THE 12 POUNDS OF CHRISTMAS

THE 12 POUNDS OF CHRISTMAS: HOW TO BEAT BACK A BULGING HOLIDAY WAISTLINE

BLOGGER:  JARED DEFIFE, PHD

Did you pledge to slim your waistline in 2009, but find yourself packing on a few extra pounds this holiday season?  Here are a few ways to get your pants to fit again for 2010.

-Assess yourself
Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat and take a good look at your life and health habits over the past month. Were your holiday feasts a little too filling? Did you mindlessly graze through the sweets and snacks that were left out for the taking? Have too many cocktails at your cocktail parties? Were you less active than usual? Did feeling more down or depressed leave you with less motivation to take care of yourself? Have you been eating more as a way to cope with feelings of sadness or loneliness? Developing a meaningful measure and understanding of your behavior goes a long way towards effectively identifying goals for change. Keeping track with food logs or activity calendars is a great way to record your achievements and identify problem areas.

-Don’t repress yourself
Gaining weight can be disappointing, especially if you’ve spent a lot of effort trying to lose it. When people get upset or disappointed, I often hear them say that they know they should just “let it go”, “move past it”, or “forget about it”. I think that’s a load of hooey. Those are trite little psychobabble platitudes with the implicit message that feelings are bad and you shouldn’t have them. Anyone who has been hurt or disappointed knows that you don’t just “forget about it”. Feelings are inevitable; when you stop feeling, you stop living. How you choose to act on your feelings is the point where behavior becomes more or less adaptive. If you feel disappointed and angry over your holiday weight gain, you can choose to let those feelings shut you down, or you can let those feelings motivate you towards new behavior.

-To forgive is divine
Getting down on yourself for your holiday hedonism isn’t particularly helpful for anything. Regretfully ruminating about those two extra Christmas cookies you ate or that full day you spent on the couch watching football doesn’t burn cookie calories or turn couch surfing into cardio calisthenics. Feelings of shame and guilt about your holiday weight gain can quickly become demoralizing, undermining your motivation to eat wisely and stay active. Remember that when it comes to holiday weight gain, you are not alone. American adults gain on average around 1 to 2 lbs each year, mostly around the winter holidays. It’s not a crime to be a little self-indulgent. Try to look fondly on the parts of your holidays filled with good times and good food. Don’t let a couple extra pounds hold you down too much.

-…but don’t let yourself off the hook
Self-forgiveness does not mean shirking all personal responsibility. Ultimately, you are responsible for your own actions and indulgences. Take responsibility without blaming (yourself or anyone else).  There is a fine line between understanding the effects of a situation and blaming that situation for the consequences. For example, it may be a very useful insight to identify that a streak of bad weather prevented a couple of your daily runs. What you do with that insight is what makes all the difference. Blaming the weather for your inactivity and waiting for the sun to shine won’t do you any good. Knowing that winter weather keeps you housebound and preparing for that by planning indoor aerobic activities for when the snow hits turns an insightful understanding into effective behavior change.

-Make it about the process, not about the poundage
Scales can be useful diagnostic tools. However, scale watching is a lot like whale watching. Every now and then you get an exciting result, but there’s also a lot of inactivity and even disappointment. Staying active with regular exercise and eating a sensible daily diet should be much more important than the number at your feet on any given day.

-Get support
You should always let your physician know about your diet and exercise goals and routines. A psychotherapist can also work with you in developing your personal goals, tracking your progress, guiding your emotions away from self-loathing and towards self-achievement, and identifying if you’ve dipped below winter blues and into a more significant depression.  Enlist a few close and supportive friends for encouragement and the occasional reality check.  It takes a village to lose a pound, so groups like Weight Watchers, recreational clubs, and sports teams are great for guidance, support, and social networking.

Jared DeFife, Ph.D. is a research scientist in clinical psychology at Emory University and Associate Director of the Laboratory for Personality and Psychopathology. He writes a regular blog for Psychology Today at www.tinyurl.com/jdefife.

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Happy Holidays?

Happy Holidays?

(Or, Here’s Wishing the Grinch Would Just Steal Xmas Already)

BLOGGERS:  Mary A. Langiurand, PhD & Robert F. Bornstein, PhD

Across America, real-life families will soon gather around festive holiday tables to enjoy gourmet feasts, basking in the comfort of warmth and plenty, giving thanks for the many gifts they have received this past year. It goes without saying that the greatest gift of all is the gift of family—those beloved, loving people who stick by us in good times and bad, give our lives meaning, make us happy and proud. Oh, people have their little differences, of course, but truly, at the end of the day family is what matters. That’s why we have holidays…

Most of our patients believe all of the above. They are also convinced that theirs is the most dysfunctional, annoying clan on the planet. The leaky ceiling over the less-than-Martha-Stewart-worthy table could be tolerated, as could the mismatched chairs and cramped quarters. Ditto the dry turkey, lumpy gravy, and assorted vegetable horrors cobbled together by committee. Thoughtless gifts—the toolkit for you (who can’t change a light bulb), or the brightly lit magnifying makeup mirror for your sister (who frets endlessly over her crow’s feet)…..those too could be borne with humor and grace. After all, it’ll be a good story for your friends. But the people! How in a just world could you possibly be related to them? Maybe you were mixed up with someone else at birth. Imagine a room filled with willfully annoying fools who just happen to have your entire history at their fingertips (complete with youthful mistakes, former passions, 70s disco-era photos, and other horrors), and whose notion of a good time is making fun of you.

Or perhaps you’re the hostess, opening the home you slaved to clean and decorate, watching your guests put sucked-on bone fragments into your centerpiece, smear your good napkins with indelible lipstick, and render your bathroom unusable. Maybe you got everybody to agree to détente for just one day, only to find that your cousin’s notion of truce is to choose today to come out of the closet to his fundamentalist parents and introduce his lover to everyone at your party. Or maybe you’re the one who couldn’t take one more minute of your brother’s yammering on about his great career and big raise and over-the-top vacation, so you chose today to remind him of how his success came at your expense. At the end of the day, the house is a shambles, and everybody’s in tears (except for Cousin Mildred, who’s locked in the bathroom). Surely nobody else has to deal with this, nobody…

Let’s get real.

To some degree, everybody deals with this, all the time. Real life isn’t perfect, and neither are families. Illness and death, poverty and disappointment, bad choices and worse luck happen. Further, most folks don’t accept these experiences with dignity and grace all the time, and tend to let down their guard when surrounded by people close to them. If you choose to see this as intolerable and unacceptable, you’re not going to enjoy the holidays. But if you choose to see it as an unpleasant but tolerable fact of life, you’ve got a chance of salvaging the season.

Remember that you have choices, and you are where you chose to be. If you’re thinking, “You don’t get it—I can’t just not go” you’re wrong. If you really, truly don’t want to deal with the dysfunction of a holiday meal, you can opt not to attend—it’s your call. There will be consequences; your decision will make some people angry and unhappy, and you will eventually have to address that with them. But if you feel strongly enough that this really isn’t something you want to do with your life and time, you don’t have to do it

If you choose to attend, you can also choose to engage or not to take the bait when the dysfunction fires up. You know these people well enough to predict their behavior, so figure out what’s likeliest to get to you, and then plan how you’d like to respond to defuse the situation. Practice the response in your mirror a few times, and when the zingers start, use your now-practiced skills. Change the subject, respond minimally, take a walk around the block, or just don’t respond. You probably won’t get it quite right at first, so keep practicing—you’ll get better at it over time. If you don’t feel able to develop these strategies on your own, seek professional help (no kidding). Therapists have pre-holiday rushes of new patients for good reasons.

If you really want peace, do not escalate a volatile situation artificially. Alcohol may make some situations more tolerable in the short term, but it will ultimately disinhibit behavioral controls. Ditto sleeplessness, too much noise, too little space, too much or too little heat. Don’t overdo, and avoid the obvious pitfalls. Take care of yourself. Spend at least some time with the people who really do make you happy, doing things you really do like to do. These might be ordinary water cooler moments rehashing the game, or coffee with a friend, far from the madding crowd.

And when it’s all done, don’t forget to get your share of leftovers to take home. These are, after all, the best part.

Robert Bornstein and Mary Languirand are the authors of When Someone You Love Needs Nursing Home, Assisted Living, or In Home Care, published by Newmarket Press.  The second edition, revised and updated, was recently released.  Here’s the link: http://www.newmarketpress.com/title.asp?id=901

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Grouchy Guy: Anxiety in Married Men

Grouchy Guy: Anxiety in Married Men

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

There is one source of resentment that married men often suffer that isn’t a wife’s “fault” but for which women often get unfairly blamed anyhow. Men strongly feel that how successful they are is a measure of their masculinity. Especially, when men marry and have children they feel a responsibility to be a good provider and the better they are at that job the better they feel about themselves. If men aren’t as successful as they feel they should be, they begin to feel like a “loser” and get depressed. Men may defend against their underlying depression and shameful feelings of inferiority by getting angry, especially at their romantic partners.

Why do men get angry at their partners when they don’t feel as successful at their jobs or in their careers as they feel they should be, after all it’s not the woman’s fault?

Yet in a man’s unconscious mind it is the woman’s fault. He feels that she expects a certain level of success from him, that providing at a certain level is his responsibility and his duty. In his mind, if it weren’t for her implicit expectations, he wouldn’t have to enter the rat race and get beat up in the effort to make a living. One reason many men avoid marriage and family is that they don’t want to be tied down with responsibilities they worry they might be unable to fulfill. Or men wait until they are as advanced and as secure in their careers as they can possibly be before settling down with marriage and children even if it means waiting until they are forty or even fifty to get close to the top of their income earning potential.

Women sometimes have a hard time understanding how men feel about this issue. Women may feel that as long as you have got your family and enough money to get by, they don’t understand what the big deal is. But for men it’s as much about their manly pride as about the practicality of getting by. For most women, the family is their central source of meaning and of self-esteem and if the family is OK then all is well in the world. For most men, that isn’t enough. Their manly pride requires a certain level of prestige, social status, and success, mostly reflected in how much money they make. This is not to say that some women aren’t as status oriented as men and that some women do make their men feel like “losers” if they don’t make enough money. But I have noticed over the years, that this issue often isn’t as big a deal for most women as it is for most men. As a consequence, many women don’t really get or understand the way men feel about this issue and that lack of understanding just makes men all the more resentful.

Women can give men all the reassurance in the world that in their eyes their men are a great success, that they are happy with their level of affluence, and that they don’t mind that much having to work to help support the family, but deep down men don’t really believe it. Men worry that it’s all a bunch of false reassurances that in fact makes them all the more resentful. It’s almost like men are a bit paranoid on this issue. It’s like men secretly suspect that all women are “gold diggers” who only want men for their money and secretly have contempt for a man who can’t bring home the bacon to support them and their children in a grand way. And in men’s minds there is always a constant and ongoing social comparison with other men and how well other men are doing which they assume women are making as well even if they don’t say so openly.

So what is a woman to do to deal with this sort of male paranoia if everyday reassurance feels patronizing and condescending to your typical male with an ego bruised by the fact that he hasn’t lived up to his own high ambitions for himself. Once again, humor might be the only real antidote. But how do you kid around about such a touchy issue, that your boyfriend or husband feels like an unlovable loser no matter how much you reassure him. Well, first of all when ever he acts like a grouchy guy and snaps at you for some trivial or stupid little thing, you could just snap right back: “Don’t take your frustrations out on me, don’t be a sore loser just because things aren’t going so well at work. Suck it up, take it like a man.” Or “We all have to eat to shit at work sometimes so stop complaining. Look at all of your shit I have to put up with. Why do you think you should be able to go through life and never have to eat shit just to bring home a paycheck for your family? And I do appreciate all the shit you have had to eat over the years to support our family and some of it may have even been my own cooking.”

Though women tend to be skeptical, men are more likely to respond positively to this sort of blunt and crude language than more sensitive and lovingly reassuring language which is felt as infantilizing. In men’s mind, if you have to comfort them the way you would comfort a baby, you definitely must think they are the biggest loser in the whole world. You are emasculating them by treating them like a hurt little boy rather than respecting their masculinity by encouraging them to face a harsh reality like a man and stop whining about it. They need to be encouraged not to take themselves so seriously and to lighten up.

If you stubbornly insist on treating your man in a lovingly reassuring way you will probably just antagonize him and he will probably push you away for making him feel like a big baby. Then you will be feeling hurt that your love and sympathy has been rejected and you will probably get into a big fight about it. I appreciate that it might not feel natural to talk to your man in the way I am suggesting and you might resent a suggestion that requires you to do something that at least initially feels uncomfortable, but try a little experiment and if it works what have you got to lose.

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Grouchy Gals: The Problem of Unwanted Sex

Grouchy Gals: The Problem of Unwanted Sex

BLOGGER: LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

In a previous blog, we discussed why some women might feel sexually frustrated in long-term relationships and might be tempted to cheat or find a more sexually desirable partner as a permanent replacement for her current partner. Not getting enough high quality sex and romance in a long-term relationship makes some women grouchy. But some women suffer an opposite problem. Some men have a much higher sex drive than their girlfriends and wives and are constantly looking for and pressuring their girlfriends and wives to relieve their sexual tensions. It is not always particular romantic as some men just want to get a “quickie” to be sexually serviced in a rather impersonal way by their partners just to relieve sexual tension. When men are single, they usually rely on masturbation to relieve their sexual tensions because most single men can’t find enough women with whom to have casual sex to relieve themselves. Some men to keep their sexual tensions down feel a need to have daily orgasm or orgasms ever other day. If they aren’t having orgasms at the frequency that they feel they require they feel consumed by the mounting sexual tension. They become obsessed with sexual thoughts and fantasies and can’t focus on other things, like their work, until they can obtain relief.

When men enter a long-term monogamous relationship, they often hope and assume that the days of having to relieve themselves through masturbation are finally behind them as now they will have a sexually indulgent partner who will relieve them on demand at whatever frequency they need. Especially if the relationship starts off as an intense whirlwind romance, their fantasy seems to come true. When a couple is caught up in an intense romantic infatuation, they can’t wait until that moment when they can rip each others clothes off and have wild crazy sex. But unfortunately once the honeymoon phase is over the frequency of sexual relationships begins to decline and tensions arise when one partner seems to be a lot more interested in sex than the other partner. When men want more sex than their girlfriends or wives, men tend to turn into whiney, petulant little boys who just keep pestering their partners for sex until they get it. Obviously, this is a huge turn off for most women. Yet women are caught in a double bind. On the one hand, they are not in the mood for sex and feel resentful to be pressured to have sex when they are not in the mood, especially when they are being propositioned in such an exceptionally off putting way. Yet on the other hand, women may feel sorry for their sexually frustrated partners, feel it is their duty to keep their partners sexually satisfied, and may be tempted to sexually service their partners just to shut them up and stop their annoyingly incessant pestering. What is a woman to do: Resentfully have unwanted sex just to relieve guilt and pestering or decline to have sex and force her partner to deal with his sexual frustrations on his own (i.e. sexual abstinence, masturbation, or some sort of infidelity).

It would seem that few men are capable of exercising sexual abstinence in the marriage in which they patiently wait to have sex until their female partners are in the mood to have sex. Men may to some degree “save it up” until their girlfriends or wives are finally in the mood for a romantic tryst. Yet most men seem to have great difficulty with delay of sexual gratification and do not handle sexual frustration very well. Especially, if they are still very attracted to their wives, it’s a huge tease to sleep every night with a beautiful and sexy woman and see her walk around naked and not to be able to have sex with her just because she isn’t in the mood. As a consequence, most men masturbate to relieve themselves, just like when they were single guys, to relieve sexual tension, but to some extent resent their partners for not being available for sex on demand. Naturally, women resent this state of affairs. It doesn’t seem fair that women should be resented for not having sex when they aren’t in the mood, but unhappily that seems to be the case. And unfortunately, the most resentful men will probably look outside of the marriage for sexual relief.

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer about how to deal with this issue. Even women who don’t mind sexually servicing their husbands on a regular basis often find that it is never enough. If a man needs to have his daily orgasm, there are few women who after years of marriage, with a full time job, and a bunch of kids is going to have the time, energy, or inclination to service her husband on a daily basis. It’s just not going to happen. So my advice is for husbands to have more compassion for the no-win situation in which their girlfriends or wives find themselves. You can’t blame them if their sexual drive is just not as strong as yours, if they aren’t as interested in impersonal sex as you are, and that they often just don’t have the energy to service you even if in general they don’t really mind doing you a favor, especially if you orgasm really quickly to save them time and energy. If you are not capable of sexual abstinence to save it for when your partner is in the mood, you might have to relieve yourself through masturbation just like when you were single. So don’t take it so personally as though it’s some big sexual rejection, if your partner is not inclined to sexually service you on demand and don’t hold it against her either. In the end, you will have a much better long-term relationship and your grouchy gal won’t be quite so grouchy if you stop pestering her to have unwanted sex with you when she isn’t in the mood.

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WHEN I AM 64 WILL I BE HAPPY? II

When I am 64 will I be happy? (Part 2)

BLOGGER:  PAUL GRIFFIN, PHD

Does happiness change with age? Although the difficulties of the aging process coupled with negative stereotypes about the elderly lead many to think that a decline in happiness is inevitable, in my first post I argued that some research contradicts this popular belief. A number of studies find that those who are 64 are more likely to report higher levels of happiness than those who are 34 or 44. These findings are revealing, and certainly they point to reasons why we should be somewhat optimistic about our “golden years.” But in this post I would like to add a note of caution. Although some have used these compelling findings to definitively conclude that happiness increases with age, I think this general conclusion is problematic for two primary reasons. After discussing these problems, I will try to keep the reader happy—especially the baby boomers–by nonetheless arguing that there are still considerable reasons to be optimistic about getting older, even if the future of aging presents a number of pressing issues for society as a whole.

The first problem with concluding that happiness increases with age is that findings on this subject vary according to how happiness is measured. This brings us to an issue that has perplexed greater thinkers throughout the ages: What is happiness? On the surface, this is a rather basic question that could be answered by most anyone. We have all experienced happiness, and, therefore, we all believe we know what it is. Yet because happiness is a subjective experience, a standard definition remains elusive. We all come to our own definitions of what happiness is, and subsequently use this definition to answer the question, Am I happy? Therefore, even with the understanding that people can be wrong about their own emotional states, most research on happiness is based on directly asking the people being studied to provide the answers themselves. The most basic way of doing this would be by asking a single global question like the following: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy.”

Some—particularly in psychology– approach the question of happiness a little deeper by more precisely trying to define the components of happiness. Since they often still take a subjective approach to answering the question, the term that is often used interchangeably with happiness is “subjective well-being” (SWB). Fancy terms for common words are often a part of academic disciplines, and it might be true that in many cases such substitutions are a way for people with PhDs to feel a wee bit smarter (and, thus, a bit happier). In this case, however, I think the use of the term SWB is way to arrive at a more precise definition of happiness. The three broad components that make up people who are high in SWB are characteristics typically associated with happiness: high life satisfaction, high positive affect (more likely to experience positive emotional states), and low negative affect (less likely to experience negative emotional states). Reliable multiple-item questionnaires have been created for all three components and used in hundreds of studies.

Now what is interesting is that when you take a close look at the research on aging and happiness, you find certain differences depending on how and what component of happiness/SWB is being measured. For instance, the single item question described above (“Taken all together..”) has been used in a number of large studies comparing thousands of people of different ages. Some research of this types indicates that happiness is high in people in young adulthood—in their 20s—and then shows a decline until one reaches their late 40s to early 50s, whereupon we once again see increases. Other research, using components of SWB, finds other results. For instance, considerable amount of research on life satisfaction does not often show the early dip in middle-age, but rather a gradual rise from individuals in their 30s to the early 70s. Also, research on negative affect often indicates significant declines in the experience of negative emotions as we move from young to older adulthood, but the research on positive affect is less conclusive, with some research indicating no change with age, other findings pointing to small increases, and yet other research finding gradual declines. Please note that even when these mixed results are considered, it still does not suggest that happiness is highest in young adulthood.

I will try to make sense of these discrepancies in a moment. But let’s take up the second problem, which is that a considerable amount of the age and happiness research is composed of populations that often do not include many people in their 80s and beyond. Not including such age groups might have made sense several decades ago, when they made up smaller amounts of the elderly population. But that is not the case today, and it is likely that “late life” for increasing number of people in the future will not mean late 60s or 70s, but the decades beyond. Therefore, this is an important population to consider, and when we begin to expand our research pool to include these age groups, the picture of happiness and aging becomes more complicated. For instance, while SWB research comparing samples of people in young adulthood and middle-age (30 to 50) to older adulthood (60 and 70s) often indicate higher SWB in the older populations, when we look at groups beyond their 70s, declines are more pronounced. My own longitudinal research with a sample of 1500 men found that while negative affect showed a significant decline between middle to older adulthood (from 40 to 70 years), these declines began to flatten when they reached their early 70s, and then the experience of negative emotions showed a gradual increase as men moved into their 80s. Therefore, while it is true that a number of studies do find increases in happiness with old age, many of these studies fail to define “old age” with individuals beyond their late 70s. Studies that do focus on the very old (>80) often find reductions in SWB with age.

What are we to make of all of these discrepancies? First, it seems that if we want to get a more defined picture of how happiness changes across the lifespan, we need to fully consider what aspects of happiness are being measured. When we consider the different components of SWB and how they show different changes across the lifespan, rather than think of these findings as inconsistencies we might instead want to consider how they reveal the different ways that aspects of the happy life manifest themselves across the lifespan. A more complete picture of happiness requires us to move away from a global and singular answer to this question. Different changes in different indicators of SWB might point to the varied ways we adjust to the aging process.

Second, recent research that finds declines in happiness in very late life make it clear that we should be careful about coming to any general conclusions about the direction of SWB across the lifespan. Although it is now more common to find headlines—in both academic and popular outlets—claiming that happiness is highest in later life, I think this optimistic picture of aging is incomplete. Yes, there is considerable amount of research that indicates that people are quite happy at 64, but we know considerably less about this question when we ask those who are 84. And while 64 years of age might have once produced the iconic image of the later years of life in a song written several decades ago, this picture of late life has shifted and thus must our conceptions of what it means to get old. Recent research indicating declines in happiness in the very old (>80 years) should be reason for concern. They probably point to the many stressors of the aging process as increasing difficulties accumulate.

Yet before you say I don’t want to be 80, consider a couple of points. Several longitudinal studies on SWB find a significant degree of variability in how people change across the lifespan, even in these later years. This is another way of saying that while a considerable number of people might show decreases in happiness in very late adulthood, a considerable number do not. Yes, people are still flourishing, even in their 80s and 90s. Why? What predicts differences in the ways we cope with the aging process? This is an essential question that I will address in a future post. The important point to consider now is that there is no reason to believe that such declines are inevitable. This leads me to my next point, which is that not so long ago our perceptions of aging and what was to be expected of those in later life were considerably different from today. Ageism and common negative stereotypes of the elderly remain, but consider the more sedentary lives of those in their 60s and 70s a half century ago, and compare that with the active lifestyle many in this same age group are practicing today. This profound cultural shift can be attributed to a variety of factors, including greater amounts of social capital, better health, and expanded life expectancies.

One of the most influential researchers in gerontology and positive aging, Paul Baltes, once wrote, “The greatest invention of the 20^th century is old age.” In saying this, Baltes was saying how none of the changes we described were inevitable. If people live longer and in some cases better at later ages, it is because of the significant contributions made by society to cause these changes. But Baltes’ comment also points to the tremendous strain that such an invention places on society and individuals. If getting older is to continue to mean getting better for a significant portion of the population, it will also require considerable effort and sacrifice. When you consider that whatever the age of the person reading this post, it is now more likely than ever before in human history that he or she will spend more years at advanced ages of life, such commitment and sacrifice will be an essential part of ensuring a happy populace now and in the future.

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Grouchy Gals: How Men Let Women Down

Grouchy Gals: How Men Let Women Down

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

We all know what men think of an angry woman. For most men an angry woman is a “bitch.” Of course, it’s not fair that an angry man is often construed as an assertive man who has self-respect because he stands up for himself. An angry woman is just seen as a scolding shrew, not a particularly attractive or feminine trait. It’s just one more double standard that women are subjected to. What men never ask themselves is why are women so angry at men and if just perhaps men may have done something to provoke women’s anger. Men just assume that an angry woman is a crazy woman who is irrational. It doesn’t occur to most men that they have anything to do with it, that perhaps men drive women crazy by their actions.

I’m going to do something that no self-respecting man is supposed to do, to break the “bro’ code” (i.e. the secret fraternal code of conduct that is not to be admitted to women). The “bro’ code” are the secret stratagems that men use to have their way with women, be it to get laid, to get a woman to fall in love with him, or to keep a married woman subservient. Basically, men intuit what women are looking for in a romantic partner. The basic strategy is to seduce women by pretending to be what they want you to be and once they are hooked just do whatever the hell you want, whether they like it or not, because men believe that once women become attached to them they can exploit that emotional dependency to get their way. Men assume that women are too frightened of abandonment, of replacement, and of being on their own to ever kick them out and find someone better.

What do women want in a man, nothing particularly exotic, just a reasonably handsome, healthy guy who will be loving, devoted, and caring husband and father as well as a reasonable provider. And guys know it helps a lot if you look at a woman adoringly as though she is the greatest thing since sliced bread. So you just keep up the act until a woman is hooked and then presumably you have got her over a barrel and can have your way with her. That’s why women are angry, that men seduce them with false pretenses and then disappointment them one way or another by not living up to their advance billing. It’s not that women don’t play the same game with men but that’s another story for another blog. Once women really that they have been hookwinked and bamboozled by the men they love they are pretty “pissed off,” to put it mildly.

What are the common sorts of promises men make and break, the expectations they set up and then disappoint? Men seem to be looking for a relationship but then they just want casual sex as they turn out to be a love them and leave them kind of guy? Men seem to want to long-term monogamous relationship but they really want a mother for their children while they entertain mistresses on the side? A man might seem like a kind, good natured, and considerate gentleman but turns out to be a crude, vulgar, and grouchy guy who likes to burp and fart to his heart’s content. A man might seem like a real go getter who will be a great provider but then he gambles away the family’s financial security by going deep into debt to salvage a failing business? A man might seem easy going and flexible but turns out to be stubborn and belligerent instead. The list goes on and on of men seeming to be one way during the courtship stage of relationship and then turning out to be another way once the honeymoon is over and they are no longer on their best behavior. This is why women can turn into grouchy gals or depressed dreamers who yearn for something a bit more romantic.

My advice now is really more for men than for women. If men are living with a grouchy gal and don’t like living with someone they perceive as “bitchy,” now you know why. You seduced her on false pretenses during the courtship stage and now you are not living up to expectations. If you can see that and feel at least a little compassion for her predicament and would like to live with a less irritable spouse, this is what you have got to do:

1) You don’t have to live up to your advanced billing because that’s not you. Face it, you are a big disappointment as a husband and there is nothing you can do about it. You’re really not as nice a person as you thought you were. Maybe you are a bit of loser so just suck it up and take it like a man. Don’t dump your frustrations on your wife.

2) Given that your wife puts up with you at all, no matter how resentfully, you should be thankful that she doesn’t throw you out on your aging butt. Despite women’s fears of being alone, women actually do much better on their own than men do. Men can’t really take care of themselves no matter how self-sufficient and independent they pretend to be.

3) Don’t take her bitchiness so personally, she has to let off steam given that you are really just a big baby that she is stuck taking care of, especially once you become an old fart who will probably die almost a decade before she does and need a lot of draining custodial care. It’s really no big deal to be a bit more accepting and tolerant of the fact that sometimes your wife is totally disgusted with you and looks at you with contempt. Show a little gratitude that she puts up with your crap because really living with you is no picnic.

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WHEN I AM 64 WILL I BE HAPPY?

When I am 64 will I be happy? (Part 1)

BLOGGER:  PAUL GRIFFIN, PHD

In 1967, one of the first major reviews of happiness appeared in the psychological literature. It might seem hard to imagine now with new books on happiness popping up every month or so, but at that time happiness was of relatively little academic concern within psychology. Therefore, this article by a psychologist named Warner Wilson was quite valuable because it attempted to review and synthesize all of the studies on happiness up to that point and draw some conclusions based on this research. Among such conclusions was one that still seems persuasive to many: when it comes to happiness, better to be young.

Each year I teach an undergraduate class on the psychology of happiness. With the exception of a student or two, most of these students are in their late teens to early 20s. When I ask them to hypothetically compare the happiness levels of 20 and 30 year olds with those who are in their 60s and 70s, usually more than 60% pick the younger group (I suspect the numbers would be even be larger if it weren’t for the fact that by asking the question I am priming them to go against their instinct). Perhaps unless you are over 50 it is hard to think that being older means being happier. Why should it? After all, doesn’t getting older mean getting worse? Yes, it is true that the advent of modern medicine along with the rise of gerontology and education about aging has led to some shift in the way we think of older adulthood. However, while today’s 60 was yesterday’s 50, it doesn’t mean that common negative stereotypes of aging still do not persist. As one student asked, what is so great about losing cognitive skills, physical mobility, freedom, and social stature? Or as another student more bluntly put it, “not getting it up” can hardly make for a happy life.

Young adults’ mistaken perceptions of what awaits them in the coming years might lead to false conclusions about happiness in later life, but I think that there is more to it than that. In fact, while often grossly overstated by some, the aging process does involve decline in a number of areas, including certain cognitive skills and especially in a variety of physical abilities. And although there is a certain level of esteem and respect that is garnered as one ages (and, one hopes, progresses), our society still places great value on youth and the associated beauty, vigor, and excitement that comes with it. Regardless of the myths, in many respects, getting older can be hard. The often intuitive belief that being young means being happier makes perfect sense to me.

Let me reiterate, though, that Wilson’s early conclusion about happiness and aging were not based on intuition. This argument was based the existing research at the time. So this would be a pretty depressing post if I told you that this was the end of the story, that four decades later we have come to the scientific conclusion that it sucks to be old. In fact, something interesting happened—well, interesting enough, that I went on to do my doctoral dissertation on the subject (which according to some friends, hardly makes it interesting). After Wilson’s review, gradually more studies began to be conducted on the subject. The reason for this was twofold: greater attention to issues surrounding the aging process and more study devoted by psychologists, as well as related fields, to the question of happiness itself (I will have more to say about that in a later post). And not just more research, but better research. With each ensuing decade, the instruments being used were more precise and the populations being studied were larger and more diverse.

So now the interesting part. Through the 1970s and early 1980, a number of different studies did not find evidence that the young were happy than the old. In fact, by 1984 in the second major review of the literature, Ed Diener—one of the most prominent researchers in the area of happiness—had to amend Wilson’s original conclusion about age and happiness. At this point the research indicated there was no significant relationship between the two variables. In other words, age played little role in predicting happiness. Although there were certainly differences across individuals, there didn’t seem to be enough evidence to suggest that happiness varied in any predictable ways across age groups. If that still isn’t interesting enough for you, it gets better. After this review by Diener, there continued to be a significant amount of research on the question of happiness and aging. Again, this was due to the continued interest in gerontological issues and in an explosion of research on predictors of happiness. What began to emerge was a picture that surprised by many. So much so, that it was even identified as a “paradox.” Why a paradox? Because not only did it contradict Wilson’s earlier assertions, it went against the intuitive belief I spoke about before, the idea that aging and its associated rigors should lead to greater levels of unhappiness. These newer research suggested the exact opposite: there, indeed, was a relationship between age and happiness, and that relationship was positive. Getting older meant getting happier.

Let me give you one example of a study that changed the tide. In 1998, a young researcher named Dan Mroczek (along with his student Chris Kolarz) published research from a national database known as the MIDUS study. There had already been research suggesting that older people might be happier than the young, but perhaps due to the large sample size (over 2,500 people) and the sophisticated level of analysis, this study received considerable national attention. These researchers found that when comparing a group that ranged from their mid 20s to mid 70s, general levels of positive emotions increased across age groups while negative affect declined. Soon after they published their results, these findings appeared in a host of news outlets (it even provided material for Jay Leno’s opening monologue on the Tonight Show). In many respects, this study seemed to be the perfect conclusion to a decade of research on “positive aging.” For some time a number of researchers had been focused on the issue of understanding emotional changes across the lifespan, and Mrozcek’s study seemed to confirm many of their own positive conclusions about emotional well-being in late life.

So there you have it: when you are 64 you will be happy. Well, not exactly. Of course, no one study can ever then be used to predict an individual’s life. I hope to say more about individual differences—and factors related to such differences—at a later date. But let’s return to the general question of age differences and happiness. Does research substantiate the claim that aging more often leads to a rise in levels of happiness? A decade since Mroczek’s findings, there have been a number of studies that seem to confirm their results. At least when it comes to emotional well-being, these findings paint an optimistic picture of later life. Although it might be hard for someone younger than middle-age to imagine it might be so, a considerable amount of research suggests that happiness is not the provenance of the young.

Of course, some of you might not be surprised by this. In some cases, it might be because you are young and you are thinking, well it has to get better than this. Or maybe you are currently in middle-age or older and can tell me first-hand about this effect (as many of my older graduates have done). Or perhaps, even, you have read about these findings somewhere. Every several years you will find news outlets reporting the “surprising” finding that older individuals are happy! (The fact that this relatively old news is still newsworthy tells us how hard it is for us to believe it is true.) More than ever before—most especially in academic circles—there is an optimistic picture of life in later adulthood. In fact, it is not uncommon to hear the assertion that you get happier as you get older.

Now here is the part where I say that everything I have told you thus far is wrong, and you get annoyed. Well, not exactly. In fact, I do believe that there is considerable evidence to suggest that for many, happiness does increase across the lifespan. I certainly convinced that the notion that you are happiest in young adulthood is false. However, it seems to me that research over the last few years indicates that we might have painted an overly optimistic picture of such changes. In recent years researchers have sought to dissuade many from the stereotypical belief of the cantankerous old man as emblematic of the elderly population, and then replace him with the glossed over picture of a man swimming laps in the pool. There is good reason for this, and I find nothing wrong with our attempt to shift negative perceptions of aging. But what is missing is a more nuanced picture of an expanding cohort of elderly individuals. Although the media loves a happy ending, in my next post I would to discuss why we might needs to shift some of these assumptions about happiness once again. It might be true that you are likely to be happy when you are 64 and 74, but things seem more complicated when we start looking beyond to an elderly population that represents the fastest growing age cohort in the U.S.

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Grouchy Gals: Women’s Ambivalence About Monogamy

Grouchy Gals: Women’s Ambivalence About Monogamy

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

Cross cultural research suggests that world-wide men cheat more than women do. Yet it has been noticed that in more egalitarian countries women are quickly catching up to the men in terms of prevalence rates of infidelity. In addition, women are much more likely to report infidelity in anonymous surveys than in face to face interviews. These findings suggest that women may be just as sexually frustrated with monogamous arrangements as are men so frequently look for extra-marital sexual outlets. Research also suggests that on average women are more often unfaithful in search of romantic love whereas men are more often unfaithful in search of casual sex. Yet many men seek romantic love outside of marriage and many women seek casual sex outside of marriage.

Beginning in childhood, males tend to externalize their emotional upset whereas females tend to internalize their emotional upset. As a consequence sexually frustrated wives are just as likely to become sad and depressed (i.e. anger turned inwards) going through the motions as though everything is OK as they are to become grouchy gals who dump their frustrations on their husbands. If women are the more monogamously oriented sex as research suggests why are they so frustrated with monogamous arrangements? Research suggests that the honeymoon phase of a romantic relationship, when men are at their best behavior (i.e. most adoring and eager to please) rarely lasts more than 18 months. As suggested in previous blogs, once the honeymoon phase is over many men turn into grouchy guys who become sexually selfish and irritable due to their own sexual frustrations. They begin to treat their wives like slaves whose function is to service them. Naturally, women resent such mistreatment and begin to yearn for a more adoring and appreciative romantic partner. Yet even if a husband is a perfectly decent guy sex can become boring if it’s just the same old thing once the initial romance has faded. Women too enjoy sexual variety, novelty, and the thrill of new romantic conquests as well as the ego boost of still being able to evoke love and lust from new and desirable romantic partners, despite being older and having put on a few pounds.

Many women stay in sexually frustrating monogamous arrangements for the sake of the children or just for the emotional or economic security of having someone with whom to grow old. Yet many women do cheat, do seek divorce, and are even relieved when their grouchy and unappreciative husbands kick the bucket and they don’t want to get stuck providing undeserved custodial care for another old fart. Research suggests more health and psychological benefits for married men than for married women. We also know that men seem to be the more sexually controlling, sexually possessive, and violently jealous sex. Though men don’t like to admit to this issue, men do need to worry about what they need to do to hold onto their potentially philandering wives so they don’t get cuckolded or replaced by a competitor who is better in bed than they are. Sexually betrayed and/ or dumped men don’t fare too well, either emotionally or physically.

If your wife is privately depressed but pretending everything is OK or is openly “bitchy” and you don’t want to lose her to another man this is what husbands have to do:

1. Don’t be sexually selfish. Make sure your wife is sexually satisfied.

2. Don’t treat her like a slave. That means cut out the contempt and disgust in your attitude.

3. Don’t threaten her with abandonment and/or replacement when you are angry and in a punitive mood. That’s being mean since it’s going for the jugular.

4. Be affectionate and don’t reject affectionate gestures and overtures from your wife.

5. Stand up for yourself in an assertive, respectful way. Don’t be a wimp but don’t be a bully either. Try to be someone your wife would respect and admire.

Being a loyal and devoted partner compensates to some degree for the fading of romantic love and the sexual boredom that can be an inevitable aspect of long-term monogamous relationships. Men have to overcome their egocentrism and realize that just because they are sexually frustrated with and resentful of monogamous arrangements doesn’t mean that women aren’t as well. Women are more likely than men to live lives of quiet despair hiding their true feelings than are men who are more likely to stomp around the house making sure everyone else is just as miserable as they are. So men better wise up if they don’t want to end up dumped and replaced by their sexually frustrated wives for someone who is better in bed than they are.

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How Arguments About Stupid Little Things Turn into Major Blow-ups

The Grouchy Guy:  How Arguments About Stupid Little Things

Turn into Major Blow-ups

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

I am always surprised by the fact that couples who fight like cats and dogs all the time usually fight about stupid little things that get blown up out of proportion. Someone forgets to clean up after themselves, someone doesn’t want to take directions when driving, someone thinks the kids are being treated too permissively, someone isn’t in the mood to do something like have sex or go out to dinner, someone doesn’t want to spend money on something, etc. These are just all the little conflicts and tensions of married life that require two people with two different personalities, two different points of view, and two different sets of preferences to peacefully negotiate their inevitable differences and come up with a workable compromise. Why is that so difficult to do and why do these little conflicts become triggers of major blow-ups?

The problem seems to be that on average men and women seem to have different ways of managing conflict and angry feelings in a close relationship. When men are annoyed about something and assert their grievance, they want respect and are hypersensitive to not getting it. When women are annoyed about something and assert their grievance, they want reassurance that the relationship is solid, isn’t threatened by the difference in opinion, and are hypersensitive to not getting that reassurance. Men want to feel that their wives respect them no matter what and women want to feel that their husbands still love them no matter what, though women also want respect and men also want love. Perceived lack of respect and perceived lack of reassurance is what escalates a minor conflict about a petty issue into a major blow-up. The argument takes on a larger symbolic significance once the couple becomes insecure about whether or not they really love and respect each other. That’s the underlying hot button issue that can lead to a major conflagration.

When a difference of opinion arises and our viewpoint is questioned, it is only natural to defend ourselves by further justifying our own position while more strongly attacking our rival’s position in order to win the argument. Once a competitive mindset has been activated, that winning the argument is all that matters, the stage is set for an escalating conflict that may get totally out of control. Many men are hypersensitive to being questioned by their wives as though being questioned puts their masculine competence in doubt. To assert their dominance men start to make their argument all the more forcefully as their temper is rising. Of course, women don’t want to feel bullied into a submissive position so they too defend themselves all the more forcefully, leading to an escalating conflict. As men get more and more frustrated that they can’t get respect by winning the argument, they start expressing more disgust with and contempt for their wives and as they begin to get fed-up start to threaten to withdraw in anger. At this point, many women get alarmed that the relational connection is threatened and start demanding reassurance that they are still loved by a devoted partner who seems to be threatening hostile rejection. Of course, a man is not going to give reassurance that he still loves his partner when he is fuming inside and beginning to withdraw in anger. This is the stand-off: the man demanding respect or else to be left alone in peace and the woman demanding reassurance through some intimate gesture that brings them closer together and neither getting satisfaction. Then it’s a screaming match.

The challenge for anger management is captured by the title of the famous Rolling Stones song “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Men aren’t going to get respect and women aren’t going to get reassurance once their partner is upset and angry because people have difficulty thinking straight when they are only seeing red because they are so angry. You have a difficult choice to make, give up trying to win the argument so you can diffuse an escalating conflict or keep trying to win the argument, knowing it’s just going to end up in a big blow-up. The best response is simply to say: “This isn’t worth getting in a big fight about, let’s discuss the issue later when we are in a better mood.” Since the hot button issue must be discussed sooner or later, you have to remember that you can never talk someone out of their true feelings. Everyone is entitled to their feelings or point of view so there is no sense trying to prove that someone’s feelings or point of view are wrong and your feelings and point of view are right. So you may just as well cut to the chase. The way to arrive at a negotiated solution is to accept the fact of eventual compromise and concession. So you say something like this: “I understand that from your point of view it looks this way and from my point of view it seems exactly the opposite. Let’s not waste time trying to change each others’ minds because we will just get into a big fight and just dig in our heels all the more. So let’s just figure out what kind of compromise or concessions we can each live with.” Ultimately, you can always just walk away from a fight if your partner isn’t ready to negotiate a workable compromise. A little time-out from the relationship gives everybody time to cool off and arrive at a more conciliatory attitude.

Being in a long-term relationship is about making compromises for the sake of the relationship. You can’t always have everything your way even if you genuinely believe your way is the best way, the right way, or the correct way to go. Being in a relationship means we have to patiently suffer our partner’s mistakes and errors of judgment and still find it within ourselves to respect and love them anyway. Nobody is perfect so part of being married is learning to tolerate our partner’s imperfections, which means letting your partner do things his or her way even when you know for a fact that his or her way is the absolutely wrong way to do things. We all have to learn from our own mistakes so we can’t micro-manage our partners to make them do everything our way which is of course the “right” way. So we have a choice:  We can try to win every argument and get our partner to do everything our way and end up fighting all the time. Or we can give up trying to win arguments and try instead to negotiate a workable compromise, perhaps having to suffer your partner’s errors of judgment. Yet at least you won’t be arguing all the time and your partner, following your lead, will learn to let you do things your way even when they think you are dead wrong.

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Coping with Dementia: A Caregiver’s Guide

Coping With Dementia: A Caregiver’s Guide

BLOGGERS: MARY A. LANGUIRAND, PHD

ROBERT F. BORNSTEIN, PHD

Many people who have experienced a loved one’s dementia have said that given the choice, they’d rather deal with almost any other ailment, no matter how painful or debilitating.  Medical science has gotten pretty good at alleviating pain or restoring physical function—hearts can be made to beat properly, lost limbs can be accommodated with prosthetic devices, failed organs can be replaced via transplant.  However, there’s almost nothing we can do to fix the deterioration of memory, communication skills, and reasoning that dementia steals away.  Some recent experimental drugs hold promise, but at this point most of those medications are just that: experimental.  And few experiences are as frustrating as watching a once-vibrant, intelligent, witty person deteriorate into a confused stranger.

There are numerous forms of dementia, and great differences from person to person in how dementia symptoms are expressed.  However, all forms of dementia have certain common features.  These include:

• loss of memory and impairment in reasoning abilities
• changes in the ability to produce and/or understand verbal, written, and symbolic language
• deterioration in everyday practical skills

In the early stages of dementia, the person usually knows that ‘something is wrong’.  She may realize that she is having difficulty remembering names, balancing a checkbook, or figuring out how to use the microwave.  Some people acknowledge their problems openly and voice frustration, fear, or embarrassment about them.  While this response may provoke worry in you, it’s actually pretty adaptive: It’s an opportunity to discuss the problems openly, and work on ways to address them.

Things get trickier when your loved one goes to great lengths to hide or deny their difficulties.  They may offer plausible explanations and excuses.  “I read perfectly well—I just need new glasses!”  “The buttons on that remote are too small!”  “I know exactly where I left my bag!  It’s not there—somebody must have taken it!”

At first you will probably respond with problem-solving suggestions and helpful gestures, arranging eye appointments, buying new remotes, and so forth.  You’ll eventually find that most of these efforts don’t actually solve the problems (even if they help temporarily).  Worse, over time your efforts may be met with angry rejection, recriminations, or even abuse: Dementia is frightening to the person who has it (even if they deny it), and they’re likely to lash out at the nearest moving target.  That’s you.

You may both get pretty frustrated and angry with one another during this period, and the relationship may become quite fraught.  You feel that you are always encountering an angry, frightened, edgy person who is quick to attack you for their problems.  The care-receiver feels that they’re being patronized, marginalized, or discounted.

As the disease progresses, the capacity for realizing that there are problems fades, and the person with dementia becomes less aware of her behavior and its impact.  At this point, the patient is often blessed with ‘pleasant confusion,’ especially if their environment can anticipate and meet most of their needs successfully.  They may not be able to tell you who’s president, name their grandchildren, or recall how to cook a favorite meal, but as long as they can be physically comfortable, they tend to accept whatever is happening without question.  Some skills and pieces of information may be preserved pretty well—they may be able to knit with great skill, or recite baseball statistics from games they watched 30 years ago with total accuracy.  Often, they will construct a sort of “Reader’s Digest” version of their life experiences and beliefs, which will be presented as indisputable fact.  When the story is reasonably accurate and presents all the players in a favorable light, it can be a pretty good construct (so leave it alone).  Problems arise when significant distortions or hard-to-hear criticisms of yourself or those you love get incorporated into the narrative.  Hearing one parent criticize the other, or advise new acquaintances that your spouse is a real loser hurts, even if there’s some truth to the observation.  Worse, you (and everyone else) will hear it over and over.  The temptation to argue, correct, or defend may be very strong.  Sadly, facts and logic usually get you nowhere.

So, what do you do?  Some responses tend to work better than others.

First, remain calm. Answering the same question 20 times in one afternoon or hearing your loved one recite a totally skewed account of events for the hundredth time can make you want to scream.  Losing your cool helps nobody.  Your loved one did not develop dementia in order to annoy you, they’re not doing it on purpose, and they can’t help it.  So change the subject.  Suggest that you go out on the patio and look at the flowers.  Take a break.  If all else fails, leave—do something that will help you regain control.  Take a walk, grab a cup or tea, call a friend, pray.

Distraction sometimes works. Some realities will not change however much you discuss them, rendering the interaction upsetting and pointless.  “Re-direction” is the formal term for moving from a hot topic to something more neutral.  It’s harder to do than it sounds, especially with people with dementia, who can be surprisingly stubborn in their focus on a given topic.  However, persistence can sometimes pay off.  “Why can’t I go home with you tonight?”  can be countered with “They’re going to be showing your favorite movie in the dining room after dinner.  Remember how great Bogart was in Casablanca?”

Keep problem-solving efforts reasonable. When Mom complains that the telephone buttons are too small, buy her a phone with bigger numbers.  When she complains that there are ‘too many numbers to dial,’ program the speed dial function, and leave a note explaining how to use it.  However, when she complains that she can’t actually reach anybody on the phone in spite of all these efforts, what are you supposed to do?  That one’s a trap, so you may want to respond with a vague reply about ‘how busy people are these days,’ and change the topic.  You cannot ‘solve’ dementia—know when to quit.

Here’s a key one: Try to acknowledge feeling, rather than content.  “I want to go home” may actually mean “I miss the way things were,” “I’m frightened,” “I hate being sick,” or all of the above.  You know your loved one well, and can probably make a pretty good guess about the feelings associated with many of the things she says.  In this area the research findings are clear: Addressing the underlying feeling is more effective than arguing the logic.

That’s our best advice, but we’d like to hear from you as well.  What are your experiences in coping with a loved one’s dementia.  What has worked for you?

Robert Bornstein and Mary Languirand are the authors of When Someone You Love Needs Nursing Home, Assisted Living, or In Home Care, published by Newmarket Press (2009). Here’s the link: http://www.newmarketpress.com/title.asp?id=901

To find out more about Robert Bornstein, click his photo.

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