Silimilar traits is an advantage

Choosing a partner with traits similar to one’s own is advantageous, as it ensures that our genes are more likely to be transmitted to future generations, researchers have claimed.

According to Philippe Rushton, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, physical likeness is used as a way to assess underlying genetic likeness, which can cause us to be subconsciously attracted to reflections of ourselves

In evolutionary biology, the phenomenon is called “assortative mating,” or “self seeking like”, and by mating with people who are genetically similar, one ensures that “your own segment of the gene pool is safely maintained and transmitted to future generations.”

Rushton and his colleagues have shown that the more heritable the physical characteristics, the higher the chance of mating between individuals with those particular traits. 

Height and wrist circumference, for example, are far more inheritable than waist size.

“If you look at spouses across these characteristics, they are the most similar on the more genetic components,” Popular Science quoted Rushton as saying.

Robert Zajonc, a psychologist, found that physical likeness between couples increases over time, and through the years, couples’ wrinkles form in the same places because of a lifetime of shared emotions.

Rushton hypothesizes instead that lookalike seniors have always looked similar and that it just becomes more obvious as they get older, and as you grow old, “lots of distinguishing features drop away, like flesh on the skin or hair on the head”.

“It’s more the bony structure of the skeleton that’s showing through,” Rushton added.

How couples can help each other in developing effective memory

Collaborative dialogue can help extend memory in middle-aged couples, a new study has found.

However, this doesn’t seem to be as effective for couples older than 70, the study said.

Lead researcher Jennifer Margrett, an assistant professor in human development and family studies, and colleagues looked at 14 married couples from central Iowa — three being younger (average age of 35), five being middle-aged (average age of 52) and the other six being older couples (average age of 73).

All participants were asked to complete a variety of prospective memory tasks by playing the board game “Virtual Week,” which encourages verbal interaction among players about completing real life tasks.

For each virtual “day” in the game, participants were asked to perform 10 different prospective memory tasks — four that regularly occur (i.e. taking medication with breakfast), four that were different each day (i.e. purchasing gasoline for the car), and two being time-check tasks that were not based on the activities of the board game (i.e. check lung capacity at two specified times).

The researchers video-recorded the spouses playing the game to determine whether partners tried to assist each other in completing the task, and the impact that collaboration had on their partner’s memory.

They found that partners attempted to collaborate on prospective memory tasks, reporting evidence of tutoring, monitoring, encoding and sociability among the couples – four of the most frequent types of collaborative behaviors.

The researchers found that spouses do rely on each other as external memory aids. However, the extent to which this strategy is effective depends on how reliable the partner’s memory is, and that reliability changes with age for most people.

Couples who argue on honeymoon likely to have a stormy marriage

A new study by Ohio State University has revealed that couples who argue on their honeymoon are more likely to have a stormy marriage over the long term compared with newlyweds that get on well.

The study of almost 1,000 husbands and wives found little change in the rate of rows between them over the course of 20 years.

As couples grow older together their rate of arguing is likely to stay the same, which will be reassuring for the 16 per cent who fall out infrequently and the six out of 10 whose rows are rare.

For 22 per cent of couples who say they have arguments on their honeymoon, however, it is more likely that they will go on to do the same throughout their married life.

“There was a very slight decrease in the amount of conflict reported in the final years of the study, which was slightly larger for the high-conflict couples. Still, the differences over time were small,” the Daily Mail quoted Professor Claire Kamp Dush of the University as saying.

The researchers separated the respondents into high, middle and low conflict marriages and found those in the latter group were more likely than others to say they shared decision-making with their spouses.

These people were also more likely than those who reported high levels of conflict to say they believed in traditional, life-long marriage.

The findings were published in the Journal of Family Issues.

Couples warming up to long-distance relationships?

Getting Married? Take the Quiz First

A British family law firm is urging couples to take a “compatibility quiz” before getting married or deciding to live together.

Bross Bennett’s compatibility test focuses on key questions about finances, family ties, children and aspirations that most couples struggle with and might have to answer anyway if their marriage breaks down and they end up divorcing.

Partner Ruth Bross compared taking the quiz to the kind of considerations and research an employer might make before hiring someone.

“No one who is truly committed to a relationship will ever mind making the full and frank disclosure that is asked of them; if they do, you might like to ask yourself why,” she said in an emailed statement containing the quiz.

The quiz asks about assets and how each party would like to share them, what kind of relationships they have with their extended family and friends, whether they want children, their religious views, spending habits and career plans:

A copy of the quiz is below:

Finance
Do you know the extent of each other’s assets? How do you both view the sharing of these assets? Do you have the same attitude to saving?

Will one of you want to put into a pension what the other wants to put into a new car?

Will you pool your resources or do you want to keep everything separate? Joint accounts or separate? Will you contribute in proportion to your incomes, or equally?

Are you going to have to pay off your partner’s debts perhaps from what you thought was going to be the deposit on your house?

Family Ties
What sort of relationship do you have with your extended family? Are they good at staying in touch? Are they local? Affectionate? Over-involved? Have you had any major fallings out?

Children
Do you want children? How many? How do you want to raise your children? What sort of values do you want to pass on? Do you have opposing views about the benefits of state versus private education — and should you be thinking now about buying in a catchment area for a good state school?

Religion
What are your religious views — do you agree on what religion you will bring up the children in? Church/mosque/synagogue? Once a week or once a year? Or no religion at all.

Leisure and fun
Do you like doing the same things in your spare time? Do you share common interests? Is your idea of a holiday lying flat on the beach for two weeks and your partner’s rock-climbing?

Lifestyle
What sort of lifestyle are you aiming for? Where do you want to live? Do either of you have a dream of downsizing at some point and living away from the city?

Spending
Do you have an expensive shoe or gadget habit? Does one of you think of a particular purchase as an essential that the other regards as a “discretionary spend”? Do you have any other secret addictions: handbags, chocolate, football? Do you gamble, online or otherwise?

Work
Are your respective career paths compatible, is either of you going to have to make compromises? Are you prepared to? Will you want to give up work when you have children? What does your partner think about this and can you manage financially? What about part-time working?

Roles – traditional or modern?
Will you expect to live along traditional lines: woman as homemaker and man as breadwinner? Who will organize the finances? Will household responsibilities be shared equally? Who will assume responsibility for paying bills?

Honesty
Are there any old flames for whom you still hold a candle?

Lara, Mahesh to Tie the Knot on Feb 19

Congratulations are in order. February 19 has been chosen as the day when Lara Dutta will marry Mahesh Bhupathi, who recently divorced Shweta Jaishankar. The wedding will be held at a five-star hotel in Goa.

Says a source, “Lara and Mahesh love Goa. They both decided to convert their favourite holiday spot into a place that would be memorable to them forever.”

After marriage, Lara will shift to Bhupathi’s flat in Nibbana Society at Pali Hill. Mumbai Mirror dated April 22, 2010, had broken the story about Lara taking active interest in decorating that house.”

Earlier, Lara was in serious relationships first with Kelly Dorje and then with Dino Morea, but both didn’t work out.

Meanwhile, Neelam Kothari and Samir Soni too have secretly fixed their wedding on January 17, as per the grapevine. Samir and Neelam will tie the knot in Karjat.

Says a source, “Neelam and Samir have been dating for very long. During his stay in Bigg Boss 4 house, Samir was missing Neelam terribly. He decided to propose marriage to Neelam the day he was evicted from the house.”

Not so long ago, the couple had parted ways on the marriage issue. While Neelam wanted to marry, Samir was evading it. “Now that Samir has made up his mind, Neelam’s joy knows no bounds. Both love each other very much,” adds the source.

When contacted, Sameer denied that the wedding date is January 17, but confirmed very excitedly, “Both her family and mine are not in town. The moment they’re all here, we shall exchange marriage vows. And that could be this month. Or even early February.”

married couples less chance to split than the live ins

The Office for National Statistics has revealed that couples who are married are less likely to split up than those who live together.

Analysis of Census results found that four-fifths of spouses who were married in 1991 were still together a decade later, compared with three-fifths of cohabiting couples.

The independent statistics body said older couples and those with children were more likely to stay in the same relationships.

The findings of the ONS are likely to reignite the political debate over whether married couples should be given tax breaks.

The Conservatives have pledged to recognise marriage in the tax system, ensuring that spouses would not lose out if one wanted to stay at home to raise their children, on the grounds that stable families are good for society.

But Labour ministers, who abolished tax breaks for married couples, say that families now come in ‘all shapes and sizes’ and so it would be wrong to disadvantage single parents or widows.

The ONS report, included in a new edition of its regular publication, Population Trends, analysed the information about living arrangements provided by 318,533 adults in its own Longitudinal Study.

Researchers tracked those who answered questions in both the 1991 and 2001 Census then looked in detail to find out whether they remained in the same relationship over the decade.

They found that of those who were cohabiting in 1991, 61 per cent were with the same partner 10 years later while 39 per cent were not.

Of those who stayed together, most had by then married their partner. The majority whose relationship had ended were living alone.

By contrast, 82 per cent of those who were married in 1991 were still with their spouse in 2001. Of the 18 per cent who had divorced or been widowed, most were single although a small proportion had remarried.

“It shows that marriage was more stable than cohabitation, even when controlling for a variety of factors,” the Telegraph quoted the ONS as saying.

Detailed models suggested that couples were more likely to split up if they were younger, had no children, had previously split up with partners, were poorly educated or were unemployed.

“The Government persists in saying there’s no difference between marriage and other forms of relationship but these official statistics are telling us, from a completely neutral standpoint, that there is a difference,” Jill Kirby, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a think-tank, said.

“Living together is not an equivalent to marriage for family stability. That’s why it’s important to protect and support marriage, in the interests of children,” she stated.

Marriage rates are already at their lowest level since records began in 1862, with just 232,990 weddings taking place in England and Wales during 2008.

But despite the greater instability of cohabitation, the ONS believes even fewer couples are likely to tie the knot in future.

“There have been notable changes in UK partnership behaviour over the last 40 years,” the report said.

“Divorce rates rose considerably during the 1970s, remained broadly stable after the mid-1980s, and more recently have fallen since 2004.

At the same time, there has been a long-term fall in marriage rates since the beginning of the 1970s, and a steady increase in the proportion of adults cohabiting.

For unmarried men in Great Britain aged 16 to 59, the proportion cohabiting increased from 11 per cent in 1986 to 27 per cent in 2007.

There was a similar change for equivalent unmarried women, from 13 per cent to 28 per cent. This change in partnership behaviour is likely to persist.

According to demographic projections, the long-term rise in cohabitation will continue, with the number of cohabiting couples in England and Wales projected to rise from 2.25 million in 2007 to 3.70 million in 2031.

The same figures show that the proportion of the adult population that is legally married is projected to fall from 49 per cent in 2007 to 41 per cent by 2031,” it concluded.