They say people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses. Most everyone can talk about a manager who effectively made their workday a living nightmare.

Now, new research suggests it's not just managers — our coworkers in general have the potential to make or break our work experience.

The research methodology itself is fascinating. For the second year in a row, career services site Monster and social intelligence company Brandwatch teamed up to analyze Tweets that mention work; in total, they looked at more than two million Tweets.

Results showed that "people" was one of the most frequently mentioned words in Tweets about loving or hating a job.

That makes sense in light of earlier research, from both Monster and other sources. Monster told Business Insider that a previous poll found 95% of respondents said friendly, polite coworkers are important to their overall happiness at work.

Meanwhile, a 2004 Gallup survey found that 51% of employees who strongly agree that their organization encourages close friendships at work are extremely satisfied at work. Compare that to just 19% of employees who disagree.

Encouraging employees to foster close relationships with coworkers may benefit organizations, too. Previous Gallup research found that employees who say they have a best friend at work are more productive, and more likely to say they've received recognition for their work recently.

This research has a number of important implications, namely that if you're looking for a job, try to find out what kind of people work there and whether they're generally friendly and social. Given that you'll spend the better part of your waking hours with them, it could be more important than the actual content of the work you're doing.

It's also worth thinking about strengthening your bonds with current coworkers. As Business Insider's Rachel Gillett has reported, there are a number of ways to do that, such as finding areas of similarity and common struggle.

Feeling close to your coworkers might seem like a fringe benefit — but if these findings are any indication, it could make all the difference between being a happy, stellar performer and dreading every workday.

SEE ALSO: How to make friends at work

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NOW WATCH: There’s an app that analyzes your coworkers' personalities and it’s shockingly accurate

My family often makes fun of me for being overly effusive in restaurants:

Oh, thank you so much for bringing the bread — we really appreciate it! Water? I love water! Thank you for being so kind!

Though no one in my family has ever said it explicitly, I imagine part of the reason they find it so hilarious is that I hardly ever show them so much gratitude.

Not even for oh, say, bringing me into this world and putting a roof over my head for 18 years.

So I had a quiet "aha!" moment while reading Janice Kaplan's "The Gratitude Diaries," in which she chronicles her yearlong effort to show more appreciation in different areas of her life.

Before writing "The Gratitude Diaries," Kaplan, a journalist who was formerly the editor of Parade magazine, helped conduct a survey on Americans' gratitude habits.

Results showed that 97% of respondents said they would express gratitude to a server in a nice restaurant (guilty as charged). But how many women said they regularly thanked their husbands? Just 48%.

In the book, Kaplan writes that she gets it — we have way higher expectations for our partners than we do for waiters. Beyond that, she suspects we also get so used to our partner being there for us that we generally forget to appreciate it.

Simply making the effort to say "thank you" can breathe new life into a tired relationship.

When she visited the Business Insider offices in August, Kaplan told us:

"When you're in a relationship, particularly for a long time, you kind of stop noticing somebody. Psychologists call it habituation."

"You get used to somebody. You stop realizing why you wanted to be there in the first place."

During the first month of her gratitude experiment, Kaplan focused on appreciating her husband.

She'd thank him for driving them home from a party or fixing a leaky faucet — and he'd be confused, because he always does those things.

"I know you do," Kaplan would tell him. "But I appreciate it."

As Business Insider's Erin Brodwin has reported, psychologists have known for a while that couples who express gratitude toward each other are more likely to stay together. In fact, thanking your partner even once can bring you two closer months later.

That's possibly because a single act of gratitude sparks a cycle of gratitude and generosity: You thank your partner, so your partner feels appreciated and invests more in the relationship, which in turn makes you feel more grateful to them.

Perhaps the part of "The Gratitude Diaries" that struck me most was a scene Kaplan describes in which her husband, a doctor, is rushing off in the middle of the night to treat a sick patient.

Typically, Kaplan writes, she'd be frustrated and angry that her husband was leaving at that hour. But during her gratitude experiment, she pushed herself to find the reason to be grateful.

So she told him:

"I was just thinking about how lucky your patient is to have you. She must feel so much better knowing you're on the way. The world needs more doctors like you. Thank you for being so special."

To me, this scene reflects how showing gratitude to the people we're closest to can take more effort than thanking the barista at Starbucks. It requires seeing the person in a new light — or simply seeing them at all.

But that effort can pay big dividends. Kaplan writes that her small acts of gratitude appeared to change her overall marriage for the better.

In the book she mentions one professor of marriage and family therapy who told her that every day he emails his wife thanking her for something. It doesn't have to be anything huge — thanking her for running errands when he was busy is fine.

The point is to make gratitude a habit so that, eventually, you don't have to think about it — it's just the default lens through which you see your partner's everyday behaviors.

SEE ALSO: 15 relationship facts everybody should know before getting married

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NOW WATCH: Why being yourself in your relationship is a terrible idea

There are a number of athlete couples competing together in the Olympics this year.

But one Olympic couple — Chinese diver He Zi, and her teammate and boyfriend, Qin Kai — showed up the others by getting engaged.

Qin, 30, proposed to 25-year-old He in a touching moment after she came in second place in the women's three-metre springboard diving competition on August 14.

Once the athlete picked up her silver medal at the podium, Qin dropped to one knee and popped the question, presenting her with a ring and a red rose, according to the Associated Press.

The diver nodded yes, and the couple — who have been together for six years — embraced in front of a cheering audience.

Here's the surprise proposal as it unfolded:

"He said a lot of things," the silver medal winner told the Associated Press, speaking of Qin's proposal. "He made a lot of promises, but the most important thing is this is the guy I can trust for the rest of my life."

While the proposal gave He another cause for celebration, her teammate Shi Tingmao — who came in first place with 406.05 points in the same diving competition — picked up a gold medal for their team. He was close in second place, scoring 387.90 points.

This isn't the first proposal to occur at this year's Olympics. After a game of rugby, Brazilian player Isadora Cerullo got engaged to her girlfriend Marjorie Enya, a volunteer manager at the event.

Here is a video:

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Simone Biles has already won three gold medals at the Rio Olympics — but she's also spent some quality time with the man she calls her "Brazilian boyfriend:" fellow gymnast Arthur Nory Mariano. 

The two aren't actually dating, NBC reports, but they are friends who became close while competing in international meets over the past few years. 

Mariano, 22, is one of Brazil's best all-around gymnasts — he just won a bronze medal in the men's floor exercise final. He got his start in judo, but switched to gymnastics when he was around 10 years old. NBC also notes that he's insanely popular on social media (possibly because he films many of his Snapchat stories shirtless).

He and Biles are both known for their fun-loving attitudes while competing. Just look at these smiles:

Mariano is a very vocal cheerleader for Biles, too. After Team USA competed in a qualifying round for women's gymnastics, he tweeted her a sweet message of congratulations:

And Biles returned the support when Mariano won his bronze medal:

Mariano has also been teaching Biles Portuguese — at least, the Portuguese word for "kisses:"

These two could not be more adorable:

Mariano's Olympic competition has concluded, but Biles has two more event finals: balance beam on August 15 and floor exercise on August 16. It looks like her Brazilian boyfriend will be cheering her on as she vies for two more gold medals. 

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NOW WATCH: The US women's gymnastics team is taking over Rio — and everyone's going crazy for them

It's a decidedly unromantic thing to hear, but here it is: Relationships take work.

The honeymoon phase, scientists say, lasts about a year, and while it's not necessarily downhill after that, it's also not all butterflies and sunshine — unless you deliberately chase after those things.

But doing just that is not as hard as it sounds. Research suggests there's one key way to maintain the spark: Try new things together.

Much of that research has been spearheaded by Arthur Aron, a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University. The research was cited in The New York Times.

In 1993, Aron and colleagues published a study that found couples who spent time jointly doing new and exciting activities were more satisfied with their relationships. For the study, the researchers recruited 53 married couples, assessed their relationship quality, and assigned them to one of three groups.

One group picked new and exciting activities to do together for 90 minutes a week — like going to a play, or hiking, or dancing. Another group spent 90 minutes a week doing pleasant but routine activities together — like going to a movie. The last group wasn't asked to change anything.

After 10 weeks, the researchers reassessed the couples' relationship quality and found that those who had tried new and exciting things were the most satisfied.

Aron and another set of colleagues extended those findings in a 2000 study, in which dating and married couples completed either a boring task — walking back and forth — or an exciting one — walking and navigating obstacles while they were Velcroed together.

The researchers measured couples' relationship satisfaction before and after they completed the task, and sure enough, couples who had completed the exciting task showed greater changes in how happy they were with each other.

This isn't to say that spending more time together is a panacea for a relationship rut. In fact, spending some time apart, with your own friends, can help you build a strong partnership.

But perhaps the greatest takeaway from this research is that feeling bored in a relationship isn't necessarily a bad thing. Instead, as The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, boredom can be a sign that you need to make a change — and when you do make that change, your relationship may be more satisfying than ever before.

SEE ALSO: 8 signs you're in a strong relationship — even if it doesn't feel like it

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NOW WATCH: Why being yourself in your relationship is a terrible idea

Most people would think that if it's not good looks that make a man most attractive to women, then it's definitely a sense of humor.

But studies consistently show that altruism is a top quality women are drawn to when they are looking for a relationship.

And a new study in the British Journal of Psychology found that altruistic men may have more sex, too.

The researchers asked unmarried Canadian adults how much they did good deeds like giving money to charity or helping someone get their car out of the snow. They then asked the participants how often they had sex and how many partners they've had.

Men who reported more altruistic acts had more sex — and more partners. For those who were in relationships, good-hearted men were more likely to have had more sex in the last 30 days, too.

In the second experiment of the study, the researchers had undergraduate students say whether they would like to donate money that they might receive for participating to charity. Those who said that they would also tended to have more casual sex, more sex in relationships, and more lifetime sex partners overall.

Another study, published in January 2016 in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, presented 202 women with different men to choose from. The different combinations of choices were either attractive or not, and they either did a good deed or didn't.

The women chose the selfish, attractive men for a one-night stand. But for a long-term relationship, they chose the altruistic man whether he was attractive or not.

A slightly older study, published in The Journal of Social Psychology in 2013, really drives this home. That study found that women valued altruism above other traits as a measure of whether a potential mate would make a good parent. The women also said that altruism was important for short-term relationships, but significantly more women said that the trait mattered for the long term.

Yet another study, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science in July 2015, analyzed Germans' responses to a large annual survey.

Single people who reported doing good deeds were much more likely to say that they were in a relationship the next year. They also took less time to find a partner than their non-altruistic peers.

All of this is not to say that other traits don't matter. Humor is also important to women selecting a mate, researchers have found. It makes women assume that a man is more intelligent.

A sense of humor is a good indicator of sexual activity, too. In one study, men whom women rated as funnier reported having more sex with more partners.

For building long-term relationships, though, researchers find over and over again that altruism is a crucial and highly desirable trait.

Psychologists have yet to pit humor head-to-head against altruism. It's also important to keep in mind that many of these studies are small, and that people often behave differently in real life than they do in a lab setting, or when responding to a survey. Especially when reporting positive experiences like charity work or sex, men may be more likely to overestimate how much they actually do those things.

And because of the way that these kinds of studies are designed, they can't say conclusively that it's altruism specifically that's attractive. It might be other traits associated with altruism, or that men attractive for other reasons might also happen to be altruistic.

But the large number of studies and the consistent findings in favor of altruism are building a pretty solid case that there are some side benefits to doing good deeds. No matter what, if you're a man seeking a woman — especially for a long-term partnership — helping others can't hurt.

SEE ALSO: 11 qualities in men that women find attractive

DON'T MISS: Here's how people's sex lives change over the course of a relationship

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People lie everyday, so if you're concerned that your partner is hiding something big, you might be considering how to catch them.

Unfortunately, science can't tell you if your partner has been sleeping around, but it is getting better at spotting when someone is being deceptive. Follow the advice below to see if someone is cheating on you. 

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NOW WATCH: This one conversation can prevent infidelity in your marriage

The most important thing for couples in a long-term relationship is keeping the passionate spark. Couples therapist and "Mating in Captivity" author Esther Perel explains how they can keep the passion alive.

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Winning your boss' favor isn't so hard to do.

And it's not about kissing up by complimenting their new haircut or volunteering for every single new assignment.

Instead, it's about figuring out what they want from you and being strategic in making them feel good.

To help you ingratiate yourself with your manager, we consulted both scientific research and expert opinion. Read on for the eight most compelling insights we learned.

SEE ALSO: These 9 behaviors separate star employees from everyone else

1. Get to work early

Research from the Michael G. Foster School of Business at the University of Washington suggests that employees who get into the office early are generally perceived by their managers as more conscientious and receive higher performance ratings than employees who arrive later.

And it doesn't matter if those who get in later stay later, too.

If you feel that you'd be more productive working from, say, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. instead of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., consider explaining the situation to your manager and confronting their potential "morning bias" head-on.

2. Ask for advice

You might be wary of asking your boss anything — whether it's how they got to this point in their career or which marketing strategy they think you should go with.

But research from Harvard Business School suggests that asking for advice doesn't make you look stupid — it can make you seem more competent, which is presumably how you want your boss to see you.

In one experiment, 170 university students worked on a series of computer tasks and were told they would be matched with a partner who would complete the same tasks. (The partner was really a computer simulation.) When they'd finished the tasks, the "partner" either said, "I hope it went well" or "I hope it went well. Do you have any advice?"

As it turns out, students who'd been asked for advice rated their "partner" more competent than those who hadn't been asked for advice.

The researchers explain that when you ask for advice, you're validating the person's intelligence and experience, so they feel good about you in turn.

3. Manage up

"Managing up" is a term for learning what your boss really cares about and making sure you deliver on that.

As Dave Kerpen, founder and CEO of software company Likable Local, told Business Insider, "It's about helping your manager look great to his or her manager. And ultimately by doing that you're going to position yourself better for success."

Kerpen expects his team at Likeable Local to manage up to him. For example, he doesn't care that his head of marketing shows up late almost every day — as long as she's on time Monday morning, delivering a great report at the company-wide meeting.

Kerpen recommends either asking your boss directly what's important to them or subtly trying to figure it out on your own.

Do you have a secret list of things that would disqualify someone from being your significant other?

Apparently, many people do — and now those lists are not so secret anymore.

A series of studies on "relationship deal breakers," published last year in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, represents "the first systematic and comprehensive attempt to understand the traits that people avoid in their partners," the team of social scientists behind the studies writes.

In one of those studies, the researchers asked a nationally representative sample of 5,541 single Americans to reveal which in a list of 17 things would be a "deal breaker" when considering a "committed relationship" with someone.

The top three deal breakers for men and women were "disheveled or unclean appearance,""lazy," and "too needy." Here's the full list:

People reported an average of six deal breakers out of the 17 on the list. Men were more likely than women to say "having kids, living too far away, talks too much, and a low sex drive" were deal breakers, while women were more likely to say "lacking self-confidence, being too lazy, being too needy, and engaging too often in television/playing video games" were deal breakers.

Respondents ranged in age from 21 to 76; older people tended to have more deal breakers than younger ones, and women tended to have more deal breakers than men.

Differences between the answers from men and women "were modest," the researchers noted, "which may be unsurprising given that men and women are more alike than different."

While the study was large, it relied on self-reports; people's deal breakers may not always be what they say they are, since some may not be willing to admit their actual deal breakers or even be aware of them. There are also likely many qualities people avoid that are not on the researchers' list of 17.

This is an updated version of a story that originally appeared in October 2015.

SEE ALSO: One quality in men might be even more attractive than good looks and a sense of humor

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Amy Cuddy, a Harvard psychologist, admits that dealing with conflict in her personal relationship creates a lot of anxiety. But she has developed a method to make those arguments more productive and beneficial.

How you argue is just as important as what you argue.

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For a lot of us, finding love is a maddening, elusive process. For matchmakers, it's just another day in the office.

So INSIDER asked New York City matchmaker Nora DeKeyser of Three Day Rule to share some of the most important things she's learned about finding love and making it last. Here's what she had to say.

Look at yourself first.

It's fine to have a 'checklist' of qualities you desire in a potential mate — just remember that you need to be the kind of person who will actually attract your fictitious dream partner.  

"A question that most people unintentionally ignore is:  Do I personally live up to the expectations that I have for someone else? And often the answer is no," DeKeyser said. "It is easy to come up with a list of 'must-haves' in a partner, but it is a lot harder to turn that list around and judge yourself. If you are not passionate about your life, how are you going to attract someone who is? If you are not living your life true to your values, how are you going to attract someone who does?"

The solution? Take time to work on yourself, DeKeyser explained. Strive to be more like the kind of person you want to attract. 

Remember: Looks fade quickly.

You already know that looks don't last, so don't let them dictate your search for a long-term partner. 

"When a client tells me his or her physical 'musts,' I like to use the analogy of friends," DeKeyser said. "Think about your three best friends at work. They probably all look extremely different, but they all have qualities in common that you choose to surround yourself with — humor, intellect, empathy, altruism, honesty — whatever it is that you enjoy."

When you're searching for a romantic partner, think about searching for those qualities you enjoy — not just blonde hair or guys taller than 6 feet. 

"You will be surprised at the way your heart can teach your brain to become attracted to someone," DeKeyser said. "Look at that person's soul. If you like it, hold onto it."

Don’t force marriage.

"In American society, we have an idea of the right age to get married. But just because you have been dating someone for four years, and you are 31 years old, does not mean that you need to get married," DeKeyser said.

The bottom line: Trust your gut. If you're not ready to get married, don't. You could be saving your future self from yourself a world of trouble. 

"I meet people every day who have gone through and endless paychecks settling nasty divorces," DeKeyser said. "If [marriage] doesn’t feel right, it’s not right. Don't settle."

One friend of mine met her now-fiancé on the New York City subway.

But most every other friend of mine has a story about seeing someone on the subway, or the bus, or the line at the drugstore, and wanting to talk to them but not knowing how — and letting the moment pass them by.

How do you strike up a conversation with someone you don't know without coming off as creepy, while still making it clear that you're interested?

The short answer: It's hard.

For the long answer, let's turn to Jordan Harbinger, host of "The Art of Charm" podcast, where he shares tips on networking and relationship building, romantic and otherwise. Harbinger recently appeared on another podcast — "The James Altucher Show"— and gave some pointers on the dilemma mentioned above.

Back when he was single, Harbinger said he spotted a woman on the train who was texting furiously.

"Are you gonna write the whole book on your phone?" he asked her.

It turned out the woman was really open to conversation, and told him how she wanted to text her friend, but there was no service underground, so she was preparing a message she could send as soon as they surfaced. She and Harbinger ended up getting into a discussion about how annoying it would be if there were cell service on the train, and how they appreciated the respite from technology.

The trick here is that Harbinger didn't open with a traditional pick-up line (Altucher suggested, "I didn't get your text. Can you resend it?") or anything that would directly signal his interest.

That's because he put himself in the woman's shoes and tried to figure out what she'd be thinking or worrying about if a random guy started talking to her — he assumed it was safety. So he tried to disarm her.

"That was a pretty nonthreatening general thing to say," he said of the opening line he ended up using. After they established some rapport, he could theoretically ask for her number. (Harbinger didn't reveal on the podcast whether he did that.)

Another trick he sometimes uses?

Instead of speaking directly to the person he's interested in, he'll talk to that person and someone else seated near him. "Now it's just a conversation and I happen to be leading it," he told Altucher.

Harbinger's advice jibes with research on flirting: A 1986 study found that women generally prefer "innocuous" opening lines to direct openers or pick-up lines. Think, "Which team are you rooting for?" or, "How do you like the band?" (Men, on the other hand, tend to prefer direct lines, like, "Can I buy you a drink?")

Keep in mind, though: Harbinger says not everyone will be open to conversation. This is just a way to boost your chances of getting the object of your affection to talk to you. He told Altucher that getting good at this kind of relationship building ultimately comes down to persistence and patience.

Citing the work of the psychologist Anders Ericsson, he said it's all about "deliberate practice," which involves having a goal and figuring out exactly what went wrong if you don't reach it. What can you say next time that won't put the person on their guard or turn them off?

The takeaway here seems to be that it helps to imagine how you would feel if you were that person and someone approached you while you were going about your business. If you'd feel even a little bit skeeved out by the line you're about to use, it's probably best to find another one.

SEE ALSO: 13 facts about flirting that single — and married — people should know

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From Google cofounder Sergey Brin's split from 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki to SpaceX founder Elon Musk's second divorce from actress Talulah Riley, the separation of several high-powered couples could signal that extreme career success comes at the expense of relationship success. 

But relationship experts say this doesn't always ring true. You can have a successful marriage and balance high-powered careers — it just takes work.

Dr. Mike McNulty, a Master Certified Gottman Therapist, says maintaining a marital friendship, romance, and intimacy, managing ongoing conflict that is inevitable in marriage, and creating and maintaining a meaningful relationship is more challenging for partners with successful careers because they have less time to do so.

He says these couples are at more risk when the connection to the career becomes primary, and the commitment to and trust in the relationship becomes questionable. "Having a spouse addicted to work can feel like as much of a betrayal as extramarital affair to the other spouse," McNulty says.

But as research psychologist and couples counselor John Gottman explains in his book "What Makes Love Last," 40 years of research shows that trust and commitment are crucial to holding relationships together. "When both partners have a strong commitment to a relationship, this leads to a strong sense of trust, which makes love last," McNulty explains.

Here's how some of the most successful married couples keep their relationships strong:

SEE ALSO: Marriage under the spotlight — why successful people get divorced

DON'T MISS: 7 ways being married influences your success

They prioritize spending time together

Handel Group co-president and life coach Laurie Gerber says shared experiences are key.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, for example, drew up a relationship agreement with his then-girlfriend and now-wife Priscilla Chan when she moved to Palo Alto, California, several years ago. In it, he agreed to take her on a date once a week and spend 100 minutes of alone time each week with her outside the office or his apartment.

McNulty says creating rituals can help. "Rituals are more formal ways of connecting and ensure spouses reserve time for one another or their families and make specific plans to do the things they want to do," he explains.

Whether it's a weekly date night or a trip for just the immediate family, he says busy, successful partners have to be more careful with their time to make sure they connect with one another and enjoy the things that define or give meaning to their relationships.

Their time is spent doing good

Gerber says it also helps if power couples spend time doing things outside of the ego.

Last year Zuckerberg and Chan launched the philanthropic LLC the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative together, and Bill and Melinda Gates have overseen their own foundation together since 2000. 

"People dedicated to making the world better or with a spiritual side seem to have more chance of success in partnership because they aren't depending on external factors only to feel good," she says.

They listen and empathize

"Make time every day to talk with your spouse, in person or by phone, about one another's lives," McNulty says, noting that texting is often not enough.

"Focus on the stressful things or events that are important to your spouse. Listen. Help your spouse express his or her feelings. Empathize. Show support. Don't problem solve or fix. Most of us just want to be heard," he explains.

According to McNulty, Gottman's research shows that this kind of conversation is the one common thing that all successful couples do after marriage therapy.

In The Gottman Method of Couple Therapy, he says this kind of conversation is called a "stress reducing conversation.""Successful, busy couples' relationships will suffer if they fail to find a way to have this type of conversation on a regular basis," McNulty says.

Sometimes relationships end for a good reason. People grow apart, and both parties are happier on their own, or with other people.

But sometimes, relationships end because one or both partners made an avoidable, but incredibly destructive mistake.

Psychological literature is rife with examples of behaviors that can hurt a romantic relationship. We rounded up seven of the most common.

Don't get paranoid. If you recognize one or more of these patterns in your relationship, you can now take steps to remedy the problem instead of staying mired in conflict.

Read on and learn how to stop a breakup in its tracks.

SEE ALSO: 15 relationship facts everybody should know before getting married

Distancing yourself from your partner

Recent research found there's a deadly combination of characteristics that predict relationship dissatisfaction: sensitivity to rejection and the tendency to cut your partner off emotionally.

People who are really worried about getting hurt might distance themselves from their partners, which ends up making the relationship less satisfying in the long run. In other words, they effectively create what they fear.

If this sounds like you, try telling your partner about your fears. You might be surprised to learn that they share some of those concerns, and you can work through them together.

Hiding your finances

Nearly two in five Americans in one poll said they've lied to their partner about money (financial infidelity), which can lead to fights, distrust, and in some cases divorce.

The problem is that money isn't just about numbers— it can symbolize power and love. So insecurity about what your partner's doing with his or her money means insecurity about the relationship in general.

Before you decide to combine (or even partially combine) finances with your partner, it helps to have a conversation about budgeting and your financial histories, and to come up with guidelines for making big individual purchases.

Forming a 'fantasy bond'

Psychologist Robert Firestone coined the term "fantasy bond," which describes the illusion of connection with your partner.

You replace genuine feelings of love and passion with the idea of being a couple, or a unit. Emotional closeness is often replaced by adherence to routines.

The real danger, according to Firestone's daughter, the psychologist Lisa Firestone, is that you start to lose your individuality in your attempt to find safety in the relationship.

If you feel like you've entered into a fantasy bond, Robert Firestone says it helps to explore your fears of individuation and separation from your partner and work toward developing a more honest communication style.

Work is hard and Instagram is easy.

So if you need a break at the office today, it makes sense that you'd whip out your phone and start scrolling through the last batch of #summer2016vacay pics.

This is probably a bad idea. Not solely because it'll look unprofessional when your boss walks by — those teeny bikini photos can make you feel bad about yourself, and distract you from the work at hand.

A recent New York Times article by psychologist Lisa Damour highlights the problem with teenage girls who browse Instagram while doing their homework — and the same idea might easily apply to adults at work.

As Damour points out, looking at Instagram shots of friends with seemingly perfect beach bodies can cause young women to feel insecure about their own physiques, which in turn can make it hard to concentrate on anything else.

Damour points to a 1998 study that found undergrad women performed worse on a math test when they were asked to wear swimsuits than when they were asked to wear sweaters. For undergrad men, on the other hand, their performance didn't seem to depend on what they were wearing.

In the years following the original swimsuit study, other research found that one reason why women's cognitive performance seems to suffer when they start focusing on the way they look is that it depletes their attentional resources. The authors of one 2006 study say that feeling objectified in professional or academic situations — whether it's a job interview or an exam — can hurt women's performance.

Beyond physical comparisons, it can be frustrating for men and women to look at vacation photos in which people seem so darn delighted to be alive. But comparing yourself to other people can be tricky business. Science suggests that people can seem a lot happier and less troubled than they really are.

A study published in 2011 found that university first-years underestimated the number of negative emotional experiences (like having a fight or feeling homesick) and overestimated the number of positive emotional experiences (like going to a fun party or hanging out with friends) their peers had recently gone through.

As a Slate article pointed out right after the study was published, our social media experiences might only exacerbate this phenomenon. When all your friends are posting photos of their exotic summer vacations, it seems reasonable to assume that they're having a whole lot more fun than you are.

But when it comes to social media — and even IRL interactions — you're probably only seeing a curated version of everyone else's lives. Keep that in mind the next time you feel alone in your struggles — chances other that other people have been there too, and might even be able to provide some guidance.

Of course, the quick fix to these issues might be to simply stop looking at social media while you're doing important work. If you need a break, it's better to take a walk around the block or even get started on a work project that really interests you.

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In any relationship, the best course of action when a problem arises is usually to address it quickly before it snowballs into a bigger problem.

But talking through your issues requires tact, and in some instances, it's best to choose your battles. This is less about simply letting things go, however, and more about knowing when to save discussions for later.

Dr. Michael McNulty, a master trainer from The Gottman Institute and founder of the Chicago Relationship Center, tells Business Insider that there are different kinds of issues within a relationship: Some that are minor and easily solvable, and others that are more perpetual and complicated. Over time, as you get to know someone, you get to know what topics are minor and what are perpetual.

When issues are more complicated and people's needs clash, McNulty suggests waiting to bring it up until there's more time to talk it out. You should block out some time or even set up an appointment so that the problem can be handled with much more care, he says.

The reason for this extra care, McNulty explains, is that when we feel attacked, we go into a mode of fight or flight, the parts of our brains that handle logic and reason go to sleep, and our ability to respond to criticism rationally goes out the window.

"If partners start a conversation in a negative manner, 97% of the time that conversation will end negatively," he says, which is why he recommends taking a softer approach to raising issues. But even with this softer approach, people can still feel threatened and essentially begin to shut down their ability to reason and think clearly.

McNulty points to some visible, physical signs of this phenomenon, which he refers to as "flooding," and says it's a good idea to look out for these when having a potentially heated discussion:

• Accelerated pulse
• Blushing
• Sweating
• Appearing nervous or fidgety
• Clenched muscles

He suggests holding off on having the conversation until everyone's in a calmer place and can really hear each other.

"If something like that is occurring, what I would do is to try to take a break and come back to it, because when people are in that state, they can't take in new information and they can't think creatively," McNulty says. "So it's not really useful to talk about much at that time."

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Popular culture perpetuates a lot of poor information about intimate relationships.

The systematic disinformation can, and does, lead people astray, and not just into hilariously awkward situations (see almost any romantic comedy), but into genuine misery.

In fact, as social psychologist Matt Johnson made known on the very first page of his new book, Great Myths of Intimate Relationships, the largest predictor of life satisfaction is relationship satisfaction. "So, we had better pay attention to those relationships!"

In his book, Johnson tried his best to pay more than mere lip service to intimate relationships. Sorting through a boatload of scientific evidence, he dispelled twenty-five myths on topics ranging from online dating, to sex, to divorce. Here are four of those myths.

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1. Men have a much stronger libido than women.

Stronger? Probably. But the difference is much narrower that what common thinking dictates. In his book, Johnson points to pioneering studies by Meredith Chivers of Queen's University.

In a series of experiments that have been repeatedly replicated, Chivers had both men and women watch various sexually stimulating videos and asked participants to report their levels of arousal. Participants were also equipped with devices to measure blood flow to their genitalia, a physiological sign of arousal. Men's self-reports of arousal closely matched their physiological signs of arousal, but women's did not.

"Women -- straight and lesbian -- seemed to be pan sexual," Johnson summarized. "The women had blood flow when watching the sexual videos regardless of who was with whom... Clearly, there's a large gap between the arousal that women report and the arousal they feel."

This divide may be societally constructed, Johnson suggests. If women had not had their sexuality systematically repressed for centuries, their libido might be more on par with men's.

2. Opposites attract.

More than 8 in 10 individuals desire a partner with opposite traits that complement theirs. Fueling this situation is the widespread myth that "opposites attract." But scientific evidence does not bear this belief out.

"There's essentially no evidence that differences lead to greater attraction or improved relationship outcomes," Johnson reports. Similarity, however, does predict attraction and relationship success. Honestly, this makes sense. While scientific fact is often counterintuitive, in this case, what's intuitive seems to be correct. People aren't magnets, after all.

3. You should live together before marriage.

Roughly seven out of ten high school seniors and young adults agree that it's usually a good idea for couples to live together before getting married.

This majority opinion certainly seems like wisdom — a couple should probably make sure they can successfully cohabitate before deciding to spend the rest of their lives together.

Intriguingly, however, there's no evidence that premarital cohabitation improves marriage quality or reduces divorce rates. When Penn State social psychologist Catherine Cohan reviewed over 100 studies on the topic in 2013, she found "no benefits of cohabitation in terms of... personal well-being and relationship adjustment, satisfaction, and stability." If anything, there was actually a small negative effect!

If you and your boo split up this month, you're hardly alone.

According to new research, March and August are when couples are most likely to file for divorce.

The research, conducted by sociologists at the University of Washington and cited on The Atlantic, was presented at the most recent meeting of the American Sociological Association.

For the paper, which hasn't yet been peer reviewed, the researchers looked at divorce filings in Washington state between 2001 and 2015. They found that the number of filings reliably increased in March and August.

The researchers say it's meaningful that March and August follow holiday or vacation periods. In the paper, they suggest that holidays represent something like "optimism cycles"— we see them as a chance to start anew in our relationships, only to find that the same problems exist once they're over.

The researchers also suspect that oftentimes our holiday experiences can be stressful and disappointing, laying bare the real issues in our marriage. As soon as they're over, we're ready to call it quits.

The researchers are currently investigating whether the same pattern applies in other US states.

Other analyses of relationship cycles have yielded slightly different findings. An oft-cited analysis by David McCandless and Lee Byron, published in 2010, found that couples tend to split up around spring break, summer vacation, and right before Christmas, according to their Facebook statuses.

On the other hand, research by the economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, cited in The Washington Post, found that there's an increase in Google searches for the word "divorce" in the 10 days after Christmas.

Meanwhile, in 2012, Facebook released data that found people are most likely to change their relationship statuses from coupled to single on the social network during the summer months.

None of these researchers can say with certainty why they got the results they did. But perhaps the spike in breakups during and after summer break has to do with our interest in meeting someone new around that time.

As Bat Sheva Marcus, the clinical director of Maze Women's Sexual Health, told Business Insider, we generally feel more playful during the summer. And the fact that we're wearing less clothing can make us more aware of our bodies, she said.

This research shouldn't make you paranoid, assuming that the minute your plane lands after a vacation, your partner will drop the D-word. It's more interesting from a macro perspective, thinking about the many surprising factors that contribute to — and allow us to predict — the dissolution of a marriage.

SEE ALSO: 7 ways to ruin your relationship for good

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Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus, the sexual-dysfunction specialist and clinical director of The Medical Center for Female Sexuality, reveals how much sex is good for a marriage and how sex changes over the years.

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