Can Love Last a Lifetime?
Can romantic love last or, by its very nature, does it have a best before date? One writer recently suggested that love is only “designed” to last for about four years, or until the offspring of a romance can survive without two guardian parents. Other research has suggested that love inevitably fades after about 15 months. But mostly we seem to have collectively decided that the natural life of a love relationship is even shorter than this. After all, if love is a fever, then it has to die down eventually – right? Even our language suggests that romantic love is brief. If you “fall” in love, then I guess at some point you stand up and dust yourself off.
This perspective on love becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As one of my clients recently told me, “I almost didn’t agree to come for couple therapy. After all, my girl friends all say that there is no solution to my unhappiness and I just have to accept the way love is. After you have been married for a few years there just isn’t much of that romance and being-in-love left. You just have to give that up and accept that this is all there is.” My client then added, “But I came because I was dying inside. I was angry all the time – after a while screaming into the silence is just too hard.” She was telling me about the high price of a distressed relationship and a resigned approach to love.
Read in Full:Â http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hold-me-tight/201006/can-love-last-lifetime
A Rival’s Deep, Masculine Voice Is Not Enough To Challenge A Man’s Dominance, Says New Study
Article Date: 31 May 2010 – 0:00 PD
Men with a deep, masculine voice are seen as more dominant by other men but a man’s own dominance – perceived or actual – does not affect how attentive he is to his rivals’ voices. His own dominance does however influence how he rates his competitors’ dominance: the more dominant he thinks he is, the less dominant he rates his rival’s voice. These findings1 by Sarah Wolff and David Puts, from the Department of Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University in the US, are published online in Springer’s journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
This is the first study to look at why men differ in the way they perceive indicators of dominance in others and what causes the variation in the degree to which a man’s masculinity affects judgments of his dominance. Specifically, the authors investigated for the first time whether men’s own dominance affects their attentiveness to vocal masculinity, a dominance signal, when they assess their competitors. They carried out two studies asking men to rate male vocal recordings which differed in level of masculinity i.e. from low, more masculine voices to higher, less masculine voices.
Read in Full:Â http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/190360.php
 
8 Ways to Overcome Jealousy and Envy
Or, as Helen Keller put it: “Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.â€
But Helen and Max don’t keep me from going to the land of comparisons and envy. Before long, I’m salivating over someone else’s book contract, or blog traffic numbers, or “Today Show†appearance. Then I have to pull out my set of directions — these 8 techniques — that will lead me out of the continent of jealousy and home, to self-acceptance.
1. Get more information.
Most of the time we envy one quality about a person, and we presume the rest of her qualities are as perfect as the one we want. That’s usually not the case. Think Rain Man. Boy did he know how to count those straws and play poker. But his social skills needed some fine-tuning, yes? Do some research on the person you want to temporarily destroy and you will find that she has her own set of problems and weaknesses. Moreover, if you consider her success in context, you’ll see that she hasn’t always been a superstar–that maybe, just maybe, back when you got a blue ribbon for the fastest freestyle swimmer in the 7 to 8 age group, she was afraid to dive in the pool or couldn’t figure out how to swim without getting water up her nose. My point: you don’t have the full story. Once you do, you’ll feel better. I think.
2. Compliment her.
“WHAT?!? You can’t be serious,†you’re thinking to yourself. Actually I am. I have tried it numerous times and it works. Last year I came across a blogger I envied. She had two degrees from Yale. (I scored 1,000 on my SATs). Her books were bestsellers. (I had just received a royalty statement that said more copies of my book were returned than sold.) Her Technorati score (blog traffic) was, well, much better than mine.
So…. I did something very counterintuitive. I e-mailed her to tell her how impressed I was with her, and I would very much like to interview her on Beyond Blue. When I started reading through her blogs, I found this great story about her feelings of insecurity regarding a fellow writer whom she felt somewhat threatened by because he was writing on the same topics as she was. What did she do about it? She contacted him and took him out to lunch.
I couldn’t believe that she had moments of insecurity too! I mean, she’s got two Yale degrees! Nowhere in her bio did it mention insecurity. But by complimenting her, and connecting with her, and dare I say befriending her, I learned that she is just like me–with some outstanding strengths but some fears and reservations and insecurities, as well.
Read in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/05/29/8-ways-to-overcome-jealousy-and-envy-2/
 
People reestablish trust only when they believe in change
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