So many singles appear to be enjoying their unencumbered and unmarried state that two-thirds aren't even sure they want to marry, suggests a broad national survey of the dating habits, sexual behaviors and lifestyles of 5,541 single adults across the USA.

Almost 40% of singles 21 and older surveyed were uncertain about wanting to marry; overall, 34.5% say they do want to marry, but 27% don't.

This second annual Singles in America study, conducted online and completed in December by market research firm MarketTools for the Dallas-based dating website Match.com, was developed by the Institute for Evolutionary Studies at Binghamton University, along with biological anthropologist Helen Fisher and sex therapist Laura Berman.

Attitudes about relationships also show decidely mixed views: 21.3% report they don't have time or prefer to stay unattached. Only 12.7% are actively seeking a relationship. Just under half (46.8%) are not actively looking for a relationship but say that if they met the right person they would consider it, and 16.9% are dating someone. Another 2.2% like to play the field.

The nationally representative sample of single adults not in a committed relationship is largely heterosexual (90.5%) and includes 56.5% who have never married, 30.9% divorced, 10.2% widowed and 2.4% separated. ...

Almost a quarter said they typically have sex after one, two or three dates; 25% said “when the other person is ready,” and 19% said “when we agree to an exclusive relationship.” About 13% said “when we are married.”

Among other sex-related findings:

-- 58% of singles have had a one-night stand (65% of men and 51% of women).
-- 44% had not experienced infidelity; of those who had, 36% said a partner had been unfaithful, 8% had personally been unfaithful, and 13% said both were.
-- 60% said a partner having a series of one-night stands was “more unacceptable” than a three-month affair with one person; 40% said a three-month affair was worse.

Labels: committed relationships, culture, dating, Marriage, premarital sex, religion

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The final road to the altar for the four couples celebrating a group wedding in Long Beach on Sunday was a bit unconventional.

Most of the newlyweds, like high school sweethearts Angel Lewis and Christopher Woodbridge, had lived together for years and were raising families.

But the couple's plans to marry kept getting stalled, partly because saving money has been a struggle while raising five children. And last year, wedding bands they had purchased were stolen from their home.

So it was a godsend for them when the pastor at Parkcrest Christian Church, Mike Goldsworthy, announced during his sermon two weeks ago that the church would throw a free wedding and reception for any unmarried couples in the congregation who were living together.

"If your only barrier is the cost of a wedding, we will remove that," he said. ...

Sunday's church-financed weddings were a first for Parkcrest, Goldsworthy said. His offer was partly motivated by couples' reluctance to marry because of the costs involved. But he added he also wants members of his congregation to adhere to the Bible.

"We believe that God's plan for a couple is not to be living together, but marriage," he said.

Labels: California, Christianity, cohabitation, committed relationships, culture, economics, Marriage, religion, weddings

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"Stayover relationships" are a growing trend among U.S. college-age couples who are committed, but not interested in cohabiting, researchers say.

Tyler Jamison, a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri, found people in their 20s engage in "stayover relationships," spending three or more nights together each week while maintaining the option of going to their own homes.

"There is a gap between the teen years and adulthood during which we don't know much about the dating behaviors of young adults," Jaminson said in a statement.

Jamison conducted interviews among college-educated adults who were in committed, exclusive relationships and found though living together before marriage has become less taboo, many want to avoid the potential negative social consequences of cohabitation.

Labels: cohabitation, committed relationships, culture, premarital sex

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Statistics Canada will no longer collect and crunch numbers on the country’s annual marriage and divorce rates, a sign both of cost cuts at the agency and the changing nature of relationships, as definitions get fuzzier and harder to track.

The national statistical agency published its last national figures on marriage and divorce rates last week. It has been collecting divorce data since 1972 and marriage data since 1921. It pegs the cost of reinstating the collection at $250,000. ...

It will also be trickier to assess what is going well. This week, Ontario said it would require every couple in the province hoping to split to attend an information session on alternatives to going to court before getting a divorce. Evaluating whether measures like that work, five years later, has become much more difficult, Mr. Benmor said.

Statscan says it will still examine trends in family composition through its census, conducted every five years, and general social surveys. But annual data on marriage and divorce rates won’t be replaced.

Labels: Canada, committed relationships, common-law, divorce, divorce reform, economics, family policy, family structure, Marriage

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Cuddling and caressing are important ingredients for long-term relationship satisfaction, according to an international study that looks at relationship and sexual satisfaction throughout committed relationships, but contrary to stereotypes, tenderness was more important to the men than to the women.

The Kinsey Institute study involved more than 1,000 couples from five countries -- the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Spain and Japan.

Also contrary to expectations of the researchers, men were more likely to report being happy in their relationship, while women were more likely to report being satisfied with their sexual relationship. The couples, more than 1,000 from the United States, Brazil, Germany, Japan and Spain, where together an average 25 years. ...

Participants in the study were 40- to 70-year-old men and their female partners, either married or living together for a minimum of one year. The study included around 200 couples from each country. The men and women answered gender-specific questionnaires and were assured that their responses would not be shared with their partner. ...

For men, relationship happiness was more likely if the man reported being in good health and if it was important to him that his partner experienced orgasm. Surprisingly, frequent kissing or cuddling also predicted happiness in the relationship for men, but not for women. Both men and women reported more happiness the longer they had been together, and if they themselves scored higher on several sexual functioning questionnaires.

Labels: Brazil, cohabitation, committed relationships, culture, gender, gender differences, Germany, heterosexual couples, Japan, Marriage, men, sex, Spain, women

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...While many in our community have worked hard to secure the right of same-sex couples to marry, others of us have been working equally hard to develop alternatives to marriage. For us, domestic partnerships and civil unions aren’t a consolation prize made available to lesbian and gay couples because we are barred from legally marrying. Rather, they have offered us an opportunity to order our lives in ways that have given us greater freedom than can be found in the one-size-fits-all rules of marriage.

It’s not that we’re antimarriage; rather, we think marriage ought to be one choice in a menu of options by which relationships can be recognized and gain security. Like New York City’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who has been in a relationship for over 10 years without marrying, one can be an ardent supporter of marriage rights for same-sex couples while also recognizing that serious, committed relationships can be formed outside of marriage.

Here’s why I’m worried: Winning the right to marry is one thing; being forced to marry is quite another. How’s that? If the rollout of marriage equality in other states, like Massachusetts, is any guide, lesbian and gay people who have obtained health and other benefits for their domestic partners will be required by both public and private employers to marry their partners in order to keep those rights. In other words, “winning” the right to marry may mean “losing” the rights we have now as domestic partners, as we’ll be folded into the all-or-nothing world of marriage.

Of course, this means we’ll be treated just as straight people are now. But this moment provides an opportunity to reconsider whether we ought to force people to marry — whether they be gay or straight — to have their committed relationships recognized and valued.

Labels: beyond marriage, cohabitation, committed relationships, domestic partnership, gay marriage, Marriage

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...And while the pressures on the leader of the Labour party will be slightly different to those of the average person, there is no mistaking that attitudes to marriage and family have changed. Getting married used to be about sex, living together and having children, but research shows this is no longer the case.

According to the latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey, which was conducted in 2008, almost two-thirds of people now see little difference between marriage and living together. Fewer than a fifth of people took issue with it.

Just under half thought cohabitation showed just as much commitment as getting married. When it comes to children, where opinion can often be a bit more traditional, only 28% said they believe married couples make better parents.

So why do it? Psychologist Donna Dawson, who has specialised in sex and relationships, says it is often about making a public statement.

"Having the children take part is like a ceremonial creation of a family and a public statement that they are all in it together. It's very much a 21st Century ritual, which more and more people will be doing." ...

In the end it could all be about having a big party for Ed and Justine. According to BSA survey, 53% of people now think a wedding is more about a celebration than a life-long commitment.

Labels: children, cohabitation, committed relationships, common-law, Marriage, premarital sex, United Kingdom, unmarried parents

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For the child of lesbians, Mother’s Day is never simple. Sunday was no exception.

For starters, how many Mother’s Day cards should my daughter buy? As with everything else in our family, this one is particularly complicated. You may want to jot down a few notes.

My daughter has two moms, one stepmom, one ex-stepmom and one future stepmom, maybe. Every year, she scopes out Mother’s Day cards in multiple configurations, depending on relationship statuses.

My (now ex-) wife gave birth to her via artificial insemination 25 years ago. Some time later, we divorced. We each remarried. More precisely, I remarried and she got into a committed relationship, during which her partner bore a son and daughter. Both were the products of AI, which in this case had nothing to do with Allen Iverson, that we know of.

Many years later, she and her partner broke up. They worked out a time-share for the kids, who were raised with my daughter as her brother and sister. The fact that the (now ex-) partner and her progeny moved across the street streamlined the process considerably.

Labels: children, cohabitation, committed relationships, culture, divorce, donor conception, family structure, lesbians, motherhood, parenting, stepparents

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After a series of relationships and messy breakups, Leila, 22, is now happy to be living with Mike, her unofficial fiancé. They know they’ll marry each other, but they don’t have a date set, nor has there been an official proposal. Mike, 27, spent most of his 20s working at Starbucks and now works night shift as a supervisor at a homeless shelter because he wanted to find something more meaningful. He is an artist, and he looks the part: a full red beard, black button stud earrings on both ears and a beanie hat with a visor covering disheveled dirty-blond hair.

As a believer in Christ, Mike believes that marriage is “a spiritual covenant.” Yet he adds, “Marriage is the same thing as a soulmate…. Marriage to me is not a ceremony…. It’s a spiritual covenant between you and the other person. No one else. No one else involved. If no one’s there, I don’t care. If someone’s, like, ordained or not to officially marry you — I don’t care! I don’t give a s*** if you’re ordained. I’m married because I say I’m married, and [if] we say that we’re married, then we’re married.”

So do Mike and Leila consider themselves married? Well, actually, they do. Mike explains:

To me we are [married]. I don’t care that you didn’t get to come to a ceremony and have free food…. Right now, with my current relationship going, it’s just understood. We’re just like, ‘All right, you’re my soulmate — cool.’ Whatever. It’s like, did we have a ceremony yet with a bunch of people and raise some money to have a little thing? No. But if someone said ‘Who’s your soulmate?’ Who would she say? She would say me, and I would say her…. I don’t care about a big show. I don’t care about who knows what, who thinks what — or anything. And I mean I’m a believer; I’m a Christian. And my whole life it’s been ‘You don’t [mockingly mumbles unintelligible sounds]’ and all this stuff. And ‘You’re not married.’ It’s like ‘OK, well then tell me what marriage is. Why don’t we talk about what marriage is? ‘And then we’ll go from there.’”

It’s not surprising that young adults like Mike and Leila are skeptical of marriage as a public institution. Authenticity is a buzzword for us Millennials, and we’ve seen plenty of marriages where people say that they love each other and promise to love each other for a lifetime and then divorce and repeat those same vows multiple times to multiple people. That’s authentic? Sure seems phony to us. We want the real thing, and many people in our generation notice that the wedding, the ring, the wedding certificate often don’t bring the real thing. So, they conclude, marriage is not a public institution. It’s a private, spiritual union of soulmates.

Labels: Christianity, cohabitation, committed relationships, culture, Marriage, religion

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The 21-year-old woman was carefully trained not to flirt with anyone who came into the laboratory over the course of several months. She kept eye contact and conversation to a minimum. She never used makeup or perfume, kept her hair in a simple ponytail, and always wore jeans and a plain T-shirt.

Each of the young men thought she was simply a fellow student at Florida State University participating in the experiment, which ostensibly consisted of her and the man assembling a puzzle of Lego blocks. But the real experiment came later, when each man rated her attractiveness. Previous research had shown that a woman at the fertile stage of her menstrual cycle seems more attractive, and that same effect was observed here — but only when this woman was rated by a man who wasn’t already involved with someone else.

The other guys, the ones in romantic relationships, rated her as significantly less attractive when she was at the peak stage of fertility, presumably because at some level they sensed she then posed the greatest threat to their long-term relationships. To avoid being enticed to stray, they apparently told themselves she wasn’t all that hot anyway.

This experiment was part of a new trend in evolutionary psychology to study “relationship maintenance.” Earlier research emphasized how evolution primed us to meet and mate: how men and women choose partners by looking for cues like facial symmetry, body shape, social status and resources. ...

“It seems the men were truly trying to ward off any temptation they felt toward the ovulating woman,” said Dr. Maner, who did the work with Saul Miller, a fellow psychologist at Florida State. “They were trying to convince themselves that she was undesirable. I suspect some men really came to believe what they said. Others might still have felt the undercurrent of their forbidden desire, but I bet just voicing their lack of attraction helped them suppress it.”

It may seem hard to believe that men could distinguish a woman who’s at peak fertility simply by sitting next to her for a few minutes. Scientists long assumed that ovulation in humans was concealed from both sexes.

But recent studies have found large changes in cues and behavior when a woman is at this stage of peak fertility. Lap dancers get much higher tips (unless they’re taking birth-control pills that suppress ovulation, in which case their tips remain lower). The pitch of a woman’s voice rises. Men rate her body odor as more attractive and respond with higher levels of testosterone. ...

This is good news for fans of fidelity, but there’s one caveat from a subsequent study by Dr. Maner along with C. Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky and others. This time, the researchers subtly made it difficult to pay attention to the attractive faces. Both men and women responded by trying harder to look at the forbidden fruit. Afterward, they expressed less satisfaction with their partners and more interest in infidelity.

The lesson here seems to be that too much “mate-guarding” can get in the way of “relationship maintenance.

Labels: adultery, committed relationships, fertility, heterosexual couples, men, women

VOTE

When my husband and I got married I was making more money than he was. We both had steady journalism jobs but I was also writing a column on the side, which put me ahead. At the time, I didn't gloat, and he didn't care. Mostly we spent the extra money on treats for both of us—fancy meals, weekend trips—and anyway, the gender-role reversal didn't last. Three children and several job switches later, he's edged me out for top family earner. But I wonder: What if our marriage had not gone the traditional route, and I had stayed on top? Would that have changed our dynamic in some way? Would small resentments have built up over time? Or would we have felt perfectly comfortable, even proud to be so progressive?

For many American couples, this is not just a thought experiment. Researchers have recently begun scrutinizing a new kind of family ruled by "breadwinner wives" or "top income wives," defined as women who make more money than their husbands. About 22 percent of American marriages of people over 30 fall into this category, up from 4 percent in 1970. (For men without a college degree, the rate is higher: One-quarter are married to wives who earn more than they do.) And demographers expect the number of such marriages to grow, as women continue to get more college degrees than young men and to outearn them, especially early in their careers.

Already, younger people's relationships look radically different. A recent breakdown of census data showed that in all but three of the 150 biggest cities in the United States, young women age 30 and under are making more money than young men. Even if that changes when the women have children, such a vast shift in earning power suggests that the next generation may make different decisions about whose salary counts more and who should be the family's primary breadwinner. This is all happening despite widespread ambivalence. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 67 percent of Americans said that in order to be ready for marriage, a man should be able to support his family financially, while only 33 percent said the same for women. A 2007 Pew survey found that working mothers increasingly say they would rather not work full time. And another Pew study out today shows the nation divided over the sweeping changes to family structure that have unfolded over the past half-century, with about one-third of Americans generally accepting these changes, one-third skeptical about them, and one-third opposed to them. ...

The emotional landscape of these new American relationships and families is a mystery—which is where you come in! If you are a primary-breadwinner wife, or are married to one, I would love to hear from you, either via this survey or via e-mail, at endofmen@gmail.com. If you are not married but are in a committed relationship where the woman makes more money, I also want to hear from you. I want to hear from you even if the woman earns just a little more than the man, or did for at least some period of time, and even if the relationship is over. Finally, I would like to hear from women who head single-parent households, whether you're divorced or never-married.

Labels: committed relationships, culture, divorce, economics, gender, gender differences, heterosexual couples, men, women

VOTE

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, love is in the air. Or is it oxytocin? This so-called "love hormone" is involved in social bonding, and it always seems to get a publicity boost around Feb. 14. But research suggests that oxytocin isn't all roses and heart-shaped chocolates.

Oxytocin is marketed as an all-purpose "love drug" year-round. Online, sellers shill a product called "liquid trust" that purports to contain oxytocin and promises to create an "environment within which you are more attractive to people you previously had no luck with." In San Antonio, Texas, at least one doctor prescribes dissolvable oxytocin strips for husbands and wives going through rough patches, according to a Feb. 10 news report by local news station KENS5.

Even cultural and political commentators have touted oxytocin's effects, arguing that the hormone makes no-strings-attached sex impossible, especially for women.

"The way chemicals are released in the brain during intercourse is very different in men and women," Washington Post reporter Laura Sessions Stepp, the author of "Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both" (Riverhead Books, 2007), told Marie Claire magazine in 2007. "In women, oxytocin is released. It's a chemical that makes women want to nurture their young and stay close. Men get a huge jolt of testosterone, which suppresses oxytocin, and that's nature's way of saying, 'Leave the nest and go sire offspring somewhere else.' So when women think they can have sex and walk away just like guys do, they're having to suppress thousands of years of evolution that tells them to cuddle."

Not so fast. Sex may foster closeness, researchers say, but oxytocin shouldn't be blamed for bonding you forever to that guy you met at the bar last night. And the hormone isn't exactly going to make you a top salesman or irresistible lover. In fact, oxytocin is a complex chemical with a variety of influences on social behavior. It can increase trust among strangers — but it can also intensify negative memories of an aloof mother and even make you favor your "in-group" over people you perceive as outsiders.

"Oxytocin is not this indiscriminate love drug," Carsten K.W. de Dreu, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, told LiveScience.

Labels: animal research, committed relationships, culture, Fathers, men, motherhood, oxytocin, parenting, sex, women

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Half of men would forgive their female partner's infidelity, as long as it was with another woman, according to a new study on cheating.

Women, however, were less likely to forgive and forget if their boyfriend had been with another man, the University of Texas at Austin study showed.

Researchers asked 718 college students to imagine being in a long-term relationship and what their reactions would be to several different cheating scenarios.

They found that overall, 50 percent of men would likely continue a relationship with a woman who had a dalliance with another woman, while 22 percent said they could forgive betrayal with another man.

For women, the results were reversed. If their boyfriend cheated with another woman, 28 percent said they'd keep him around, but only 21 percent said they would if he cheated with another man. ...

So, the researchers asked participants about their real experiences with cheating. There again, men showed less tolerance of cheating than women.

"Men were significantly more likely than women to have ended their actual relationships following a partner's affair," according to the study.

Labels: bisexuality, committed relationships, culture, gender differences, heteronormativity, heterosexual couples, men, sex, women

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Miscommunication and misunderstandings about monogamy appear to be common in both married and unmarried couples, U.S. researchers found.

Jocelyn Warren and Marie Harvey of Oregon State University say a study that involved 434 young heterosexual couples ages 18-25 found in 40 percent of couples -- both married and unmarried -- only one partner says the couple agreed to be sexually exclusive, while the other partner said there was no agreement.

Even among the couples who agreed they had an explicit agreement to be monogamous, almost 30 percent say at least one partner had sex outside the relationship, the researchers said. ...

The findings are to be published in the Journal of Sex Research.

Labels: adultery, committed relationships, heterosexual couples, Marriage, monogamy, parenting

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It's not a new theory: As women progress in educational and professional opportunities, their odds of finding a committed man appear to go down. Women in their 40s and 50s have long heard this, but new research finds it's true for women just entering adulthood as well.

That's one of the findings in the new book "Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying," by researchers Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker at the University of Texas at Austin.

They looked at the results from a number of national studies including the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the National Study of Youth and Religion, in addition to interviews with young people ages 18 to 23.

Researchers found that since women in the 18- to 23-year-old group feel they don't need men for financial dependence, many of them feel they can play around with multiple partners without consequence, and that the early 20s isn't the time to have a serious relationship. But eventually, they do come to want a real, lasting relationship. The problem is that there will still be women who will have sex readily without commitment, and since men know this, fewer of them are willing to go steady.

"Women have plenty of freedom, but freedom does not translate easily into getting what you want," Regnerus said.

Labels: committed relationships, culture, divorce, heterosexual couples, hooking up, Mark Regnerus, Marriage, men, premarital sex, virginity, women

VOTE

The good ol' tradition of marriage is not extinct, but the numbers certainly are dropping.

Moving up the relationship ranks is the very modern - and considerably cheaper - option of living together, sans the 'I dos'.

"It's the first time in Canada there are more unmarried people than married people," explains Gemini-award winning documentary filmmaker Sue Ridout, producer and director of the new hour-long doc entitled, "Thoroughly Modern Marriage" (Dreamfilm Productions).

But, despite the popularity of common law and even the high rates of divorce, the institution is still likely to survive, Ridout believes. ...

According to Statistics Canada, in the past 25 years, common-law unions in Canada have more than tripled. ..

Regardless though, even pairs who sign on the dotted line are holding off longer than ever.

At the end of the '70s, the average marrying age for women was 23 and 25 for men. That number has jumped significantly, to 28 for women and 30 for men.

"People are seeing marriage as a capstone to their relationship - perhaps they've purchased a condo, maybe had a child ... and later on they're turning to each other and saying, 'hey, maybe we should get married.'"

Labels: Canada, committed relationships, common-law, Marriage

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Studies have long shown that married people are less susceptible to the effects of stress. Now a new study finds that being in a committed relationship, even without being married, appears to have the same protective effect, according to a study published in the journal Stress.

A research team from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., studied 501 masters of business administration students (348 men and 153 women) and found the romantic bond of being in a committed relationship alters hormones that can buffer against stress.

Participants were asked to take a 90-minute computerized test in which they played games that assessed their economic decision-making. They were told the test was a course requirement and the results would impact their future career placement, so that the test was a potentially stressful experience.

Before and after the test, researchers took saliva samples to measure cortisol and testosterone — two hormones that the study says "are particularly sensitive to psychological and social influences." Cortisol is often called the stress hormone. Testosterone can potentially influence responses to take risks.

The study found cortisol concentrations increased for all participants, but the results suggest that single people were more susceptible to psychological stress than those who are married or in a relationship, says study co-author Dario Maestripieri, a University of Chicago professor of comparative human development, evolutionary biology, neurobiology, and psychiatry. ...

"We don't know whether it's the result of being single or you have high testosterone and that makes you more likely to be single and less likely to settle down in a stable relationship," Maestripieri says.

Labels: committed relationships, Marriage

VOTE

Belief in the success of marriage now requires a faith reserved in times past for religion. As a result, cohabitation and serial monogamy are at an all-time high. People are applying the mutated companionate courtship values of sexual attraction and contrived compatibility in choosing cohabitation partners. In an interview with television and movie star George Clooney on his 1980s decision to move in with actress Kelly Preston on their first date, Clooney concluded, “I was always Mr. Full-On Spontaneous . . . then as you get older, you start to go, ‘you know what? Maybe we should go out a little bit first’” (quoted in Rochlin, 56). What—go out and get to know each other before moving in together? For many mirage men that is an unthinkable idea. But the results of this deceitful cohabitation trend have been anything but encouraging, with a break up rate for couples who cohabitate twice as high as for married couples (Jayson 3A).

Washington State University researcher Jan Stets reported that women who cohabitate are more than twice as likely to be victims of domestic violence than married women and data from the National Institute of Mental Health show that cohabitating women have three times the rate of depression as married women and twice as much as non-cohabitating single women (Popenoe: smartmarriage.com/cohabit.html)

Why isn’t cohabitation working? The problem is that the male partner is often pretending to be emotionally compatible to achieve immediate sexual results and uses cohabitation to subvert the dating process altogether (Wetzstein:1). By living together, the female partner often sees the real man behind the phony act and realizes she has been deceived by her man way before marriage. Thus, any cohabitation that limps into marriage is already weakened before the wedding ceremony by the already jaded bride. ...

Ladies, this is the poisonous fruit of Tiger Woods Syndrome. Becoming joined at the hip with a stranger is not the way to an intelligent, long-term, committed relationship that might some day lead to marriage. It isn't even the way to a short-term romance based on mutual respect. An errant baseball revealed to the world the shallowness of love based on artifical intimacy and approval seeking.

Labels: cohabitation, committed relationships, hooking up, sex

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INFIDELITY is rampant in nature. Birds, mammals, amphibians and even fish all cheat if the conditions are right, forcing mates to remain perpetually vigilant. People are no different. Although cheats are publicly condemned, or in some cases impeached, infidelity is common and public disapproval does little to dissuade the sinner. The disapproval of God, however, is a different matter, and a new study suggests that prayer can indeed guide people away from adulterous behaviour.

Frank Fincham at Florida State University and his colleagues knew from looking at past studies that couples who attend religious services are more likely to be satisfied with their marriages and less likely to be unfaithful than those who do not, but they did not understand why. Speculating that the act of praying might itself cause romantic relationships to become more resilient, the team set up an experiment to explore prayer and fidelity.

The researchers recruited 83 undergraduates who reported both being in a romantic relationship and praying at least occasionally. Participants were given a survey that is used by psychologists to measure levels of infidelity on a nine-point scale (with nine being highly unfaithful). The survey instructed them to think of the person that they were most attracted to besides their partner and then asked questions like how aroused they felt in that person’s presence, how emotionally intimate they had been with him or her, and how physically intimate they had been. In a second survey, participants were asked to state how strongly they agreed with statements like “my relationship with my partner is holy and sacred”, by rating levels of agreement on a nine-point scale (with nine indicating very strong agreement).

Following the survey, the participants were randomly assigned to one of four daily activities: praying for the well-being of their partner, engaging in undirected prayer, thinking about positive aspects of their partner or reflecting upon their day. Participants did as they were asked for four weeks, and kept written logs of what they were praying (or thinking). At the end of this period, the team again measured infidelity and how sacred the participants felt their romantic relationships were.

Labels: committed relationships, culture, premarital sex, religion, sex, universities

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Romance isn't dead, it just needs a little cash injection - according to those old romantics known as the Australian Family Association. Late last week, the AFA announced that couples deserved to receive a federally funded ''reward'' for staying married. As AFA vice-president Mary-Louise Fowler put it: ''One innovative idea is the idea of a marriage bonus - if you become married and you remain married for five, 10, 15, 25 years." ...

As those of us bound up in holy matrimony well know, wedded bliss sure can feel like bloody hard work sometimes. But don't just take our word for it. A day after the AFA's suggestion, the Coalition announced that, should it win office, it would provide $200 vouchers for couples to use in marriage or parenting education.

The proposal is billed as a critical response to the "enormous" financial and emotional cost of the "many" marriages dissolving like fairy floss inside a Swedish sauna.

It's true that more than 47,900 divorces were granted in 2007, but what the AFA and the Coalition conveniently leave out is the fact that divorces in this country have been steadily decreasing since 2001, while marriages are actually on the rise. ...

Contrary to what the AFA says on its Facebook page, the "stability, morale, security and prosperity of the Australian nation" is not built solely on the bedrock of marriage. Society also needs justice, understanding and inclusion.

As "Casey" wrote in response to the report last week: "What if I don't want to get married because I am not religious and don't see the point, yet I stay with my partner for 50 years because I am committed to them? Does that mean I contribute less to society and therefore shouldn't be rewarded?"

She makes some good points, but Casey might well have added that until a person's sexual preference no longer dictates whether he or she can legally take the plunge, incentives such as the AFA's marriage bonus must be seen for what they are: disingenuous and discriminatory.

Labels: Australia, committed relationships, divorce, Marriage

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