out and improve your health and fitness.

You don't have to interview job candidates; you get to select a great person to join your team.

We all want to associate with happy, enthusiastic, fulfilled people. The approach you take and the words you choose can help other people feel better about themselves — and make you feel better about yourself, too.

9. Don't discuss the failings of others…

Granted, we all like hearing a little gossip. We all like hearing a little dirt.

The problem is, we don't necessarily like — and we definitely don't respect — the people who dish that dirt.

Don't laugh at other people. When you do, the people around you wonder if you sometimes laugh at them.

10. …But readily admit your own failings.

Incredibly successful people are often assumed to have charisma simply because they are successful — their success can seem to create a halo effect, almost like a glow.

The key word is "seem."

You don't have to be incredibly successful to be extremely charismatic. Scratch the shiny surface, and many successful people have the charisma of a rock.

But you do have to be incredibly genuine to be extremely charismatic.

Be humble. Share your screwups. Admit your mistakes and be the lesson learned.

And definitely laugh at yourself. When you do, other people won't laugh at you. They'll laugh with you.

And they'll like you better for it… and want to be around you a lot more.

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If you're a night owl, a psychologist will tell you that you have an evening-oriented "chronotype"— meaning that you feel more alert later in the day than those annoying morning people.

Recent research shows that you are also more likely to be a psychopath. 

In a 2013 paper, a joint team of British and Australian researchers found that night owls tend to have the so-called Dark Triad of personality traits.

The traits are: 

• Narcissism, or a need for dominance and a sense of entitlement.

• Psychopathy, or a willingness to manipulate people and a streak of social charm.

• Machiavellianism, or a tendency toward impulsivity and regular antagonism toward other people.

The nighttime orientation serves as a kind of evolutionary adaptation for the Dark Triad personality type, argue authors Peter K. Jonason of the University of Western Sydney and Amy Jones and Minna Lyon of Liverpool Hope University.

The night, with its lower levels of light in the environment and lower levels of cognitive functioning in people, could be well-suited to the "fast life strategy" that the Dark Triad personality type embodies. 

"Such features of the night may facilitate the casual sex, mate-poaching, and risk-taking the Dark Triad traits are linked to," they argue.

The methodology of their research was clear-cut: 263 volunteers took an online study. The study had a range of personality quizzes, testing for narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism — plus a quiz for chronotypes. 

The result? People who scored highly in the Dark Triad traits also tended to stay up late.

It makes a sinister sort of sense. 

"Those high on the Dark Triad may be characterized by cognitive biases that orient them to occupy an environment that will facilitate their life history strategy," the authors conclude. "In short, those high on the Dark Triad traits like many other predators (e.g., lions, African hunting dogs, scorpions), are creatures of the night." 

The paper made such a splash that it even won the 2014 Ig Nobel Prize, given for surprising or amusing scientific discoveries, for "amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning." 

The takeaway? The next time you're out late and meet someone charming, look out. 

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SEE ALSO: 15 Signs You're A Narcissist

For more detail on the study read:  People Who Love The Night Have Psychopathic Traits

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Although fewer young people are getting married today than ever before, research suggests that getting and staying married is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

As The New York Times recently concluded, "being married makes people happier and more satisfied with their lives than those who remain single — particularly during the most stressful periods, like midlife crises."

But how do you know if you should get hitched in the first place? 

We asked Peter Pearson, couples therapist and cofounder of the Couples Institute of Menlo Park, California. 

Chemistry was his first answer. 

"Chemistry is not everything," he said, "but if the chemistry is not there, that's a tough thing to overcome. If the chemistry is more there for one person than the other, that's tough to overcome. It's hard to build passion if it's low at the beginning. If I could find a way to build passion where passion was low, I'd be richer than Bill Gates."

But it's not just sexual chemistry, Pearson said. What you might call social chemistry plays a crucial role — the way you feel when you're with the other person. In his experience, when people have affairs, it's more than simple lust — it's also about the way they feel when they're around the other person. 

That sense of "how I feel" can be investigated further by looking at the work of Canadian psychologist Eric Berne. Back in the 1950s and '60s, Berne developed "transactional analysis," a model that tried to provide an account of how two people in a relationship interact, or transact.

His popular books about the model became bestsellers, namely "The Games People Play." Drawing somewhat on Sigmund Freud, his theory argued that every person has three "ego states":

• The parent: What you've been taught

• The child: What you have felt

• The adult: What you have learned

When two people are really compatible, they connect along each tier. Pearson gave us a few questions for figuring out compatibility at each level: 

• The parent: Do you have similar values and beliefs about the world? 

• The child: Do you have fun together? Can you be spontaneous? Do you think your partner's hot? Do you like to travel together? 

• The adult: Does each person think the other is bright? Are you good at solving problems together? 

While having symmetry across all three is ideal, Pearson said that people often "get together to balance each other." One person might identify as fun-loving and adventurous, while the other takes on the role of nurturing and responsible. 

While that divvying-up of roles makes for good odd-couple romantic comedies, it's not ultimately sustainable.

"That works until someone gets tired," Pearson said — until one partner is shouting, "I'm tired of being the responsible person here!"

When that happens (or ideally, before that happens), a couple has to go through the "differentiation" process.  

In another interview, Pearson's wife and Couples Institute cofounder Ellyn Bader described how the high-tension phase of differentiation works: 

People have to come to terms with the reality that "we really are different people. You are different from who I thought you were or wanted you to be. We have different ideas, different feelings, different interests."

Differentiation has two components. There is self-differentiation: "This is who I am and what I want." This refers to the development of an independent sense of self: to know what I want, think, feel, desire...

The second involves differentiation from the other. When this is successful, the members of the couple have the capacity to be separate from each other and involved at the same time.

For couples to survive that differentiation process and maintain their compatibility, the real secret sauce is effort. 

But despite all these theoretical models, Pearson said the clues about what predicts true compatibility are much more of a felt sense than something you reason out. 

He provided a litmus test. "If you're living together and your partner is away for a couple days and you see a favorite scarf, a pair of shoes, or another article of clothing that's important to them, how do you feel?" Pearson asked. "Do you feel annoyed that you have to pick up the clutter, or does it bring up happy memories?" 

The answer can tell you a lot about how your parent, child, and adult are getting along with theirs. 

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Marriage has always been a gamble, but the modern game is harder — with higher stakes than ever before.

Struggling marriages make people more unhappy today than in the past, while healthy marriages have some of the happiest couples in history, according to a comprehensive analysis published in 2007 regarding marital quality and personal well-being.

When Eli Finkel sought to understand why marriage is more extreme at both ends today than in the past, he discovered something intriguing yet discouraging: Marriages in the US are more challenging today than at any other time in our country's history.

Finkel is a professor of social psychology at Northwestern University and is known for developing a surprisingly simple marriage-saving procedure, which takes 21 minutes a year. (The procedure involves three seven-minute online writing sessions, where couples describe their most recent disagreement from the perspective of a hypothetical neutral bystander — something they are also encouraged to try out in future arguments.)

Finkel, together with his colleagues of the Relationships and Motivation LAB at Northwestern, have gone on to publish several papers on what they call "the suffocation model of marriage in America."

In their latest paper on this front, they explain why — compared to previous generations — some of the defining qualities of today's marriages make it harder for couples to cultivate a flourishing relationship. The simple answer is that people today expect more out of their marriage. If these higher expectations are not met, it can suffocate a marriage to the point of destroying it.

Finkel, in an Opinion article in The New York Times summarizing their latest paper on this model, discusses the three distinct models of marriage that relationship psychologists refer to:

• institutional marriage (from the nation's founding until 1850)
• companionate marriage (from 1851 to 1965)
• self-expressive marriage (from 1965 onward)

Before 1850, people were hardly walking down the aisle for love. In fact, American couples at this time, who wed for food production, shelter, and protection from violence, were satisfied if they felt an emotional connection with their spouse, Finkel wrote. (Of course, old-fashioned, peaceful-seeming marriages may have been especially problematic for women, and there were an "array of cruelties that this kind of marriage could entail,"Rebecca Onion wrote recently in Aeon.)

Those norms changed quickly when an increasing number of people left the farm to live and work in the city for higher pay and fewer hours. With the luxury of more free time, Americans focused on what they wanted in a lifelong partner, namely companionship and love. But the counter-cultural attitude of the 1960s led Americans to think of marriage as an option instead of an essential step in life.

This leads us to today's model, self-expressive marriage, wherein the average modern, married American is looking not only for love from their spouse but for a sense of personal fulfillment. Finkel writes that this era's marriage ideal can be expressed in the simple quote "You make me want to be a better man," from James L. Brooks' 1997 film "As Good as It Gets."

These changes to marital expectations have been a mixed bag, Finkel argues.

"As Americans have increasingly looked to their marriage to help them meet idiosyncratic, self-expressive needs, the proportion of marriages that fall short of their expectations has grown, which has increased rates of marital dissatisfaction,"Finkel's team writes, in their latest paper. On the other hand, "those marriages that succeed in meeting these needs are particularly fulfilling, more so than the best marriages in earlier eras."

The key to a successful, flourishing marriage? Finkel and his colleagues describe three general options:

• Don't look to your marriage alone for personal fulfillment. In addition to your spouse, use all resources available to you including friends, hobbies, and work.
• If you want a lot from your marriage, then you have to give a lot, meaning that in order to meet their high expectations, couples must invest more time and psychological resources into their marriage.
• And if neither of those options sound good, perhaps it's time to ask less of the marriage and adjust high expectations for personal fulfillment and self discovery.

Other researchers, like sociologist Jeffrey Dew, support the notion that time is a crucial factor in sustaining a successful marriage.

Dew, who is a professor at the University of Virginia, found that Americans in 1975 spent, on average, 35 hours a week alone with their spouse while couples in 2003 spent 26 hours together. Child-rearing couples in 1975 spent 13 hours a week together, alone, compared to couples in 2003 who spent 9 hours a week together. The divorce rate in America was 32.8% in 1970 and rose to 49.1% by 2000.

While that doesn't necessarily mean less time together led to divorce or that the people who stayed together were happy, Finkel's research suggests that higher expectations and less investment in the relationship may be a toxic brew.

Marriage has become as tricky but also as potentially rewarding as climbing Mt. Everest: Obtaining a sense of personal fulfillment from your partner is as hard as achieving the summit. This is both good and bad because it means that you are reaching for the pinnacle of what marriage has to offer — which explains why couples in healthy marriages are happier now than in the past — but it also means that meeting those expectations and feeling satisfied in marriage is harder than ever.

"The good news is that our marriages can flourish today like never before," Finkel writes for The New York Times. "They just can't do it on their own."

SEE ALSO: Scientists Have Discovered How Common Different Sexual Fantasies Are

CHECK OUT: 5 Ways To Tell If Someone Is Cheating On You

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Getting hitched is good for you. 

"Being married makes people happier and more satisfied with their lives than those who remain single,"the New York Times recently concluded, "particularly during the most stressful periods, like midlife crises."

But if romantic comedies have taught us anything, deciding who to marry is one of the hardest choices you'll make in your life.

To figure it out, you could go the analytic route, agonizing over every compatibility.

Or you could take the oh-so-simple-advice of Peter Pearson, psychologist and cofounder of the Couples Institute, a couples therapy practice in Menlo Park, California. 

He suggests answering a simple question: "If you're living together and your partner is away for a couple days and you see a favorite scarf, a pair of shoes, or another article of clothing that's important to them, how do you feel?" 

"Do you feel annoyed that you have to pick up the clutter," Pearson continued, "or does it bring up happy memories?"

While simple, the question makes a profound point: Do you appreciate or resent your partner? 

And the answer has massive consequences. 

Relationship psychologists have discovered that kindness and generosity are what make couples last — and those qualities won't come without lots of appreciation.

SEE ALSO: Psychologists Say You Need These 3 Compatibilities To Have A Successful Marriage

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If you're thinking about tying the knot, you're probably wondering if — and how — such a big commitment will impact your relationship.

Here's the good news: People who get married report being happier over the course of their lives than those who stay single, according to a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Spouses are the happiest, the paper found, when their life partners are also their best friends.

But it gets better than that. If your partner is also your best friend, you don't actually need to be married to reap the benefits of the relationship.

The increased happiness levels the researchers found to be linked with marriage held true for best-friend couples who lived together too, even if they weren't married.

To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers studied three separate data sets that included information about thousands of couples: The United Kingdom's Annual Population Survey, the British Household Panel Survey, and the Gallup World Poll. Then, they controlled for couples' age, gender, income, and health conditions (all of which could potentially affect their results).

Here's a chart from the paper comparing the life satisfaction of people who had ever been married (red line) with people who were single and had never been married (blue line):

There's something crucial missing from that chart though: The results were very similar for cohabitating couples who considered their partner their best friend but were not married.

Here's a chart comparing the life satisfaction of couples who were married (blue bars) with couples who lived together but were unmarried (red bars). Couples whose partner was also their best friend are to the left; couples who had another best friend who was not their partner are to the right.

People in a relationship who saw their significant other as their best friend and either lived with that person or married them were happier than couples who saw their best friend as someone outside of the relationship.

"What immediately intrigued me about the results was to rethink marriage as a whole," University of British Columbia economics professor and study coauthor John Helliwell told the New York Times. "Maybe what is really important is friendship, and to never forget that in the push and pull of daily life."

This takeaway squares with other research. A 2012 survey of American couples found that those who lived together but were not married had higher self-esteem and were happier overall than their married counterparts, even though both types of relationships improved bigger-picture well-being. Other studies have shown too that, despite persistent narratives about marriage as key to happiness, tying the knot doesn't always have a net positive effect on couples. A 2011 review of the impact on happiness of major life events found that couples who got married generally felt less happy and less satisfied with their lives over time.

In other words, your significant other should be your best friend. But as far as marrying that person goes? Not required for optimal happiness.

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SEE ALSO: Science Says Lasting Relationships Come Down To 2 Basic Traits

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When it happened to me for the first time, I was hit hard with feelings — happiness, excitement, concern for another person that went deeper than anything I'd experienced before. Suddenly, my body felt light — weightless, even. I was floating. I'd lost control, but I knew everything was going to be okay.

Falling in love, I quickly realized, felt an awful lot like, well, falling.

But what if love wasn't as passive as we tend to picture it being? What if — instead of stumbling into it as a result of chance or fate — we actively choose it?

Some research suggests this is what actually happens when we find ourselves deeply bonded to another person: We don't fall in love — we jump.

In 1997, State University of New York psychologist Arthur Aron tested the idea that two people who were willing to feel more connected to one another could do so, even within a short time frame. (The experiment featured prominently in a recent Modern Love column in The New York Times.)

For his study, Aron separated two groups of people, then paired people up within their groups and had them chat with one another for 45 minutes. While the first group of pairs spent the 45 minutes engaging in small-talk, the second group got a list of questions that gradually grew more intimate, from things like, "Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?" to "Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?"

Not surprisingly, the pairs who asked the gradually more probing questions felt closer and more connected after the 45 minutes were up. Six months later, two of the participants (a tiny fraction of the original study group) even found themselves in love — an intriguing result, though not a significant one.

Still, Aron's findings — that getting to know someone is simple, but takes effort — are particularly meaningful for our most intimate partnerships. 

When we see love as a choice or an action rather than something that simply happens to us, we're more willing to take responsibility for building and maintaining the relationship.

For one of the questions in Aron's experiment, participants had to identify characteristics about their partner that were important to them. When practiced regularly, this simple exercise of telling your partner what about them is meaningful to you can help both of you feel closer and more connected. A recent study found, similarly, that couples who took time to feel grateful for their partner's kind acts felt happier and more connected. 

Aron's study hit on several other key components of any strong relationship, from talking through big decisions (#36: "Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it") to discussing personal experiences openly and honestly (#29: "Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life").

Married couples who make big decisions as a team, for example, are not only happier individually but feel closer to one another and stay together longer. Similarly, couples who speak openly about the physical and emotional parts of their relationships tend to trust one another more and feel more satisfied with the relationship.

So next time you think about falling in love, picture yourself leaping — not stumbling.

PREVIOUSLY: Study Reveals The Kinds Of Marriages That Make People The Happiest

UP NEXT: Psychologists Say One Habit Can Make Or Break A Relationship

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Ty Tashiro, psychologist and author of The Science of Happily Ever After,  explains why these two (often overlooked) personality traits are so important in maintaining long-lasting relationships. 

Produced by Alana Kakoyiannis

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What if love weren't as passive as we tend to picture it being?

What if, instead of stumbling into it as a result of chance or fate, we actively choose it?

In 1997, State University of New York psychologist Arthur Aron tested the idea that two people who were willing to feel more connected to each other could do so, even within a short time.

The experiment is featured prominently in a recent Modern Love column in The New York Times, in which the author pointed to the questions as the springboard into her own romance; more on that here.

For his study, Aron separated two groups of people, then paired people up within their groups and had them chat with one another for 45 minutes. While the first group of pairs spent the 45 minutes engaging in small talk, the second group got a list of questions that gradually grew more intimate.

Not surprisingly, the pairs who asked the gradually more probing questions felt closer and more connected after the 45 minutes were up. Six months later, two of the participants (a tiny fraction of the original study group) even found themselves in love— an intriguing result, though not a significant one.

Here are the 36 questions the pairs in Aron's test group asked one another, broken up into three sets. Each set is intended to be more intimate than the one that came before.

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.

Try them out, and let us know what happens.

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