How We Meet Our Spouses

As 'How I Met Your Mother' ends, here are the real-life lessons of Ted's romantic odyssey.

Americans still expect to pair off with a 'soul mate.' Above, Cristin Milioti as the Mother, and Josh Radnor as Ted in 'How I Met Your Mother.' 

In March 2014, Ted Mosby, the hero of the long-running CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother," will finally meet his future wife. Over the series' nine seasons, Ted (whose unseen older incarnation offers off-screen narration to frame the episodes) has been telling his two kids the long, intricate story of his romantic odyssey—replete with misfires, coincidences and perhaps the hand of fate. Having spent his 20s and early 30s as a single architect in Manhattan, almost but not quite crossing paths with his beloved, Ted (played by Josh Radnor ) is now poised to meet the mother of his children (introduced this season, at last, in the doe-eyed form of actress Cristin Milioti ).

Sitcoms aren't exactly social science, of course, but what should we learn from Ted's adventures? How do Americans actually meet their spouses?

Nearly 30% of straight couples meet the old-fashioned way, according to a 2012 study led by Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld: through their friends. That has been the leading means of meeting a spouse since World War II—so Ted had a point in boring his kids with so much detail about the lives of the show's supporting cast.

Why do social circles exert such influence over the life partners we meet? "Friends are the people we are closest to, the people we spend the most time with as adults, and therefore the people most likely to introduce us to others that we might be interested in," says Dr. Rosenfeld. And since Americans now marry later than ever before, they are more likely to be living with friends (rather than parents) when searching for a spouse.

Neil Patrick Harris as womanizer Barney on 'How I Met Your Mother.'  

Unlike Ted, many Americans meet their spouses at work. That phenomenon only took off around 1960, when women entered the labor force in larger numbers. About 10% of Americans who found spouses between 2005 and 2009 met at the office or through co-workers, according to Dr. Rosenfeld—down from around 20% in 1990.

Why the decline? In part: the Internet, which "has partly displaced not only family and school but also neighborhood, friends and the workplace as venues for meeting partners," Dr. Rosenfeld writes. He found that close to one-fourth of Americans now make initial contact with their spouses online. The dating site Match.com launched in April 1995. A year and a half later, it had 100,000 users; today, it has 1.9 million. A 2013 study by the Pew Research Internet Project found that about four in 10 U.S. adults who were single and looking had tried a dating site or app. (Of course, watching Mr. Radnor clicking on OkCupid profiles would be pretty dull TV.)

Ted turns out to be fairly typical in other ways, however. He believes there is a soul mate out there for everyone—as do nearly 80% of Americans under 45, according to a 2011 Marist poll. He's had plenty of sexual partners along the way (if not nearly as many as his goatish, womanizing "bro" Barney, played by fan favorite Neil Patrick Harris ). Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that most men between 25 and 44 have had six partners; most women that age have had four.

And like Ted, today's young adults aren't marrying early either. A recent Pew report on millennials—the generation born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s—found that only 26% of those aged 18 to 33 are now married. Compare that to the 36% of Generation X members who were hitched at those ages—and to nearly half of the Boomers.

Though the leads of "How I Met Your Mother" are likely to end the series coupled off, many Americans aren't so lucky. "Most demographers believe that about 15% of Americans will never marry, up from only 5% in the 1950s and early 1960s," says Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History." And about half of those who married in 2012 will eventually divorce, according to sociologist Philip Cohen of the University of Maryland.

So that's marriage today. What about tomorrow? Ted's kids will probably be telling stories about the wonders of technology. Though a 2013 Pew study indicated that just 3% of adults had tried dating apps such as Tinder, that number is bound to grow.

More futuristically: Online daters may soon be matched through third-party data that shows where they socialize and shop, says Kenneth Cukier, co-author of a new book about Big Data. The strongest predictor of compatibility, he adds, "might be something we don't expect, like the time of day you make your purchases."

Try making a sitcom about that.

The Science of Love: How Positivity Resonance Shapes the Way We Connect

The neurobiology of how the warmest emotion blurs the boundaries by you and not-you.

We kick-started the year with some of histroy's most beautiful definitions of love.  But timeless as their words might be, the poets and the philosophers have a way of escaping into the comfortable detachment of the abstract and the metaphysical, leaving open the question of what love really is on an unglamorously physical, bodily, neurobiological level — and how that might shape our experience of those lofty abstractions. That’s precisely what psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, who has been studying positive emotions for decades, explores in the unfortunately titled but otherwise excellent Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become (UK; public library). Using both data from her own lab and ample citations of other studies, Fredrickson dissects the mechanisms of love to reveal both its mythologies and its practical mechanics.

She begins with a definition that parallels Dorion Sagan's scientific meditation on sex:  

First and foremost, love is an emotion, a momentary state that arises to infuse your mind and body alike. Love, like all emotions, surfaces like a distinct and fast-moving weather pattern, a subtle and ever-shifting force. As for all positive emotions, the inner feeling love brings you is inherently and exquisitely pleasant — it feels extraordinarily good, the way a long, cool drink of water feels when you’re parched on a hot day. Yet far beyond feeling good, a micro-moment of love, like other positive emotions, literally changes your mind. It expands your awareness of your surroundings, even your sense of self. The boundaries between you and not-you — what lies beyond your skin — relax and become more permeable. While infused with love you see fewer distinctions between you and others. Indeed, your ability to see others — really see them, wholeheartedly — springs open. Love can even give you a palpable sense of oneness and connection, a transcendence that makes you feel part of something far larger than yourself.

Perhaps counterintuitively, love is far more ubiquitous than you ever thought possible for the simple fact that love is connection. It’s that poignant stretching of your heart that you feel when you gaze into a newborn’s eyes for the first time or share a farewell hug with a dear friend. It’s even the fondness and sense of shared purpose you might unexpectedly feel with a group of strangers who’ve come together to marvel at a hatching of sea turtles or cheer at a football game. The new take on love that I want to share with you is this: Love blossoms virtually anytime two or more people — even strangers — connect over a shared positive emotion, be it mild or strong.

Fredrickson zooms in on three key neurobiological players in the game of love — your brain, your levels of the hormone oxytocin, and your vagus nerve, which connects your brain to the rest of your body — and examines their interplay as the core mechanism of love, summing up:

Love is a momentary upwelling of three tightly interwoven events: first, a sharing of one or more positive emotions between you and another; second, a synchrony between your and the other person’s biochemistry and behaviors; and third, a reflected motive to invest in each other’s well-being that brings mutual care.

She shorthands this trio “positivity resonance” — a concept similar to limbic revision — and likens the process to a mirror in which you and your partner’s emotions come into sync, reflecting and reinforcing one another:

This is no ordinary moment. Within this mirrored reflection and extension of your own state, you see far more. A powerful back-and-forth union of energy springs up between the two of you, like an electric charge.

What makes “positivity resonance” so compelling a concept and so arguably richer than traditional formulations of “love” is precisely this back-and-forthness and the inclusiveness implicit to it. Fredrickson cautions against our solipsistic view of love, common in the individualistic cultures of the West:

Odds are, if you were raised in a Western culture, you think of emotions as largely private events. you locate them within a person’s boundaries, confined within their mind and skin. When conversing about emotions, your use of singular possessive adjectives betrays this point of view. You refer to ‘my anxiety,’ ‘his anger,’ or ‘her interest.’ Following this logic, love would seem to belong to the person who feels it. Defining love as positivity resonance challenges this view. Love unfolds and reverberates between and among people — within interpersonal transactions — and thereby belong to all parties involved, and to the metaphorical connective tissue that binds them together, albeit temporarily. … More than any other positive emotion, then, love belongs not to one person, but to pairs or groups of people. It resides within connections.

Citing various research, Fredrickson puts science behind what Anai's Nin poeticlly and intuitively cautioned against  more than half a century ago:

People who suffer from anxiety, depression, or even loneliness or low self-esteem perceive threats far more often than circumstances warrant. Sadly, this overalert state thwarts both positivity and positivity resonance. Feeling unsafe, then, is the first obstacle to love.

But perhaps the insight hardest to digest in the age of artificial semi-connectedness — something Nin also cautioned against a prescient few decades before the internet — has to do with the necessary physicality of love:

Love’s second precondition is connection, true sensory and temporal connection with another living being. You no doubt try to ‘stay connected’ when physical distance keeps you and your loved ones apart. You use the phone, e-mail, and increasingly texts or Facebook, and it’s important to do so. Yet your body, sculpted by the forces of natural selection over millennia, was not designed for the abstractions of long-distance love, the XOXs and LOLs. Your body hungers for more.

True connection is one of love’s bedrock prerequisites, a prime reason that love is not unconditional, but instead requires a particular stance. Neither abstract nor mediated, true connection is physical and unfolds in real time. It requires sensory and temporal copresence of bodies .The main mode of sensory connection, scientists contend, is eye contact. Other forms of real-time sensory contact — through touch, voice, or mirrored body postures and gestures — no doubt connect people as well and at times can substitute for eye contact. Nevertheless, eye contact may well be the most potent trigger for connection and oneness.

Physical presence is key to love, to positivity resonance.

While Fredrickson argues for positivity resonance as a phenomenon that can blossom between any set of people, not just lovers, she takes care to emphasize the essential factor that separates intimate love from other love: time.

Love is a many-splendored thing. This classic saying is apt, not only because love can emerge from the shoots of any other positive emotion you experience, be it amusement, serenity, or gratitude, but also because of your many viable collaborators in love, ranging from our sister to your soul mate, your newborn to your neighbor, even someone you’ve never met before.

At the level of positivity resonance, micro-moments of love are virtually identical regardless of whether they bloom between you and a stranger or you and a soul mate; between you and an infant or you and your lifelong best friend. The clearest difference between the love you feel with intimates and the love you feel with anyone with whom you share a connection is its sheer frequency. Spending more total moments together increases your chances to feast on micro-moments of positivity resonance. These micro-moments change you.

Whereas the biological synchrony that emerges between connected brains and bodies may be comparable no matter who the other person may be, the triggers for your micro-moments of love can be wholly different with intimates. The hallmark feature of intimacy is mutual responsiveness, that reassuring sense that you and your soul mate — or you and your best friend — really ‘get’ each other. This means that you come to your interactions with a well-developed understanding of each other’s inner workings, and you use that privileged knowledge thoughtfully, for each other’s benefit. Intimacy is that safe and comforting feeling you get when you can bask in the knowledge that this other person truly understands and appreciates you. You can relax in this person’s presence and let your guard down. Your mutual sense of trust, perhaps reinforced by your commitments of loyalty to each other, allows each of you to be more open with each other than either of you would be elsewhere.

(As the silent half of Penn & Teller once poignantly remarked, "Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect."

How to Handle Manipulators

You know what they want: Everything.

In an earlier column addressing toxic friendships, I briefly described the “social exchange” theory of friendship development: Friendships and other relationships involve their own versions of economic systems, in that we make investments in them using “relationship acumen” akin to “financial acumen.” 

This may sound callous, but the truth is that few of us are willing to invest time and energy into activities or relationships that do not promise some measure of return. In business, we hear about the metric called Return on Investment, or ROI. When the expected return outweighs projected costs—in terms of cash, publicity, good will, exposure, leverage, or a host of different currencies—it is much more likely that the investment will be made.

Friendships also involve an ROI analysis, even if we don't consciously crunch any numbers or measure our expectations for outcome. Friendships are often established on the basis of shared interests, proximity, or similarity between acquaintances. We slowly open ourselves up to a growing relationship with another person with whom we feel some affinity.

The Cost of Befriending Manipulators

Relationships deepen as we provide increasingly deeper levels of self-disclosure. We gauge how much to reveal based on how deeply we perceive our acquaintance to be sharing. Yet there are “friends” who may encourage us to “tell all the gory details.” Or ask for “blow-by-blow descriptions” of fights with our lover, parenting mistakes we may have made, or details about interactions with other friends. Or: Friends who ask us to go above and beyond the level of instrumental or emotional assistance that they themselves would provide to us. For many of us, giving to others is satisfying and brings us pleasure; but being taken advantage of by such relational manipulators only brings frustration and resentment.

Manipulators are expert at convincing us to give them more than they give us. It might feel good, at first, to have a “friend” who encourages you to open up, share your thoughts, and reveal your weaknesses. Someone who listens to us when we are down is valued; someone who uses what she learns about us during those weak moments. . . not so much.

These manipulative friends know their needs and how to get them met at little expense to themselves, but at significant cost to others. Master manipulators know many ways to coerce your assistance that can leave you confused, bewildered, or angry. They may make dire predictions of what will happen if you don’t step up and give them a ride, a meal, or the shirt off your back, or they may make you feel special by playing on your soft heart. Successful manipulators are keen evaluators of human nature and can create a dynamic in which meeting their needs makes you feel good. . . even as you are stuck eating Ramen noodles for dinner because you just gave a friendly manipulator your last $20 bill.

 How Do You Know When There's a Problem?

We all know that you must admit there’s a problem before you can begin to find a solution. Here are some signs that you're being manipulated:

• When you feel an imbalance in the level of self-disclosure between you and a friend.

• When you feel like you are always “on call” to assist your friend, but she’s a no-show when you are in need.

• When you realize that her needs take precedence over your own.

• When other friends begin to make pointed observations about the equity in your relationship with this particular friend.

Unfortunately, ending or exiting a manipulative relationship—whether friendship or romance—is probably easier than trying to realign it. Manipulators spend a great deal of time creating a world in which their needs are met by others over whom they maintain control. Trying to shake up that foundational operating system is biting off a lot.

 Break the Cycle: Say “No” and Mean It

As counselors say to clients, the only person you can change is yourself. The best way to handle manipulative people is to become less susceptible to them. We are only as easily manipulated as we choose to be—manipulators make us feel good when we bend to their needs, but we can learn to realize that there are many better ways of building our self-esteem than giving in to them.

 Remember:

• It’s okay to say no and sometimes it's essential to your well-being. Practice saying, “No, I am not available to help you with that,” even in the mirror if it helps.

• Create boundaries you can enforce. Think about what this friend would do for you if asked. Use the answer as a guideline for how far you should go for her.

• Recognize that healthy friendships include give and take, and that there is a limit to what even the best of friends should ever ask of one another.

Friendships are seldom fully equal in what is being given and received at any specific moment. Over time, however, a healthy relationship provides both members with a sense of commitment and support from the other.

Friends don’t let friends do all the work!

The Fantasy That Puts All Relationships at Risk

There is a way to keep love alive. 

 

There may now be hard science behind the notion that true love can last a lifetime.

A neurological study from Stony Brook University revealed that couples who experience “romantic love” long-term keep their brains firing in similar ways to couples who have just fallen in love.

The research team, led by Bianca P. Acevedo and Arthur Aron, found that the “dopamine-rich brain regions associated with reward, motivation and ‘wanting’” were activated in similar ways in couples newly in love and those who experienced “romantic love” over the course of many years. They defined “romantic love”as characterized by “intensity, engagement and sexual interest.” This type of love was associated with marital satisfaction, well-being, high self-esteem, and relationship longevity.

 What does it all mean?

It means that couples who maintain “intensity, engagement and sexual interest” without that extra layer of anxiety associated with “obsessive love” can, in fact, sustain the sparkly, cloud-nine, butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling of being in love. This optimistic conclusion led Acevedo to state: “Couples should strive for love with all the trimmings… Couples who’ve been together a long time and wish to get back their romantic edge should know it is an attainable goal that, like most good things in life, requires energy and devotion.”

If lasting love is an attainable goal, what’s getting in our way of achieving it? What keeps so many people from maintaining that excitement and closeness they once felt with a partner? And how can long-term couples rekindle a fire that’s started to dwindle?

I would argue that couples can preserve “romantic love” by avoiding a "Fantasy Bond."

It's a concept developed by psychologist Robert Firestone, to describe an illusion of connection that a couple forms which replaces real acts of love, affection, and relating. A fantasy bond exists when the form of a relationship becomes more important than the substance. In these relationships, a couple starts to forego their individuality, losing the "me" to become a "we."

As Robert Firestone explains it: “Perhaps the most significant sign that a fantasy bond has been formed is when one or both partners give up vital areas of personal interest, their unique points of view and opinions, their individuality, to become a unit, a whole. The attempt to find security in an illusion of merging with another leads to an insidious and progressive loss of identity in each person.”

This loss of identity is detrimental to sustaining romantic love. Our initial attractions are very much based on a sense of interest in; an intensity toward; and an attraction to a separate person. This combination of emotional, intellectual, and physical engagement is necessary to keep love alive. Yet we forego this excitement in favor of a safer arrangement in which we regard our partners as extensions of ourselves, instead of appreciating them for the autonomous individuals they are.

We do this because, although most of us say we want real love, many of us actually find it hard to tolerate. Real love threatens our defenses. It can feel uncertain and unsafe to care so deeply for someone else or to be seen in a different light than we’ve been seen or have come to see ourselves over the years.

As my father wrote, the fantasy bond "explains people's compulsion to relive the past with new relationships, i.e., to form illusory connections that invariably lead to a reenactment of defensive styles of interacting developed in childhood… Once a fantasy bond is formed, individuals prefer to maintain a defensive posture rather than trusting and investing genuine feeing in others.”

A fantasy bond allows us to feel secure and connected to someone else, while numbing us against some of the more painful emotions that love stirs up, such as existential anxiety, fear of loss, or memories of hurt, longing, or rejection.

Unfortunately, we cannot selectively block out pain without also blocking out joy. Without knowing it, couples tend to set up routines and fit each other into roles rather than face the unpredictability and inherent challenges that come with maintaining passion, excitement, and a deep sense of fondness for another person, separate from themselves.

Signs that you may be in a fantasy bond:

• Less eye contact

• Breakdowns in communication

• Less frequent affection and less personal, more routinized lovemaking

• Loss of independence

• Speaking as one person, overusing “we” statements

• Using everyday routines as symbols of closeness, in place of being emotionally close

• Engaging in role-determined behaviors (father, wife, breadwinner, decision-maker), rather than developing yourself based on your personal goals and interests

• Using customs and conventional responses as substitutes for real closeness and relating

If your relationship has some of these qualities, don’t despair: A fantasy bond exists on a continuum. Once you realize that you have fallen into some form of it, it's possible to reemerge as a happier, more in-love version of yourself. You must first investigate and explore how the bond manifests itself and hurts your current relationship. Then you can stop the behaviors that maintain the fantasy connection and engage in behaviors that encourage real, meaningful contact with your partner. You can stop reenacting hurtful dynamics and strengthen your capacity to love and be loved. Ultimately, you can become the person you want to be in your relationship—minus the fairytale, but with a much happier ending.

Gary Zukav: "We Are All Coming of Age Spiritually" - Super Soul Sunday -...

What Every Woman Needs to Know About Love by Age 30

Grown-up romances take a few grown-up realizations 

 You might have learned this one before, when you were off in college in California and your high-school love was off in college in Maine. Sooner or later, somebody got lonely and fell for a more conveniently located mate. Long-distance adult romances have similar issues. Yes, you have a job, a car and a condo with a reasonable mortgage. So does he. But sooner or later, one of you is going to have to move if the two of you want things to work. Skype doesn't let you e-cuddle or e-go-to-the-movies (where you find out that you both crack up during the supposedly scary scenes). I'm not saying you should pick up and relocate two weeks into the relationship. But then again, two years can be too late. All of us fear being the ding-dong who gave up her whole life for some guy. But that guy probably fears the same thing. Nobody talks about it, but love requires bravery—and the kind of closeness that's not just in your minds.

 I am a big fan of having no expectations. I don't know exactly how to achieve that goal in all cases. But the less I picture how things should go or might go, the better they do go. I let myself show up and enjoy the experience rather than kill it before it begins with my huge, soul-gobbling, predetermined fantasy life that no real experience can ever rival This approach also works very well in love. Showing up at restaurant, having zero idea of what the blind-date guy will be like (because you did not Google him, you did not grill your friends, you did not hope he might be a 6-foot-2 veterinarian) allows you the possibility of having an amazing time with the short, hilarious barber who is sitting there waiting for you.

Low expectations are something else entirely. An example: You just want the guy to be straight, funny and not a cheater (the word just is always a tip-off). In my experience, these are not low at all. They are simply revised expectations—after high ones were not met (he was straight, he was funny, and he was a cheater). You created these lower ones to keep from getting burned again. You’re telling yourself to want less than you want, so you might get something instead of nothing. But what happens is...you end up with something that you don’t want. The whole problem, I really, really believe, is the wanting. Going into a date and just letting it be what it is—and later deciding if you like it (or not)—allows for the possibility of the delightful unexpected, which is the official lightning rod of love.

There is a certain female stereotype that I often see on television and in movies. The most dismal (though outdated) example is Ally McBeal, the most recent is Hannah in Girls. Ally and Hannah are beautiful and brilliant and destined for greatness, but they're full of pesky questions about the men they date. They analyze everyone's behavior and try to understand why or why not a certain somebody did or didn't call. In short, their problem is that they "overthink" things.

According to this logic, one can assume that women who "underthink" will have much more success when it comes to love. They won't ask themselves if their long, rambling rant about gourmet tequila on the first date drove a guy off! They won’t pause and examine why exactly they're dating their best friend's ex-husband. They'll just go with it and end up blissfully happy...because...they're dumb.

Please believe me: Thinking about both his and your behavior, trying to understand why he does things (for example, inviting you to bowling night) and why you do things (for example, buying him B12 vitamins) is part of loving. It means you're looking at all the factors to the best of your ability and deciding to participate in the relationships with your heart, body and mind. Nobody says you have to rattle off every idea directly in his ear, but thought is not the antithesis of romance. Whereas thoughtlessness? Hmmm...think about it.

He doesn’t want them with a house. He doesn’t want them with a mouse. He doesn’t want them if you’re thinner or richer or have plumper lips. He doesn't want them if he’s older, had time to think, or had the kitchen redone with stainless-steel sinks. Believe him.

Everybody shows love in different ways. If I am leaving for a long driving trip, my husband will desperately run down the driveway and scream at me “Put on your seatbelt!” He will also hand me big handfuls of paper napkins “just in case.” I understand the seatbelts: He’s worried; he doesn’t want anything to happen to me; he wants me to keep safe. In a perfect world, men would rush after us with easy-to-read signs like bouquets of red rose or huge banners painted with, duh, I LOVE YOU. We do not live in that world. The person who adores you may stuff carrots in your lunch to protect you from cancer with fresh vegetables or refuse to let you watch 90210 because it hurts your brain.

Love is not a mystery, I believe. Most of us know who loves us. But the expression of that love is often cryptic. Take the paper napkins. I don’t know what those are for. But I suspect they might have something to do with sopping up all the tarter sauce that will spurt out of the Filet of Fish that I will purchase at the first McDonald’s on the side of the highway that I spot, which is chain of events that my beloved, fast-food-despising husband and I will never discuss...out of love.

The Math of Everyday Happiness

  How figuring out a few crucial equations can equal long-term joy.

1. Sushi + Gummy Bears + Lilacs = Happy Birthday

I am not a birthday-party person. Inviting people over for a big gathering in honor of me feels embarrassing. And yet, I have noticed that people who are birthday-party people seem to know how to celebrate—not just others—but themselves. Two years ago, I decided I would try to learn from them. I thought, "What would make me happy on my birthday?" It was 8 a.m in the morning. I did not have the money to go to Paris. I did not have the energy to book a table at a happening restaurant where my kids would order french fries then knock over their ginger ales. I wanted to eat at home. But I did not want to cook, which is a skill that, sadly, my husband doesn’t possess. So: Sushi! You’re supposed to have a cake on your birthday, but I don’t like cake. So: Gummy bears! You’re also supposed to have streamers and balloons. But streamers and balloons feel like stuffing myself into frilly party dresses with patent shoes—at age 40. So: Lilacs!
Then I called my husband, who was able to purchase all this and arrive home by 7 p.m. and lay it out on the table. The party took 30 minutes. We ate. We sang a song. We blew out a candle on the gummy bears. And I felt great, not just because I got what I wanted, but because I had an equation that would make me feel festive about this one loaded, inevitable day of the year—and I could simply repeat it the next year. It was not a complex equation. Nobody at Princeton was going to invite me on staff or invite me out to a desert to experiment with molecules. It was the simple math of how to make myself happy. And it occurred to me that there are times when all of us need to have these kind of no-fail formulas, specific to our needs, fears and understanding of ourselves. So I came up with a few for those situations that crop up and challenge us, again and again.

2. (62 Episodes of True Blood + 1 Down Duvet) ÷ 2.5 Days = Monday Recovery

Let's say you are like me. I wake up 5 a.m. to get "free time" which means I exercise, or send emails, or write creatively (aka sleep on keyboard). Then I go work 9 to 10 hours a day. After that, my two kids need to eat, do homework and talk about things like "Who do you think is a faster runner? You or Daddy?" while sitting on the toilet for an hour, just to avoid going to bed. Somewhere after, they (finally) fall asleep; but before I (almost immediately) fall asleep, I read, hit "like" 600 times on Facebook and buy clothes online that don’t fit any of us but that we all wear because we're too overwhelmed to return them.
Your schedule may be different. One woman I know sleeps until 8 a.m., works all day, puts the kids to bed, then goes back to work from 9 to 11 p.m. Another takes care of her kids all day then works from 9 to 1 a.m. But regardless of the differences in schedules, most of us hit a Friday where we scream "No more!" For me this happens every six months. Then, like great old timber falling in a virgin forest, I topple into bed and line up four or five seasons of any show on Netflix or Apple TV. It doesn't matter which one: Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Walking Dead, True Blood, Gossip Girl, Glee. As long as I am swaddled in a soundproof, down duvet and not disturbed over two full days, plus Friday night, I can get up recovered on Monday morning and go on living my life. In a perfect world, we might say that we need to do less and avoid the whole burnout-meltdown cycle. But I can’t do less—and I hear the same thing from other women all the time—which is why all of us need this particular less-than-scientific formula, the one that lets us abandon multitasking, singletasking and anything other than pause, drool, repeat. (Note: Some women may have to put extra parentheses around the whole equation and subtract guilt.)

3. Me × 21 Meetings = Functional Calm

I have a rule—a very new one and tailored to my personal style of paralysis and panic. When I need to get a new job or move to a new place or do anything that I’m totally and absolutely nervous about doing, I have to set up 21 meetings. None of these meetings have to come to anything. Nobody has to offer me anything on the spot or hand me the secret to my existence. But we do have to talk about the goal at hand.
In common sense terms, what this process does is let me gather information and learn from outside sources. But what it also does is force me to do something, just at the very moment I'm sitting at my desk thinking, "What if I can’t get another job?" or "What if there are no houses we can afford—ever?" I don't have time for those kinds of thoughts; or, I have less time for them, at least, because I have to call somebody up and try to get them to go to coffee with me. The illusion of packed, high-power schedule—much like the illusion of decaf (which by the way does so have caffeine in it)—can be exceptionally calming. So much so that by meeting 22, I'm usually relaxed enough to make a decision—if not take action.

4.Two Equally Awkward People + One White Wine Spritzer + 2πr = Permission to Go Home

In my twenties, my way of dealing with packed cocktail parties was to sit in the nearest potted ficus (there are always potted indoor trees in large public rooms, but so rarely chairs). After I’d polished off three glasses of wine and gotten mulch stains on the back of my skirt, I would go home. Something had to be done, I knew—and that thing would not be that I would suddenly become more extroverted or chatty with strangers, because, in my case, that was not possible. Instead, when faced with intimidating social situations that might lead to valuable personal or professional connections, I now have a formula: Circle the room (the perimeter of a circle is 2π times the radius) with (one!) white wine spritzer and, in the process, bump into or knock the drink out of the hand of an equally awkward person, engage in conversation while apologizing and cleaning off her skirt, then go home with some kind of contact information from her. Inevitably, this works because awkward people are very easy to spot (look for: people trying to look busy or wrapped up in their own thoughts, which really means just standing alone by the buffet.) Further, they make the most interesting conversation because they are too befuddled to make witty banter. They just blurt out their true, undisguised thoughts and, in my totally biased opinion, honesty is always riveting.

5. Me - 17 Irrational, Emotional Flip-Out = What I'm Feeling About What Actually Happened

An irrational, emotional flip-out can be calling up the cable company and screaming at the customer service about the slow Internet connection. Or yelling at my husband about the ski rack he hasn't put on the car even though it's still summer. Or yelling at the kids about throwing water out of the bathtub. Or fixating on my neighbor who lives off a trust fund and never has to work and gets to stay home with her kids. Or throwing away half my closet because everything is lumpy and horrible on me. Or eating stale peanut brittle circa two Christmases past. Or—gulp— all of the above.
When these are removed, I no longer am able to work off a small portion of whatever is inside me (while alienating friends and family). Thus, I end up feeling very, very mad about the friend dying or very, very sad about the amazing promotion that didn’t work out. Neither of which are emotions I exactly want to have, but do let me examine what happened and how I might survive it. The upside is that this is the one equation in the world where, even if the answer is embarrassing or upsetting or not what anybody wants to hear at the time, it is always 100 percent right.

Times When Life Cracks Open

There are those perfectly ordinary, yet exquisite times when we hit that eureka moment that suddenly makes life happier—and a lot easier.

1. Life Cracks Open: When your point of irritation explodes into a Roman candle of illumination.

For example, you're so fed up with your husband buying sweet pickles (not dill! never dill!), that you begin to shout out across the kitchen, "You know I hate sugary condiments!," only to stop and blurt out instead—without any foreknowledge—"I feel like you never even consider what I want!" And what started out as a moment of anger, turns into total calm. You know what you're feeling. Now, sit down with the person you love and figure out what to do about it.

2. Life Cracks Open: When you run the last stride you're capable of...and you keep going.

Because of course you're capable of more, be it measured in miles, little electronic bars on the elliptical or the amount of heady bliss you get from creating a new goalpost for yourself.

3. Life Cracks Open: When you haven't talked to someone for a year and it feels like you just talked to her yesterday.

But not in the wonderful, we're-still-so-close way. It feels like yesterday because you realize how little your life has changed during this time period. In other words: You are where you were. What is the one thing you can do—quit your job, fall in love, give up double burritos, take up meditation, go to Minnesota to hear the wild wolves howl, finally—what would make you feel as if you'd squeezed an entire decade out of 365 days?

4. Life Cracks Open: When you realize it's more effective to stop decorating the air.

Because what you're really doing by telling your boss how much you admire the souvenir mug, or pointing out the lack of cereal on your husband's grocery list, is adding curlicues and filigree to the surrounding oxygen. You want to ask her for a raise, or you want to explain to him how much it upset you when he didn't introduce you to his smoking-hot "pal" from college. And so, you dive in—and do it experiencing, for the first time, the awesome power of being straightforward. Note: The odd thing about this revelation is that the other person, whoever it is, may have the same minihit of nirvana at the same time as you; because fluff, however lovely, is still fluff. She or he is waiting for you to get to your point—and the more quickly you do, the more seriously that point—and you—will be taken.

5. Life Cracks Open: When you understand the simple-yet-messed-up logic for some really obvious thing.

In other words, you suddenly, and for no apparent reason, look at a woman's dress and see how the neckline dips into a heart shape—and you say, "Oh, that's why they call it a sweetheart neckline." Nothing massive is about to change in your day-to-day. But you do experience a poof of useless pleasure in your brain. (Because, duh, it's not like somebody would invent a neckline that only sweethearts could wear, right? That would be some thought you had in the sixth grade, when another girl came to school wearing one and you sat in the corner, watching every boy fall on his face as she walked by and you decided, very quietly, that the universe had invented a shirt for people like her; people who were so, so, so not you). 

 6. Life Cracks Open: When you let the other person decide...

Anything at all. But especially: the restaurant, the movie, the dance club, the size of the Christmas tree, the brand of the new car, the length of the sofa, the time of the brunch and which overpriced-but-requisite package of school pictures to buy.

7. Life Cracks Open: When you sprinkle salt flowers on your chicken.

You don't have time to make bread (even in a bread machine); and, quite frankly, you're getting a little irritated with all the online women out there that have the energy to make their own jam and, God help you, yogurt. And yet, one Sunday night, on the advice of the shelf stocker at the grocery story, you sprinkle fleur-de-sel (translated: flower of salt, or just plain old French sea salt) on your boneless, skinless, grilled chicken breast. Suddenly, a light descends on your dinner—a golden light hitherto unseen, save in patches of various still-life masterpieces in museums—and that chicken turns crunchy, delectable, transcendent. Which results in the belief that neither life nor last-minute dinners ever, ever have to be boring.

8. Life Cracks Open: When you undergo a "mirror" epiphany.

Even at 42.7 years, it happens. Someone points out something amazing about you that (1) You never realized was amazing (for example, you are told, "You never interrupt my stories with a, 'That's okay'"; or, "You're the only person that remembers I majored in performance video in college"); and, (2) you never realized was something you even did, because it just came naturally, no trying to be a good friend or better person involved. Link this moment to another moment in the past when you thought, "I'm not amazing enough." Enjoy the sensation of the latter feeling suddenly shriveling into the scrap of nonsense that it always was.

9. Life Cracks Open: When you hear the story of your grandparents first date for the first time in your life.

They met in Poland. Then ran into each other in New York—first, at the synagogue; then, at the dance. He offered her punch. She asked him to hold her shawl. And sure, all this is romantic, you're thinking. Until it hits you, "Why the heck did it take you that long to ask her out, Grandpa?," or, "Come on! It took two countries, three years and a friend in common to get you guys to one silly movie?" The only thing to do in eureka moments such as this, is to apply it to yourself. Someone, somewhere is waiting for you to hurry up—and speak up.

  

Rebound Relationships: A Good Thing, says Science

They say the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else -- and now there's scientific proof to back that up.

In
a new study, researchers from Queens College and the University of
Illinois surveyed 313 young adults -- some single and other in
relationships -- to determine how rebound relationships affect personal
recovery following a breakup. Their results were published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 

What
they found is that participants who had stayed single for a shorter
amount of time recovered faster from their breakups than those who
waited longer to enter into another relationship or had not yet found
another partner.

Specifically, those who rebounded with other people reported higher self-esteem, higher dating confidence, higher confidence in their romantic desirability and were not as hung up on their ex.

"This
suggests that having a new partner may effectively serve the purpose of
allowing people to more quickly get over their ex, even when the
breakup occurred recently," the researchers wrote in the study.
"Compared with those who remained single, people who had begun dating
again were generally better off ... Because dating individuals already
demonstrated that they had the ability to attract another partner, their
confidence may have been higher than singles who could have more uncertainty about their romantic future and ability to find a mate."

While
the sample size is small, the researchers note that 77 of the
participants in the study were followed both during their relationship
and through the breakup stage, giving them insight into their emotional
well being before and after the split.

What do you think of the results -- is rebounding the best way to heal or it just a temporary band-aid?

Signs He'll Never Marry You

The tricky thing about womanizers is that they usually have their game down pat, which mean it's easy to get sucked in. They seem totally sweet and charming on the surface - who'd ever guess they were secretly scoundrels? So to help you sharpen your radar, we narrowed down the more subtle clues a guy has a case of commitment phobia. If he exhibits three or more of these, watch out.

1. All of His Exes Are "Crazy"

Be wary of a man who refers to his former girlfriends as crazy, psycho, or clingy - because what's the common denominator here? Him. The dude's either looney-bin glue, or he never really wanted the relationship to work in the first place.

2. He Plans Ultra-Romantic Dates

A cozy candlelit dinner is nice and all, but if he only takes you to secluded places, it could be a tip-off that he doesn't want other women to spot him on a date. Next time he asks you out, suggest hitting up a busy restaurant or popular bar and see how he reacts.

3. He's Hot and Cold on the Phone

He'll text you 10 times in a night, then go MIA for days. He'll chat on the phone for an hour, then ignore your messages for the rest of the week. Wondering what the hell is going on? We're going to be brutally honest: He's mostly likely busy dating other women.

4. He Guilt-Trips You

It's normal for a guy to be jonesing to sleep with you from day one. But this behavior is a red flag if he a) lays the pressure on thick, or b) tries to make you feel bad if you choose not to have sex.

5. Stuff Is Missing from His Facebook Profile

Has he untagged any photos of you and him? Does he post updates often, yet never mention hanging out with you? Is his relationship status hidden? We smell a rat. A guy who's leery of commitment will make sure there are no traces of you on his page.

6. His Buddies Act Distant

Even though a player's bros may be friendly enough, they probably won't ask you many personal questions about your job, interests, etc. The ugly truth: They don't want to invest time and energy getting to know you because they figure you're not going to be around very long.

7. He Says You're Soul Mates

Okay, we adore the idea of love at first sight - but too much too soon could also indicate sketchy intentions. If a dude comes on super strong right off the bat (we're talking the first couple of weeks), telling you things like that he's starting to fall in love with you, just make sure you play it safe and trust your gut. Those powerful words might be rolling off his tongue so smoothly because he's spoken them so many times before.