Love may not be a drug, but it can certainly feel like one.

Being in love floods our brains with chemicals that can induce feelings of everything from pleasure to intense focus and attachment.

But being in love isn't all in our heads: these chemicals can cause reactions throughout the body, which might help explain that tingly-all-over feeling we get when we see a loved one, or the "high" we feel after we've met that special someone.

Take a look at how love affects our brains and bodies:

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NOW WATCH: 5 scientifically proven ways to make someone fall in love with you

A small study from the University of Western Ontario shows how people deal with breakups on Facebook. Researchers Veronika Lukacs and Anabel Quan-Haase surveyed 107 participants in attempt to trace the affect that Facebook has on romantic breakups. 

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Contrary to what fairy tales may tell you, relationships take work. 

So we collected some of the best social science findings about what makes them last. 

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NOW WATCH: 5 ways to change your body language to make people like you

Ted Mosby from the TV show "How I Met Your Mother" is probably the perfect hopeless romantic.

Ted is fictional, of course, but a group of men created the show, which follows the male character's years-long quest to find true love. We see Ted's hopeless romantic side in the very first episode — he steals a blue French horn as a gift for a girl he just met, and tells her that he's in love with her on their very first date.

A lot of real-world data, however, backs up the idea men are more like Ted than most people might assume. It comes down to basic biology and evolutionary development, according to biological anthropologist Helen Fisher.

"Men are more romantic," Fisher said during an episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk Radio. "They fall in love faster because they’re so visual. They fall in love more regularly. They want more public displays of affection."

It's clear that men's disproportionately better vision plays a huge role in their romantic tendencies. And that visual strength comes from testosterone. Hormones like testosterone evolved millions of years ago to get males and females operating in a certain way to help them survive. Men were the hunters so they needed more visual prowess, Fisher said.

Research involving transgender people also shows when someone transitions from a woman into a man while taking testosterone, they become more visually attuned, Fisher said. Their visual skills improve and they're more aroused by visual stimuli.

So it makes sense when surveys show that men are much more likely than women to report falling in love at first sight. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology also found men are more likely to be the first ones to say "I love you" in a relationship, and to feel more happiness when hearing those words for the first time in a new relationship.

A romantic mindset and falling in love at first sight doesn't make evolutionary sense for women, Fisher said. When humans were first evolving, women had to invest a lot more time and energy into raising children. Falling in love quickly would make it more likely they'd end up with a sub-par mate or miss a better mating opportunity, then waste time raising kids that wouldn't survive to pass on their genes, she added.

In short, women are biologically and evolutionarily programmed to be choosier than men when it comes to relationships. It's much less risky for men to jump right in.

Today that translates into men falling in love faster and more often than women. And that's probably why the show is called "How I Met Your Mother," not "How I Met Your Father."

You can listen to the full StarTalk Radio below. The romance discussion starts around the 40-minute mark:

SEE ALSO: How to tell if someone is flirting with you

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NOW WATCH: A psychologist reveals how to get rid of negative thoughts

Ever wonder if your significant other isn't being entirely truthful?

First of all,there's a good chance you're right — it's perfectly normal to lie.

But if you're worried that someone's fibbing extends into the important stuff, like happiness or fidelity, you might have considered trying to catch them in a lie.

Unfortunately, science can't tell you if your partner is sleeping around, but it is getting better at spotting when someone — especially a significant other — is being deceptive.

Here are 7 ways to tell if your partner might be keeping something important from you.

SEE ALSO: Psychologist says these 2 patterns of behavior are the most common signs that a couple is going to divorce

READ MORE: 5 things that happen to couples who've been together a long time

Ask a friend.

Other people — strangers, even — have an uncanny ability to detect when something's not right in someone else's relationship.

BYU psychologists tested out this idea by having couples draw an object together, with one participant blindfolded and the other one giving instructions on what to draw. The whole thing was videotaped. Before they started, the scientists had the couples answer a few questions about their relationship in private, including whether or not they'd ever cheated. 

Then, the researchers had a group of strangers watch the footage and guess which couples included a partner who'd ever cheated. The volunteers were surprisingly accurate.

Although preliminary, the research suggests that, simply by watching a couple doing something that requires working together, an outside observer may be able to detect infidelity or unhappiness.

"People make remarkably accurate judgments about others in a variety of situations after just a brief exposure to their behavior," the researchers wrote in the study.

Mull it over while doing something else.

People are generally bad judges of character — consciously, at least. When we are given time to process another person's actions subconsciously, however, we're far better at telling truth from deceit.

In 2013, a team of psychologists had a panel of student judges watch people give testimony and decide if they'd lied or told the truth. The students who were given time to think before they made a decision — so long as they were made to think about something other than the case they were assessing — were better at figuring out whether the person they were judging had been deceitful.

"These findings suggest that the human mind is not unfit to distinguish between truth and deception," write the researchers in the study, "but that this ability resides in previously overlooked processes."

Listen carefully to the words they use.

For a recent study, Southern Methodist University professor of psychology James W. Pennebaker looked at some data he and his colleague Diane Berry had gathered from a text analysis program. They found that some specific patterns of language were helpful at predicting when someone was avoiding the truth.

Liars, they found, tended to use fewer of the following three types of words:

• First person words, like "I,""me," or "my"
• Cognitive words, like "realize" or "think"
• Exclusive words, like "but" or "except"

But they tended to use more of the following types of words:

• Negative emotion words, like "hate,""anger," or "enemy"
• Motion verbs, like "walk" or "move"

Infidelity is common in France, but no one in the country seems to mind.

In Aziz Ansari's new book on romance in the digital age, "Modern Romance," the comedian/actor points to a 2014 study by the French Institute of Public Opinion, which found that 55% of French men and 32% of French women had admitted to cheating on their spouse or significant other.

Fortunately for the men, only 47% of the French see infidelity as "morally unacceptable," according to a Pew Research study Ansari cites.

To better understand the country's unique relationship with infidelity, Ansari traveled to France and interviewed young Frenchmen about their thoughts on the matter.

Respondents said cheating was often seen as "natural" or "inevitable" to seek novel sexual experiences. One young man said: "In the subconscious of French people is an idea that everyone cheats."

In Paris, a woman told Ansari she didn't think it was possible to be faithful to one person forever, while a Parisian man said "you can be a good guy and still have affairs."

Affairs are so common in France that one person even told Ansari that French flower shops advertised with "don't forget your mistress!"

What Ansari found in his visit wasn't that French people didn't care if their spouses cheat, but that they weren't as shattered by the betrayal. Because of their cultural attitude, the French are also the most likely to forgive a cheater.

In fact, 63% of French people "believe they can love someone even if he or she has cheated," according to the French Institute of Public Opinion, and the French were the most forgiving of the 39 countries surveyed by a Pew Research study noted by the Telegraph.

C'est la vie.

SEE ALSO: Ask your date these 3 questions if you want to know whether they're relationship material

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Actor Jeff Goldlum was recently named to GQ’s list of the 20 Most Stylish Men Alive.

In an interview with the magazine about his personal style, the newly married actor was asked how he responds when a woman asks what you think of her outfit.

Here's his advice for men everywhere:

“The traditional wisdom is of course to be positive. Because, even though I embrace truthfulness—I'd say I am a truth seeker, and truth teller, and person who's devoted his life to authenticity (under imaginary circumstances and in real life, frankly; it's an ideal toward which I aspire, and I'm a humble student of it)—I also feel that in human relations (when not under imaginary circumstances, especially), the way to skin the cat—and the way toward integrity, in fact—is not necessarily always to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If they really ask, and you have some kind of opinion that you think can be constructive, maybe then. But err on the side of restraint. Restraaaaaint. And say ‘Mm-mm-mm. Well, you look good in everything! Da-da da-da da-da. Et cetera et cetera.’”

You got that? "err on the side of restraint" and when in doubt, "You look good in everything!"

Read Goldblum's full interview with GQ here.

SEE ALSO: Don't listen to GQ — George Clooney is still incredibly stylish and these 15 photos prove it

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NOW WATCH: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The original 1993 'Jurassic Park' cast today

Humans love to flirt. 

It's even good for couples: According to a 2012 study, couples who flirt regularly tend to feel more satisfied with their relationships. The author of that study theorized that's because it helps partners "create a private world."

But flirting is more complex than it looks. And the reasons we do it can range from logical to downright creepy.

In a 2004 review of the literature on flirting, Northern Illinois University professor David Dryden Henningsen identified six different motivations for flirting and categorized them with a single word: 

• Sex: trying to get into bed 
• Fun: treating it like a sport
• Exploring: trying to see what it would be like to be in a relationship
• Relational: trying to increase the intimacy of a relationship
• Esteem: increasing one's own self esteem
• Instrumental: trying to get something from the other person

The most troubling of all these motivations — to us, at least — was the "instrumental" one. 

It happens in and out of the workplace: 

• A 1998 British study found that women in the hospitality industry are often pressured by management to flirt with customers in order to cultivate repeat business and get better tips. 

• According to a 1982 study of American college students, 60% of female and 41% of male students reported that they had flirted with instructors. About 75% of students thought that flirting could increase a female student's grade, and 50% thought that flirting could increase a male student's grade. 

• In a 2007 survey of 500 professional women, 86% said they "would happily flirt with a male colleague if it meant they got their own way." A 2008 study found that women who flirt in negotiations are viewed as more likeable but less authentic, and a 2005 study found that women who didn't flirt at work were more likely to get promoted.  

If all this seems strangely confined to results about women, that's because it is. Compared with all the research about how women use flirting to get ahead, there's almost none for how guys do it. Of that small body of knowledge, the main takeaways include that men who flirt at work tend to be less satisfied with their jobs.

There is a larger lesson here, too: attraction is its own sort of power.

UP NEXT: 6 strange things love does to your brain and body

NOW READ: Psychologist says these 2 patterns of behavior are the most common signs that a couple is going to divorce

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NOW WATCH: A psychologist reveals how to get rid of negative thoughts

It's hard to think of a more awkward experience than talking to an attractive stranger. 

It's like having a stomach full of butterflies and a mouthful of peanut butter: Um, uh, how are you?

Helpfully, social science has done a little empirical research about how to begin a conversation. 

Enter a study in the journal Sex Roles lead by University of Alaska psychologist Chris L. Kleinke.

He asked 600 respondents to rate the effectiveness of three kinds of opening lines:

• "Pick-up" lines like "You must be a librarian, because I saw you checking me out" 

• Open-ended, innocuous questions like "What do you think of this band?" or "What team are you rooting for?"

• Direct approaches like "You're cute — can I buy you a drink?" 

The responses were pretty evenly split along gender lines: While the men in the study tended to prefer the more direct approach, the women tended to prefer the open-ended, innocuous questions.

Not surprisingly, very few people said they preferred the pick-up lines. The authors said that pick-up lines persist because they're "reinforced by popular books and magazines that stimulate our fantasies with stories overplaying the number of 'successful pickups' that actually occur in real life."

So it's best to go with a mild, inoffensive opener. 

"The advantage of innocuous opening lines is that they offer a less threatening context for the recipient's response," the authors write.

UP NEXT: 6 strange things love does to your brain and body

NOW READ: Psychologist says these 2 patterns of behavior are the most common signs that a couple is going to divorce

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NOW WATCH: A psychologist reveals how to get rid of negative thoughts

If you're struggling to make ends meet or just not where you want to be financially, open your eyes and look around.

In most cases, your net worth mirrors the level of your closest friends. Is it time to start looking for some new friends?

I've asked that question hundreds of times on stage all over the world, and it never fails to get people fired up and even angry.

I'm not suggesting you go and unfriend all your friends just because they don't have a lot of money. And I'm not suggesting that you choose your friends based on how much money they have.

However, as Einstein said, consciousness is contagious.

If you want more money, you should consider spending time with and befriending people with more money.

Exposure to people who are more successful than you are has the potential to expand your thinking and catapult your income. We become like the people we associate with, and that's why winners are attracted to winners. In other segments of society, this is accepted, but the rich have always been lambasted for their predisposition to engage the company of people with similar financial success.

The reality is, millionaires think differently from the middle class about money, and there's much to be gained by being in their presence. Perhaps even more surprising: Many millionaires are surprisingly humble and don't view themselves as having "arrived." Many of them believe millionaires are simply people who don't know how to become billionaires.

After all, why would someone settle for millions if they possessed the awareness to earn billions? That's why millionaires are always attempting to gain entry into that exclusive group of people who are among the wealthiest in the world.


The average person wants to meet a millionaire to tell their friends they met a millionaire. Millionaires, on the other hand, want to associate with billionaires to learn how they think. One group is watching the game; the other is playing the game. They only question that matters: Which one are you?

Honestly ask yourself: How many rich people are in your inner circle of associates and advisors? Set a goal in the New Year to double the amount of time you spend associating with people who are richer than you are. Doing so just might make you rich.

The correlation between your friends and your level of wealth is one that is taught improperly from the start.

Most parents never teach their kids about the importance of making contacts. They hope their kids are popular and make friends so they enjoy their days in school.

Wealthy parents have a different approach. Sure, they want their children to enjoy their years growing up. But they also know that building contacts, even as early as high school, can make the difference between a life of average success and one filled with uncommon opportunity. While most parents are hoping their kid becomes the quarterback of the football team or the most popular cheerleader, the rich are concerned about building the child's social infrastructure for the future.

The message of associating with the wealthy often sounds elitist or discriminatory against the middle class. But it's not. It's nice to say everyone, regardless of financial status, has access to all the good things in life. It's also naïve and untrue. Right or wrong, wealth offers privileges, and one of the most fundamental ways to start the wealth-generating process is to get around rich people and watch how they think. It's an eye-opening experience.

The bottom line: Like attracts like. People with high-level formal education like to associate with the academic elite. Physically fit people enjoy spending time with others who are fit. Religious people like to have fellowship with people of faith. And rich people like to associate with others who are rich.

As Will Rogers said, "A man only learns in two ways: one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people."

Steve Siebold is the author of "How Rich People Think" and a self-made multi-millionaire who has interviewed 1,200 of the world's wealthiest people during the past 30 years.

SEE ALSO: What The Middle Class Doesn't Understand About Rich People

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Licensed psychotherapist and relationship expert Rachel Sussman explains how often is "normal" for couples in happy relationships to have sex. Turns out there's no specific answer. 

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We've come a long way since the days of "I Love Lucy" when the idea of sex on TV was so taboo that even married couples were shown sleeping in separate beds.

Since then, our ideas about sex have opened up a lot — we've become far more accepting of everything from sex before marriage to sex between same-sex couples, and those trends have picked up pace since the 1970s.

But in a few areas, like sex outside of marriage, we've actually grown a tad less accepting.

At least that's according to a recent study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior which looked at data from a huge sample of Americans included in the General Social Survey (GSS).

Here are its biggest findings:

We've grown more accepting of sex before marriage

In the early 70s, just 29% of Americans (35% of men and 23% of women) thought it was okay to have sex before your wedding day. To be more exact, when given options on a scale of 1-4, with 1 being "always wrong," and 4 being "not wrong at all," less than a third of people would choose "not wrong at all."

About a decade later, this percentage grew to around 42%, where it stayed through the 90s. In the 2000s, it rose to nearly half (49%), and in the 2010s it hit 55% (59% of men and 52% of women).

We've grown more accepting of gay and lesbian sex

Acceptance of sex between gays and lesbians has tripled since the 70s, with the most growth happening amongst young people. Just over 1 in every 5 young people who were between 18 and 29 in the 1970s said sex between people of the same gender was "not wrong at all." By the 90s, this percentage rose to 26%. By the 2010s, more than half of Millennials (56%) approve of sex between same-sex partners.

and...

We're reporting having more sexual partners

In the 1980s, people said they had an average of 7 sex partners since age 18 (roughly 11 for men and 4 for women). In the 2010s that number rose to 11 (roughly 18 for men and 6 for women).

We're reporting having more casual sex

Just about 35% of 18-29 year olds in the late 1980s said they had sex with a casual date (44% of men and 19% of women). Yet nearly half (45%) of Millennials in the 2010s (55% of men and 31% of women) said they'd had sex with a casual date.

These increases don't necessarily mean we're simply having more casual sex or sex partners, and could also be a result of people being more comfortable about admitting they've had more casual sex or sex partners in the first place.

but...

We've grown less accepting of sex outside of marriage

Although levels of acceptance regarding sex between two people who are married to other people has stayed relatively low throughout the years, acceptance rates have declined pretty significantly since the 1970s.

About 4% of adults said sex between two people who were married to other people was "not wrong at all" in 1973 (6% for men and 2% for women), compared to just 1% of people in 2012 (2% for men and less than 1% for women).

NOW READ: It turns out it's scientifically possible to have twins who have different dads — and this woman just did it

SEE ALSO: Here's how common open relationships really are

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NOW WATCH: Spontaneous sex is a myth — here's how a 'sex schedule' could save your relationship

Actor Jeff Goldlum was recently named to GQ’s list of the 20 Most Stylish Men Alive.

In an interview with the magazine about his personal style, the newly married actor was asked how he responds when a woman asks what you think of her outfit.

Here's his advice for men everywhere:

“The traditional wisdom is of course to be positive. Because, even though I embrace truthfulness—I'd say I am a truth seeker, and truth teller, and person who's devoted his life to authenticity (under imaginary circumstances and in real life, frankly; it's an ideal toward which I aspire, and I'm a humble student of it)—I also feel that in human relations (when not under imaginary circumstances, especially), the way to skin the cat—and the way toward integrity, in fact—is not necessarily always to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If they really ask, and you have some kind of opinion that you think can be constructive, maybe then. But err on the side of restraint. Restraaaaaint. And say ‘Mm-mm-mm. Well, you look good in everything! Da-da da-da da-da. Et cetera et cetera.’”

You got that? "err on the side of restraint" and when in doubt, "You look good in everything!"

Read Goldblum's full interview with GQ here.

SEE ALSO: Don't listen to GQ — George Clooney is still incredibly stylish and these 15 photos prove it

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NOW WATCH: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The original 1993 'Jurassic Park' cast today

If you're fortunate enough to find someone you want to settle down with forever, the next question is: How do you achieve happily ever after?

According to mathematician Hannah Fry, it may come down to a simple formula.

Fry, who works at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis in London, explains in her 2014 TED Talk and recently released book, "The Mathematics of Love," that the best predictor of long-lasting relationships is how positive and negative a couple can be to one another.

In her book, she discusses the groundbreaking work of psychologist John Gottman and his team. Over many years they observed hundreds of couples and noted their facial expressions, heart rates, blood pressure, skin conductivity, and the words they used in conversation with their partners.

They discovered low-risk couples have more positive interactions with each other, and high-risk couples tend to spiral into negativity.

As Fry puts it, "In relationships where both partners consider themselves as happy, bad behavior is dismissed as unusual." For example, a wife might assume her husband's grumpiness is due to stress at work or a bad night's sleep. 

"In negative relationships, however, the situation is reversed," writes Fry. "Bad behavior is considered the norm." A husband, for instance, might think his wife's grumpiness is "typical," due to her "selfishness" or other negative personality trait.

Gottman then teamed up with mathematician James Murray, and they began to understand how these spirals of negativity happen. They came up with the below equations, which predict how positive or negative a husband and wife will be at the next point in their conversation.

As Fry explains, the model is framed as husband and wife but also applies to same-sex spouses and unmarried couples in long-term relationships.

The wife's equation is the top line, the husband's the bottom, and it solves for how positive or negative the next thing they say will be.

In hers, w stands for her mood in general, rwWt represents her mood when she's with her husband, and IHW shows how the husband's actions influence her. The husband's follows the same pattern.

Gottman and Murray found that the influence a couple has on each other is the most important factor. If a husband says something positive, like agrees with his wife or makes a joke, the wife will likely react positively in turn. Meanwhile, if he does something negative, like interrupts her or dismisses something she's said, she will likely be negatively impacted.

The "negativity threshold" pinpoints when the wife becomes so frustrated by her husband that she responds very negatively.

Interestingly, Fry says she would have imagined that the best relationships would have a high negativity threshold, meaning they'd be focused on compromise and would bring up an issue only if it was "a really big deal." But in fact, the opposite is true.

"The most successful relationships are the ones with a really low negativity threshold," writes Fry. "In those relationships, couples allow each other to complain, and work together to constantly repair the tiny issues between them. In such a case, couples don't bottle up their feelings, and little things don't end up being blown completely out of proportion."

Happy couples, then, tend to have more positive interactions than negative ones, and thus are more likely to give each other the benefit of a doubt. When there is an issue, they're more likely to bring it up quickly, fix it, and move on.

"Mathematics leaves us with a positive message for our relationships," Fry says, "reinforcing the age-old wisdom that you really shouldn't let the sun go down on your anger."

Watch Fry's TED Talk on the mathematics of love below.

SEE ALSO: IBM's supercomputer Watson ingested 2,000 TED Talks and can answer your deepest questions

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NOW WATCH: 5 ways to change your body language to make people like you

Romantic love is shrouded in mystery. What draws people together and how does the falling-in-love process work?

According to Elizabeth Philips, a Ph.D. student in applied experimental and human factors psychology at the University of Central Florida, psychologists have identified ten factors that explain why and how we fall in love. 

Here's what it takes:

Kevin Loria contributed to this article.

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NOW WATCH: 5 scientifically proven ways to make someone fall in love with you

Whether it's landing your dream job or getting the girl, a basic mathematical principle can help you in almost any situation.

That's according to Hannah Fry, a mathematician at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis in London and author of the new book "The Mathematics of Love."

She describes the "stable marriage problem," or the challenge of matching two entities so that neither would be better off in another match, and explains the Gale-Shapley matching algorithm often used to solve it. Exploiting this algorithm can be a great strategy for getting what you want.

Here's how it works: Fry uses the example of three boys talking to three girls at a party. Each participant has an ordered list of who is most suitable to go home with.

If this was a 1950s-style dating scenario in which the boys approached the girls, each boy would hit on his top-choice girl, Fry says. If a girl has multiple offers, she would choose the boy she preferred most, and if a boy were rejected, he would approach his second-choice girl.

The result is pretty great for the boys. Each gets his first- or second-choice partner, and there is no way the boys could improve, because their top choices have said yes or already rejected them.

The girls fare relatively worse, however, having paired up with their second- or third-choice partners.

Fry writes:

Regardless of how many boys and girls there are, it turns out that whenever the boys do the approaching, there are four outcomes that will be true:

1. Everyone will find a partner.

2. Once all partners are determined, no man and woman in different couples could both improve their happiness by running off together.

3. Once all partners are determined, every man will have the best partner available to him.

4. Once all partners are determined, every woman will end up with the least bad of all the men who approach her.

Essentially, whoever does the asking (and is willing to face rejection until achieving the best available option) is better off. Meanwhile, the person who sits back and waits for advances settles for the least bad option on the table.

The Gale-Shapley matching algorithm applies to plenty of situations beyond weekend hookups — including, say, hiring.

For example, a hiring manager who posts a job listing and lets the résumés roll in ultimately hires the best of the candidates who applied. But of course, that's a limited pool. On the other hand, a hiring manager who reaches out to the best professionals in the field and ends up with his or her third choice is still more likely to have a better candidate.

By the same token, a job seeker who approaches all the companies he or she wants to work for, starting with the most desirable, ends up with the best available employer.

The US National Resident Matching Program uses this strategy to match doctors with hospitals so that everyone is happy. Prior to the '50s, Fry says, hospitals reached out to the students they wanted, and the students accepted the least bad offers. But the organizers realized that doctors often had to relocate and weren't always happy with their options. To create a better system, they decided to flip the scenario and let doctors approach the hospitals they liked best.

Fry says the algorithm has been similarly applied to the assignments of dental residents, Canadian lawyers, and high-school students.

"Regardless of the type of relationship you're after," Fry concludes, "it pays to take the initiative."

Watch Fry's TED Talk on the mathematics of love:

SEE ALSO: A mathematical formula reveals the secret to lasting relationships

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NOW WATCH: We did the math: Is an MBA worth it?

After 10 years together, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner announced Tuesday that they are getting divorced.

"After much thought and careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to divorce," the couple said in a statement. "We go forward with love and friendship for one another and a commitment to co-parenting our children whose privacy we ask to be respected during this difficult time."

Affleck, 42, and Garner, 42, have three children: Violet, 9, Seraphina, 6, and Samuel, 3. 

In 2014, Garner told InStyle magazine of their parenting dynamic: "I know who wants what lunch, and I've done all the school paperwork and filled out the emergency cards. Ben doesn't know that stuff exists. He is in charge of laughter. No matter how much I tickle them or toss them or chase them around, it's not the same. If I'm the slow, steady drumbeat, he's the jazz." 

"Although they will file for divorce, it won't be done immediately,"reports TMZ. "They are working things out with a mediator and business managers. The divorce will be filed when all of the property and custody issues are resolved."

According to one report, the celebrity power couple is headed for a $150 million divorce. 

The couple, whose anniversary was Monday, announced their divorce on Tuesday -- but there may be a reason behind the timing.

"Waiting until after their 10th wedding anniversary might make sense from a Social Security perspective," notes MarketWatch. "Divorcing before 10 years of marriage would forfeit any spousal benefits they might choose to claim in the future."

Affleck and Garner got married in 2005 after meeting on the set of "Daredevil." Next year, Affleck will play Batman in the highly anticipated "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice."

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NOW WATCH: How much sex you should be having in a healthy relationship

Do you know how much money your spouse or partner makes?

According to the 2015 Fidelity Investments Couples Retirement Study, about four in 10 couples cannot answer this question correctly, and one in 10 of those couples were off in their estimates by $25,000 or more.

Both men and women were equally clueless — and wrong 43 percent of the time.

Additionally, 36 percent of couples in the survey disagreed on the amount of their household's total investible assets.

Baby Boomer couples did the best, followed by millennial couples, with Gen X couples bringing up the rear.

Related Link: The 3 Biggest Money Mistakes Couples Make

Nearly half of the surveyed couples (47 percent) disagreed on just how much they need to save in order to maintain their lifestyle in retirement, with 48 percent of the couples saying they had "no idea."

More than half (52 percent) did not know how much they could expect to receive in retirement income each month.

When it came to Social Security, 60 percent of couples did not know or weren't sure how much their benefits might be worth. Almost half (49 percent) of Baby Boomers fell into this category. This news is surprising, given that many Baby Boomers are on the brink of retiring or in retirement already.

Not knowing your actual household income can make it difficult to plan for the future, especially when it comes to saving and planning for retirement. It also can have major consequences if there is a divorce.

Related Link: Why Money Arguments Are a Red Flag for Couples

The last time Fidelity conducted this study in 2013, 27 percent of couples couldn't accurately state their partner's income. The big jump in that figure this year may be related to the increasing popularity of project-based work, with 40 percent of workers now employed on a freelance or contingent basis. With more income fluctuations from year to year, annual incomes may be harder to know and predict.

The Fidelity study looked at 1,051 couples who were either married or living together in long-term relationships, with a minimum household income of $75,000 or at least $100,000 in investable assets.  Participants were at least 25 years old. The study included 596 retired and pre-retired couples (age 47 or older), 154 Gen X couples (ages 35 to 46,) and 301 Gen Y couples (ages 25 to 34).

SEE ALSO: A financial planner says there's one kind of couple that's destined for money trouble

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sex - quarrels = x

x > 0 = happy marriage

x < 0 = unhappy marriage

In other words, you should be having sex more often than you quarrel.

The formula was derived from a series of studies in the 1970s. One unpublished study of married students at University of Missouri-Kansas City found that 28 out of 30 self-described happy couples had sex more than they argued, while all 12 self-described unhappy couples argued more. These results were corroborated by a 1974 study by John Howard and Robyn Dawes, in which all 23 happy couples had a positive score and all 3 unhappy couples had a negative score. Two1977 studies offered further confirmation of this idea. 

Now it's worth noting that these studies are a few decades old and relied on very small sample sizes, though many of their conclusions square with more recent research. Also, college-aged students who are married are not necessarily an accurate representation of all married couples, and perhaps sex is less important at some stages of some relationships.

Still, it remains a powerful and useful concept.

We came across this formula in "Thinking, Fast And Slow," the 2011 book by Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in a discussion of the value of simple formulas.

SEE ALSO: Scientists have found a surprising key to happy relationships

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The Japanese press has taken to calling it sekkusu shinai shokogun: celibacy syndrome.

Basically, the country just isn't that interested in sex — and it could have huge effects beyond its borders.

The most recent evidence comes in a survey by the Japan Family Planning Association, reported on in the Japan Times.

A full 49.3% of respondents between the ages of 16 and 49 in the 1,134-person survey said they hadn't had sex in the past month.

There was a minor gender variation:

• 48.3% of men reported not having sex

• 50.1% of women reported not having sex

According to Japan Times, both figures showed a 5% increase since two years ago.

Respondents gave a range of reasons as to why: 21.3% of married men and 17.8% married women cited fatigue from work, and 23% of married women said sex was "bothersome." And 17.9% of male respondents said they had little interest (or a strong dislike) of sex.

Other research suggests even more extreme trends.

According to a 2011 report from Japan's population center cited by Max Fisher at The Washington Post:

• 27% of men and 23% of women aren't interested in a romantic relationship

• From ages 18 to 34, 61% of men and 49% of women aren't involved in a relationship

• From ages 18 to 34, 36% of men and 39% of women have never had sex

Experts say "the flight from human intimacy" in Japan comes from having a highly developed economy and high gender inequality. (According to the World Economic Forum, Japan ranks 104 out of 140 countries regarding gender equality, slotted between Armenia and the Maldives).

"Professional women are stuck in the middle of that contradiction,"Fisher writes. "It's not just that day-care programs are scarce: Women who become pregnant or even just marry are so expected to quit work that they can come under enormous social pressure to do so and often find that career advancement becomes impossible. There's a word for married working women: oniyome, or 'devil wives.'"

That puts a squeeze on relational prospects for Japanese women. Fisher reports that women in their early 20s have a 25% chance of never marrying and a 40% chance of never having kids.

Japan's birth rate hit a record low in 2014 at just over 1 million infants. When combined with 1.3 million deaths in the same year, that's a deepening population crisis. According to Japan's population institute, the overall population could dip to 107 million by 2040 — or 20 million lower than today.

At the same time, Japan's population is shrinking and graying, setting up a "demographic time bomb" that could radiate out globally through the country's Greece-level national debt and deep economic ties with China and the US.

The Japanese government has stepped in to help with the national trend against relationships: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government wants 80% of fathers to take paternity leave, same as mothers taking maternity leave — while also increasing support for childcare. And one economist recommended a "tax on the handsome" to make geeky guys more attractive to women.

Different "demographic time bombs" are set to go off around the world: In China and India, the birthrates of boys have been outpacing those of girls for such a long time that a "marriage squeeze" is starting to hit both countries.

SEE ALSO: South Koreans could be 'extinct' by 2750

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