Domestic partnership law may expand

The Sacramento Bee has an interesting story today on a proposal to expand the state's domestic partnership law. It would allow any heterosexual couple to register a domestic partnership. They would then get all the legal rights of married couples.

The current domestic partnership law gives the legal rights of marriage to gay and lesbian couples.

There's the standard the-sky-is-falling reaction:

Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, which lobbies for conservatives causes, warned that if SB 11 becomes law, "marriage will be functionally abolished" in California.

...aaand the standard this-is-about-equality response:

Jessica Heskin and Bob Stephens, who live in an unincorporated area of Sacramento, are typical of the couples [Sen. Carole] Migden has in mind. Heskin and Stephens, both 41, have lived together for two years and are raising Heskin's 11-year-old daughter, Alyssa, by a previous marriage. Heskin, who testified earlier before a Senate committee in support of SB 11, said "it's not only taxes, it's basic rights" equity the legislation would ensure.

As someone who tends to be poth pro-marriage and pro-domestic-partnership, this proposal feels weird to me. I like the idea of expanding the law to include hetero couples, but... practical reasons for getting married do seem to be getting gradually more sparse. I don't know. Your thoughts?

It's not whether you fight, it's how

Hat tip to SmartMarriages and Diane Sollee. -bc

How a Couple Fights is a Strong Predictor of Divorce
Baylor University - Feb. 5, 2007
by Matt Pene

While all couples may have conflict in their relationship, a Baylor University researcher has found it is not if a couple fights and argues, but how they communicate during their conflict that can determine whether a couple will stay together for the long haul.

Dr. Keith Sanford, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University, studied hundreds of couples as they communicated through a fight. Sanford and his research team focused on what determines whether a person will use positive or negative communication during an argument. He found that emotion and the types of thoughts a person uses are especially important.

Perhaps the most interesting finding is that negative emotion can actually be a good thing. Sanford distinguished between two types of negative emotion, "hard" and "soft." "Hard" emotion is associated with asserting power, whereas "soft" emotion is associated with expressing vulnerability.

Sanford and his team consistently found that hard emotion escalated fights, but they also found that soft negative emotion is generally beneficial for relationships. Soft emotion appeared to increase a couple's motivation to address a conflict and often led to productive approaches toward resolving the conflict.

"There is a notion that all negative emotion is bad and we found that simply isn't the case," Sanford said "As humans, we are very sensitive to 'is this person going to fight against me or cooperate with me.' If you say more things that signal that you willing to cooperate, that can make all the difference."

Sanford also found that men and women approach arguments differently. His research focused on predictions that men and women make regarding what they think their partners are likely to do. He found that couples often appear to be driven by their expectations during a fight. For example, if a wife thinks that her husband will refuse to listen to her viewpoint, she is likely to use negative communication, and she is likely to do this regardless of what her husband actually does. Sanford said he was intrigued to find that wives' expectations are a stronger predictor of communication than are husbands' expectations. Specifically, wives expectations are based on what is currently taking place in the interaction with their husband.

Husbands' expectations are based on their global feelings toward the relationship as a whole.
"It's a tendency that women are more event-dependent and men are more schematic," Sanford said. "The simple take home message is be aware of your thoughts and how you are interpreting things because it could have a negative bias and that could lead to further escalation."

The results of Sanford's studies have been published in the Journal of Family Psychology and also will appear in a forthcoming article in Personal Relationships.

Love Lost and Found

The following is excerpted from a beautiful article appearing in the Wall Street Journal last week:

In the late winter of 1999, Amy and I filed for divorce.

As is obvious, we never followed through on the paperwork. This weekend, in fact, we are celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary. And based on how close we've grown in the past seven years, I have no doubt we'll be together for the duration.

A near-divorce will do that to you: make you recalibrate your life and work in a
way that allows you to see what really matters with a renewed passion. But we did separate for a while, and it's in that separation -- that near-divorce -- that the moral of today's story rests.

And here's the punch line: Love never dies; it just gets lost behind life's debris, including the money and the career, that we pack in front of it.

See the full article here.

Happiness = Marriage + Money

So says an article posted yesterday on WebMD. According to a recent Gallup poll, 64% of married people say they are very satisfied with their personal lives; only 43% of single people felt the same way. Money helps, too--a large majority of those with high incomes reported being very happy with their personal lives. Safe to say that good marriage and good money will lead to happiness. It's an interesting article, and WebMD is a great resource. But they did leave one thing out: good marriage leads to good money.

Married life lie of the day

"Majority of women would reconsider their spouses" screams a news release put forth today from Woman's Day magazine and AOL.com. Their joint survey of more than 3,000 women found 36% would not remarry their husbands if they had it to do over again, and another 20% weren't sure.

Don't take it too seriously.

The survey was a voluntary, online poll, which means it hardly represents a cross-section of American wives. Those who are discontent with their married lives would likely take more interest in the poll --and be far more likely to respond to it -- than those who are content.

When surveys like this have been done using accurate scientific methods, including a random, representative sample, results are consistent: An overwhelming majority of both husbands and wives would remarry their spouses if they had the chance to do it all again.

All this leads to a question: Why are Woman's Day and AOL so eager to portray wives as miserable? I don't have a good answer for that. If you do, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Holding husband's hand has medicinal effect

A good marriage will help you calm down when stressed -- just by holding your husband's hand. That's the news in a recent study of married women published in Psychological Science, and highlighted in today's Portland Press Herald. They sum it up nicely:

"Holding any hand reduced the women's stress, but holding their husband's hand had a greater calming effect. Further, the effect varied as a function of how happy the women were with their marriage[s]."

We've known for a long time that touch has a soothing effect, and touch between two people who love and support each other appears to be even stronger. So, when you snuggle up to keep warm over these January nights, you've got science on your side.

Marriage and health

There have been so many studies on this that it now seems like stating the obvious: Study finds links between marriage and good health. It's well-established now that both men and women enjoy better health when married, and that the effect is especially strong for men. If you're interested in more information on the topic, I'd suggest a visit to the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University.

Paying couples to get married?

In an effort to motivate poorer couples to get and stay married, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback has helped institute a pilot program in the District of Columbia that actually pays couples up to $9,000 for getting married. Brownback has said he hopes the program will eventually be implemented nationwide. The money isn't simply a handout--couples in the program are required to take additional steps like buying a home or expanding a business to qualify for federal matching funds. Nonetheless, it's designed with the goal of supporting marriage. "The welfare system penalizes marriage," Brownback tells USA Today, and that's hard to argue with. But is this the right solution? In context with Brownback's other efforts to reduce or eliminate social service programs, it looks like part of a broader plan to go back in time--to an era when money was much more of a motivator for marriage, an era when women got married less because they wanted to and more because, financially, they had to in order to survive.

Look, I agree that some of the financial disincentives to marriage should be removed. And that poverty adds strain to marriages. But tackling this without tackling the more systemic causes of poverty seems shortsighted. You really want to support marriages for poor families, senator? Show your support for federally-funded day care.

Sick of bad relationships? Well, yeah, you might be

Sorry for the delay in posts here--I've been sick. I'm better now, but the whole experience reminded me to post this article to anyone wondering how they can further help--or hinder--their chances of staying healthy over the flu season. Turns out all the kissing can help, if you're doing it with the right person:

Birmingham Post (Australia)
November 9, 2005, Wednesday
Copyright 2005 Midland Independent Newspapers plc

WEDDED BLISS CAN HELP BEAT FLU BUG

Marital happiness is key to fighting off flu, a study by university researchers has found.

The study by the University of Birmingham's School of Sport and Exercise Sciences also discovered that bereavement has a negative effect on the body's immune response to the annual flu jab.

Dr Anna Phillips, the lead investigator on the study, said: "We know that those aged over 65 are more at risk of the impact of flu, but this research shows that within that group, those that have been recently bereaved, or those that are single, divorced or widowed are more at risk that those who are in a happy marriage.

"It is especially important for these at-risk groups to get their flu jabs."

The study looked into whether stressful life events and other related factors had an effect on the immune system's response to the flu vaccination, which gives a good indication of how well the body would fight off a real attack of flu.

The research team looked at the levels of antibodies in the blood, which are produced by the body to combat disease.

The team found that those who reported having happy marriages had a much higher level of antibodies in the blood than those reporting lower marital satisfaction.

Those who had suffered a bereavement in the year prior to vaccination had a poorer response than those who had not suffered such a loss.

More than 180 pensioners from across Birmingham took part in the study, the first of its kind to examine the impact of general psychological factors on immune response to the flu jab in older adults.

Participants gave a blood sample prior to vaccination, then further samples at one month.

Dr Phillips added: "We would like to take this research further, to see whether interventions such as bereavement counselling or marriage counselling can improve the immune response in at-risk groups."

Is this what the future holds for marriage?

The San Francisco Chronicle tossed out an interesting idea Sunday: privatize marriage. I think it's ludicrous, but maybe not for the reasons you'd expect.

Marriage is a lot of things: A social contract, a religious bonding (for some), a legal contract, and so on. While its meaning and significance are frequently debated, the vast majority of adults in the US and around the world will marry at some point in their lives, and marriage is--more or less--a common experience we share as people, a bonding of two people as romantic partners for life. That serves a valuable purpose for communities and cultures, linking their members together in a way that few other rituals or contexts of life do.

The Chronicle's proposal would fracture marriage into, essentially, different kinds of commodities. ("What's that? You got the Lexus Wedding presented by TD Waterhouse? Wow, that's great! My wife and I went for the McMarriage instead. Yeah, it was all we could afford. What your life must be like!") Privatization as proposed in the article would surely create rich and poor classes of marriage, which would only increase the kind of polarization we're experiencing too much of already. And if you're expecting an anti-gay, "protect marriage for the children!" rant here, hardly; I wholly support efforts toward marriage for all. No one should be shut out of that valuable cultural and human experience because of their sexuality.

All that said, I will give credit to the Chronicle for attempting to inject some creativity into the discussion of the future of marriage. That absolutely is welcome, and it enlivens a discussion that more of us should be having.