The study considered whether different levels of self-esteem could affect women’s behaviors towards their partners. Using a series of rating scales, the researchers had the female participants rate how they felt about themselves, their current partner and the things that they did to maintain their relationships.

Researchers found that women who felt more desirable than their partners had higher levels of self-esteem and engaged in fewer behaviors designed to maintain and enhance their relationships (aka: activities intended to prevent their partner from becoming involved with someone else).

On the other hand, women with lower levels of self-esteem reported putting more effort into these relationship maintenance behaviors. In other words, women who felt less desirable or attractive than their partners compensated for this imbalance by investing more time, effort, and economic resources in their relationships.

So does that mean that if you’re the type who often puts forth more time and effort in your relationships that you automatically have low self-esteem? Not exactly. Here are a few important questions to consider before picking up a self-help book:

Am I denying, delaying, or minimizing the things I need for the sake of the relationship or my partner’s needs? While it’s normal (and nice!) to go out of your way for your partner every once in awhile, if you’re regularly putting off your needs (adequate sleep, gym time, studying, laundry, spending time with your friends, etc.) for the sake of being there for and/or with your partner, this can be indicative of valuing your partner’s needs over your own. And while time with him or his appreciation may be enough to sustain your efforts for now, keeping yourself low on your list of priorities will begin to wear on you and can breed resentment or dissatisfaction with your relationship.

Do I feel like my partner does his fair share and reciprocates my efforts? A relationship between two people should be just that – between two people, averaging out to an even 50/50 split of invested effort. Sure, some days we have to give more than our half, but if you feel like you’re consistently giving 75% to only get 25% in return, you may be compensating for an underlying insecurity. There’s always vulnerability in asking for what we need because someone can always say ‘no’. “No, I don’t care/I’m not willing/That’s not important to me.” If you’re not comfortable voicing your own needs or saying ‘no,’ it may be because you’re not sure your partner will actually care about or be willing to say ‘yes’ to help meet your needs.

Why am I motivated to do these things? If you often find yourself doing nice things for him “because that’s what a good girlfriend does” or apologizing first after he got mad at you because you “know it’s hard for him to apologize first,” it’s important to consider your motivation. Do you worry that if you didn’t do these things (or if you voiced your own needs) that your partner would leave? Conforming to your partner’s interests or catering to his whims for fear that he might not stick around otherwise may be an issue of low self-esteem, as you’re accepting less than you’re giving (see: fair share).

“What about me?” If you find you are asking yourself (or your friends) this question on a regular basis, this is likely a strong indicator that this relationship is predominantly one-sided. But before you let your friends trash talk him for not caring about you enough, it’s important to remember: you teach people how to treat you. If you don’t assert your needs or ask for what you want, no one is going to read you and just do it anyway. And if you act as if your needs are less important or can be sidelined, you’re teaching your partner to do the same. If you don’t ask and never speak up for yourself, no one can say, “Yes.” Knowing what your needs and boundaries are as an individual is essential to any balanced and mutually fulfilling relationship.

Source: Women with Low Self-Esteem Work Harder to Keep a Keeper

Sarah Schmermund specializes in marriage and family therapy, working with couples, individuals, and families via her private practice in Washington, D.C.

The post Why Women with Low Self-Esteem Try Harder in Relationships appeared first on eHarmony Blog.

Mind-wandering is often a regular (and at times disruptive) influence in our everyday lives. We all do it; our attention strays and suddenly we’re thinking about everything but the task at hand. Mind-wandering can be helpful; it has been shown to enhance creativity and problem solving. Plus, when stuck in traffic or in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, mind-wandering can also be an effective means of coping with the frustration or boredom that can accompany these mundane tasks.

When we’re trying to meet a deadline, study for a test, or pay attention to our dinner date’s story about his time in the peace corps, though, mind-wandering can be more annoying than adaptive. Some mind-wandering is normal, but it can have negative consequences on our ability to perform cognitive tasks, like working memory, fluid intelligence, and standardized tests. Your cat doodles may pass the time, but they do little to stave off the embarrassment of being called on by your boss to summarize the points she just made during an important meeting.

“This quarter’s numbers? Right, um, well, they looked purr-fect to me, boss.”

So how do you stay focused when you just can’t seem to concentrate?

A recent study out of the University of California, Santa Barbara, may have the answer: mindfulness. An increassingly a popular buzzword in psychology, mindfulness has its roots in centuries-old Buddhist traditions. Though tricky to define, mindfulness is essentially qualified as sustained attentiveness, without distraction, to one’s current thoughts, feelings, and surroundings on a moment-to-moment basis.

“In practice, mindfulness training involves maintaining awareness on a particular object of attention, such as the physical sensations in the body as the breath moves in and out, from one moment to the next. Whenever the mind wanders, as it inevitably will, to thoughts, feelings, sounds, or other bodily sensations, the contents of awareness are noted, and the attention is then gently but firmly escorted back to the designated object of attention.”

Researchers wondered whether the negative effects of mind-wandering on cognitive abilities could be counteracted through this practice of mindfulness. To find out, they randomly assigned 48 college student to a mindfulness class or a nutrition class that met for 45 minutes, four times per week, over two weeks. The study participants completed a working memory capacity task and the verbal reasoning section of the GRE (modified to exclude vocabulary-related questions) in the week before the class started and again in the week after the class ended.

The results were clear: Even a brief mindfulness training program can help people to reign in their wandering minds and, in doing so, improve fundamental cognitive abilities (and your dating life!).

Compared to those who received instruction in nutrition, mindfulness training improved accuracy on the GRE and higher working memory capacity, resulting in the equivalent of a 16 percentile-point boost on the GRE, on average.

On the GRE, 16 percentile-points can mean the difference between “Congratulations, you’ve been accepted!” and “We regret to inform you…” Just imagine what that could mean for your cat doodles job performance.

If you’re new to meditation or mindfulness, trying to “focus on your breath” can be more frustrating than freeing, as Elizabeth Gilbert so humorously described (and Julia Roberts portrayed) in her first meditation experience at an ashram in India in Eat, Pray, Love.  With a little bit of practice, though, you can reign in mind-wandering without leaving your chair. Here are a few great resources to help you master mindfulness:

• Listen and learn: The UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center offers online, self-paced classes on the basics of mindfulness and how it can be applied to daily life  free guided meditations via their website or for download at iTunes; and, for those in the LA area, free drop-in meditations.

• Exercise: Great for beginners, these easy to follow exercises help you practice different aspects of and approaches to mindfulness.

• There’s an app for that: There are dozens of apps designed to guide meditations and mindfulness. For some of the better ones, check out these reviews from The New York Times.

Source: Brief Mindfulness Training May Boost Test Scores, Working Memory 

Sarah Schmermund specializes in marriage and family therapy, working with couples, individuals, and families via her private practice in Washington, D.C.

The post Tips for the Easily-Distracted Dater appeared first on eHarmony Blog.

It’s long been wondered why women prefer ‘bad boys.’ Sure, they might be sexy, handsome, and rebellious, but their lack of interest in being in a relationship means they don’t generally offer the long-term reliability potential women are often looking for in a mate.

Contrary to the popular notion, this bad boy bias isn’t as pervasive as you might think. Previous research has shown that the tendency for women to prefer a bad boy is actually just temporary. Well, temporary in a way that revisits once a month: women become more attracted to the bad boy during ovulation.

Again, given that the general mating drive for a woman is to find a reliable, supportive mate to care for her and their offspring, this begs the question: why would women approaching fertility want to mate with a guy who offers the opposite of that?

You know how sometimes after one-too-many mojitos that guy from marketing (you know, the one with the uni-brow) starts to look way cuter than he usually does (aka the “Beer Goggles” effect)?

This is kind of like that.

Researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio asked women to view online dating profiles of a ‘sexy cad’ (aka bad boy) or a reliable man during periods of high and low fertility. They were asked to guess how much help they could expect from the men in caring for the baby and around the house.  As the women got closer to ovulation, they thought the sexy man would contribute more to these domestic duties.

Turns out, under the hormonal influence of ovulation, women are deluded into thinking that the prototypical bad boys will actually change into devoted partners and better dads.

Like beer goggles from your hormones, ovulation goggles make Mr. Wrong look exactly like Mr. Right.

So, are women just supposed to resign themselves to not dating during ovulation? Thankfully, no. Also similar to beer goggles, which can be counteracted by the intervening of a trusted friend, so, too, can a friend clear the deluded lens of the ovulation goggles.

In another study, researchers had women interact directly with male actors who played the roles of a bad boy and a reliable dad, once during ovulation and again at low fertility. Like before, ovulating women thought that the bad boy, and not the reliable dad, would be a more stable partner and a better father. But, this was only the case if she were his partner. When asked what kind of father the sexy bad boy would be if he were to have children with another woman, women easily pointed out the bad boy’s shortcomings.

So if you’re not sure whether your ovulation goggles are leading you astray, imagine him dating your friend. If he doesn’t seem so stable and faithful with her, chances are he won’t be with you.

Source: Durante, K. M., Griskevicius, V., Simpson, J. A., Cantú, S. M., & Li, N. P. (2012). Ovulation leads women to perceive sexy cads as good dads. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 103(2), 292-305. doi:10.1037/a0028498  

Sarah Schmermund specializes in marriage and family therapy, working with couples, individuals, and families via her private practice in Washington, D.C.

The post What You Don’t Know About Women and ‘Bad Boys’ appeared first on eHarmony Blog.

If you use Facebook, you may be familiar with the frustration, loneliness, jealousy, or general dissatisfaction that comes with seeing everyone else you “know” living-it-up, getting married, making babies, traveling, and all the other wonderful and/or random things people broadcast via the social media site.

And thanks to a recent study, you may also be relieved to find that you’re not alone. A research team in the UK recently reported that “one in three people felt worse after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives.” Researchers also noted that viewing pictures of others’ vacations elicited the most incidents of envy by study participants, followed by comparisons of social interaction (i.e. comparing how many birthday wishes you got with how many that girl you met once at that party three years ago received).

Subsequently, these envious reactions often prompted users to then post exaggerated or overly-boastful achievements to present themselves in a more attractive way.  So, the stories and pictures in our news feeds that we’re viewing (and reacting to ourselves) may often be someone else’s reaction to whatever is in their news feed.

Imagine a weary, jaded, and involuntarily single woman who jumps onto Facebook one evening looking for a distraction from yet another less-than-ideal first date, only to find a college friend’s photo depicting her new engagement ring and the couple’s happily-ever-after bliss. As she recalls an evening that offered no such prospective bliss, she begins to make judgments about herself as a woman and her future relationship potential (or lack thereof). While not unlike the comparisons and judgments we make in line at the grocery store or at a party, these opportunities for comparison are much more frequent and without the greater context. What that small instance in the photo doesn’t show is the bigger picture. The bigger picture, with underwhelming date nights and arguments and the silent treatment and wondering “are we really going to make it?”, is not as blissful as we imagine.

But with Facebook, we’re now regularly comparing our average situation to a small, “perfect” sampling of someone else’s.

So instead, just say “No!” to Facebook. No to clicking through hundreds of vacation photos when you can’t even remember where your swimsuit is; no to posts of weddings or anniversary trips when you’ve recently gotten divorced; no to all of it.

Particularly when you’re feeling stressed, worried, or unhappy about something, take a break from the social network. Spend some real face time with some real friends. Get in some extra quality time with your family.  Sit down with a new book or project, or start tackling a new goal at the gym. Take time to appreciate the things that are going well in your life. With a break from self-doubt and constant comparisons, you can eventually return to Facebook with a more solid understanding and appreciation for your situation, no matter what it is, without counting how many people “like” it.

Sarah Schmermund specializes in marriage and family therapy, working with couples, individuals, and families via her private practice in Washington, D.C.

The post Why You Should Just Say ‘No’ to Facebook (Sometimes) appeared first on eHarmony Blog.

“Women often need to do nothing to promote a sexual encounter. Simply existing in time and space and being naked under their clothes is often enough to trigger approach attempts by men.” -D. Symons

Walk into any bar, coffee shop, bookstore, DMV, etc., etc.: anywhere men and women intermingle, there will be flirting.  The tendency for men and women to flirt with each other is widely accepted (and expected!) as a means of initiating romantic relationships.  Just exactly how we engage each other to communicate our romantic interests, however, allows more room for debate.  Who should make the first move?  Does flirting with someone always mean “I’m interested”?  Does a “one-night stand” flirt differently than someone interested in a long-term relationship?  And, given all the different ways there are to flirt, how much can you really determine about the flirter’s potential?

According to a recent study, you can learn quite a bit, including someone’s personality, attitudes and beliefs about courtship, self-presentation tendencies, and even past relationship behaviors.  Researchers developed the “Flirting Styles Inventory” to identify the individual differences in the communication of romantic interest (Hall, Carter, Cody, & Albright, 2010).  Specifically, they identified 5 distinct flirting styles…

Click here to see what your flirting style says about you.

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A phenomenon coined “mate choice copying,” in which an animal is more likely to select a mate previously chosen by another, has been observed in a variety of nonhuman species.  From an evolutionary perspective, copying another’s mate may act as a shortcut by which the costs of active mate assessment (like time, energy, and predation risk) are diminished while also improving the mating outcome; choosing a mate who has previously mated with another helps ensure that an individual less experienced in selecting a mate will indeed mate successfully.

As humans, our tendency to copy others’ choices has been well documented by researchers across a variety of human activities, including fashion decisions, business strategies, “copycat” crimes, and, yes, restaurant orders.  Recently, mate copying has been further indicated in human mating, as humans are particularly skilled at incorporating the social cues of others as a means of determining their intentions and attitudes (Jones, DeBruine, Little, Burriss, & Feinberg, 2007).  Subtleties such as one person’s proximity to another, their facial expression, or a slight gaze potentially relay a wealth of information regarding the value of an unknown individual before you even learn their name.  Given the highly ambiguous nature of social dating, in which it seems utterly impossible to size-up every potential partner you see, mate copying may allow our already-overworked brains just the shortcut they need.

This is especially true for women, as their ideal mate preferences are influenced by those factors that best indicate that a man will be able and willing to stick around and invest in herself and her offspring, like his socioeconomic status, career, and social dominance.  Unfortunately, many of these qualities cannot be determined simply by giving a man a good onceover, and instead women must employ other means of assessing a potential mate’s value (unless Sally is around to offer her screaming approval).

So how has the female species adapted to differentiate the good guys from the bad ones with just a glance?  Read more to find out…

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