Sleep More, Fight Less

Sleeping with someone else can be hard. I'm not talking about "sleeping" but actual sleep: snoring, REM-cycle, drool rolling out of the corner of your open mouth sort of sleep.

Last week I stayed up late finishing a project for work, crawling into bed at 12:30. Then Maggie woke at 2, Sam at 3, and Cliff at 4 (to catch a plane). When my alarm went off during the 5 o'clock hour, I was just getting comfortable. Predictably, I spent the rest of the day dreaming of a nap and trying to stay reasonably cheerful and productive.

If a new research study is to be believed, it's a good thing Cliff was out of town. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine found that when women experienced sleep disturbances at night, they were more likely to initiate negative interactions with their husbands the next day. Translated: wake me up in the middle of the night, and I'll pick a fight with you in the morning.

Men, for the record, were not more likely to initiate negative interactions after a sleep disturbance. (This may just be because women tend to raise relational concerns more frequently than men.)

So what does this mean for you? Make getting a full night's sleep a priority, and you might just increase the peace in your home. Seems like good advice, whether you're married or single. The article (link below) contains a few reasonable ideas for actually getting a full 8 hours of shut-eye.

And here's the kicker: Women, we can use this to our advantage. The next time the baby cries in the middle of the night, remind your husband that it's in his best interest to be the one that gets up.

(You can read more research at this link.)

How Being a Cubs Fan is Good for Your Health

This is Great Papa, with Sam. Great Papa is almost 100 years old. In his lifetime, the Cubs have never won a World Series.

Despite this, Wrigley Field is packed out every sunny summer day. Cubs fans have cornered the market on loyalty (and consumption of Old Style, but that's a topic for a different blog).

So for those of you that have been crossing your fingers and rubbing your lucky rabbit's foot every summer, in hopes that this year, finally, will be THE YEAR THE CURSE IS BROKEN ... it's not gonna happen in 2011. But, at least you can know this: there's a benefit to your decades of loyalty.

Long-term commitment in relationships is tied to a greater sense of life satisfaction, happiness and a host of practical benefits ... People with strong social support or social engagement have been found to have lower risk of diabetes, hypertension and heart attacks. One study of 4,000 men over a 22-year period found that married men in their 50s, 60s and 70s lived significantly longer than those of the same age who were never married or who were divorced or widowed, according to research by the RAND Center for the Study of Aging. - From a WSJ article, click here.

Research has also shown that loyalty pays off at work. People with five or more years of work experience with a single employer typically got 8% increases in compensation a year, compared with about 5% for people with a history of job hopping.

The same is true for professional football players: switch teams and you may see a brief uptick in performance or pay, but players who have long term allegiance to their team tend to end their careers with better stats than their team-hopping peers.

And one more loyalty benefit: researchers think people who move to a new city but cheer for the team from their hometown adjust to their new lives faster, perhaps because of a consistent view of their personal identities. (For more on all this research, see the WSJ article mentioned above.)

So Cubs fans, raise another flimsy plastic cup of Old Style for the health benefits of team loyalty. It may be the only thing you're toasting this season.

***Side note - Live out your loyalty at the game this Tuesday. We have 3 tickets for sale. Send me a message.***

Your Personal Top 10

One of the great joys of blog writing is that occasionally someone responds with a comment, critique, or suggestion. It makes me feel important in a "when I grow up I want to be a professional writer" sort of way.

As such, I was delighted last week when a friend sent along a link to Dan & Mike's "Top 10 Reasons for A Successful Marriage" list. Dan and Mike, in case you don't know, are relationship experts (their website doesn't exactly explain what makes them experts, but I'll take them at their word) who regularly appear on CNN, Fox News, Oprah, and other media outlets.

Here's their list:

1. Open and consistent communication

2. Keeping Intimacy Fresh

3. Setting Mutual Goals

4. Having a Life Outside of Each Other

5. Having fun things to look forward to together

6. Addressing the “800 lb Guerillas” ie. Money, parenting, religion, etc

7. Creating marriage rituals and keeping them consistent

8. Variety in the bedroom

9. Empowering trust within each other

10. Remember to have fun with each other and get over arguments quickly

Reasonable stuff, don't you think? The same sort of things that you might have read here on this blog, or heard in any variety of women's magazines, websites, or talk shows.

So here's a new idea for some familiar advice: take two minutes and rank order the list. What's your number one? Now ask your spouse to do the same. Should spur some conversation.

What We Did Right Yesterday

Our Father's Day plans fell apart yesterday when our 18-month old daughter ended up in the ER with a broken leg. (For those of you who are curious as to how Maggie sustained this injury, and her current well-being ... see the bottom of this post. I'll spare the rest of you the details.) This is exactly the sort of chaos that could bring out our worst behavior, but to our credit we held it together admirably yesterday.

So, for my own benefit, here's a quick list of what we did right yesterday:

1. We accepted the change in plans by adjusting our priorities: Clearly caring for our daughter's health was more important that fulfilling a Father's Day tradition. Keeping that in mind made it emotionally easier to shift the schedule (not always an easy task for two very scheduled people).

2. We took turns going off the deep end: We have a deal in our marriage that only one of us gets to be crazy at a time. We held to that yesterday and balanced each other when one of us teetered toward the edge.

3. We didn't make each other the enemy: Whenever you get frazzled by circumstances (two restless children in a cramped hospital room, three hours past nap time), it's easy to turn on each other rather than remembering it's the circumstances causing the discomfort. We remembered this yesterday.

4. We kept checking in: Since the day took a turn for the unpredictable, we couldn't rely on a predetermined plan. So we checked in throughout the day: do you still want to grab supper out? Would you like to take Sam for a bike ride when we get home? Are you doing okay with both kids now? Would you like another drink?

That's what worked yesterday. I'm proud of us in a "shouldn't I behave this well all the time?" sort of way.

Post Script: Maggie took a hard fall (from an attempt to climb the kitchen drawers like a ladder) on Friday night. She was clearly in pain and wouldn't put weight on her right leg, but there was no bruising or swelling and she had a full range of motion. We saw the doctor on Saturday, and she advised giving it a day, assuming it was a muscle strain.

When Maggie wasn't better on Sunday the doctor sent us for X-rays, which revealed a "buckle" break just below her right knee, probably caused by landing upright on her leg and jamming it. Thankfully these sorts of breaks are fairly benign - they heal quickly (she's only in the cast for a week) and don't cause long term damage on growth plates, etc. As of right now, Maggie is quite frustrated by the cast, but doing well otherwise.

Good news for people who love bad news

By now, everyone is probably fairly familiar with Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged exploits at a swanky New York hotel. But when "The Daily Show" punch lines stopped and France's indignation waned, Newsweek swept in with an exclusive poll documenting that "Many married men expect sex along with their room service." Find the article here:

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/05/hotel-confidential.html

If you're like me, Newsweek's claim caused a double-take: "MANY men expect sex along with their room service?" Really? I have been business traveling for nearly 6 years now, and at no point did I encounter anyone who operated under the assumption that hotel staff fluffed anything more than pillows. To be fair, as a government employee I'm more likely to stay at the Holiday Inn Express than the Pierre in New York. Still, this poll caught my attention and surprised me. How could this "dirty secret about business travel" have escaped my notice completely?

Well, it turns out "many" can be translated as 2%...that's how many men claim they have had sex with someone employed by the hotel where they stayed on business. That's it? That's the smoking gun? Is it me or was this marital epidemic perhaps slightly overstated? As previously documented in this blog, reports on the demise of marriage have been greatly exaggerated (February 14: Hopeful) and reports on infidelity seem similarly inflated (May 27: Sorry Arnold). What's with all the gloom and doom? Well, I have a theory.

One of the first lessons of social work is that there is great power in starting by identifying strengths rather than listing weaknesses. But that particular problem-solving approach remains a rarity. Our modern media environment only feeds this tendency: "Dire reports from Afghanistan!" "New links between cell phones and cancer!" "Many men expect housekeeper sex during every hotel stay!" Bad news clearly sells...but it also makes strength-based approaches to problem solving pretty difficult. It's human nature really. Folks find it easy to list everything that's wrong before talking about solutions, but it's not natural to start off with identifying the strengths and assets. Still, it's a shift worth making. For the social worker or community organizer, it means that every community has good things already happening and strengths that can be built upon. For those among us that are married, it means that there are probably some strengths in our relationships that can be enhanced and invested in.

Nonetheless, Newsweek opted not to run the following headline last week:

"Exclusive Newsweek poll indicates that 98% of married men have never had sex with hotel staffers!"

Similarly, the editors there decided against the following subheading:

"Apparently Dominique Strauss-Kahn was just a dirty old man, not a reflection on every business traveler in the world."

Oh, well. We'll keep beating the drum for positivity and strength finding. After all, that's what marriage is all about: seeing the best in another person and - just maybe - in ourselves.

- Cliff (aka The Husband)

Next stop: domestic imbalance

The summer before Amber and I got married, I got a temporary job cold calling offices about their photocopier leases. Yes, it was painful. But you know what was even more painful than the work itself? That would be the commute. While I was initially planning to work in downtown Chicago, I ended up commuting to the far Northern suburbs instead. I averaged nearly an hour and a half one way in a car with no CD player and poor air conditioning. Little did I know, my marriage was at risk before it even began.

A Swedish study recently determined that long commutes (those over 45 minutes) can increase one’s chances of divorce by 40%:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/stuck-with-a-long-commute-your-marriage-may-be-at-risk/article2036226/

The author’s study suggests that long commutes often lead to an imbalance of domestic duties: while one partner commutes, the other makes up for this absence by taking a lesser job that’s located nearby or handling some extra chores or solo parenting on a more regular basis. That’s extra stress for any relationship.

Thankfully, my reverse commute telemarketing career ended shortly after it started. I got married and began grad school…at a campus on the other side of Chicago. Whoops. Nonetheless, we have somehow survived living in a city where commutes can be long and tough. Here’s my best advice on simultaneously managing marriage and commutes:

1) Switch lanes when necessary
I average about a 35 minute commute from our home to my office, but I have multiple travel options available everyday. Sometimes I take the kids to daycare on the bus, sometimes I ride public transport on my own, sometimes I hitch a car ride with my lovely family and sometimes I ride my bike. Having a few different options makes it easier to adjust my commute to fit our life, rather than the other way around.

2) Document your ETA
I will admit that Amber and I probably invest too much conversation time on when we're leaving home every morning and when we're arriving home. Still, that's preferable to her wondering every evening why I'm not home yet or me wondering why she's rushing out the door so early. It's worth reviewing commute plans the night before, and it's worth checking in via telephone sometime late afternoon. That pesky domestic imbalance can creep in either way, but realistic expectations and honest conversations definitely relieve the pressure.

There are some quick thoughts on marriage from the #3 worst traffic city in the U.S. Oh, and I have one other piece of advice: never take a job that involves telemarketing, photocopiers and a long commute.

- Cliff (aka The Husband)

Baby-Proofing Your Marriage (Even If You Don't Have Young Kids - Or Any Kids At All)

The best "I need to baby-proof" story I've ever heard comes from a friend-of-a-friend who left her two year-old son playing quietly in the living room to quickly take something out to the garage. She returned a few minutes later to discover he had crawled to the kitchen, pulled a chair over to the counter, climbed up, reached a top shelf where a box of markers were stored, taken off all his clothes and diaper, and was coloring his scrotum with a Sharpie.

In the online marriage advice community, you sometimes hear a call for “baby-proofing” your marriage, as well as your house. I’ve been giving this some thought, and here’s the conclusion I’ve come to: the best advice for baby-proofing your marriage is really relevant whether or not you have young kids, or any kids at all.

So here are my top four baby-proofing tips, all of which have are drawn from well documented research by the experts. I’m also including a lot of references to other entries about the topics:

1) Figure out how you’re going to divvy up housework, make sure it feels fair (even if it’s not 50/50), and check in regularly to make sure you’re partner still feels good about the arrangement.

Researchers routinely report that women are, or feel like they are, carrying a bigger housework burden – even when they work full time outside the home. For women, this can be a major source of marital dissatisfaction, especially after having kids.

Figuring out how to share housework can have big benefits (like more sex). Read about it here:

· Trading Dusting for Doing It

2) Make time together sacred. Make time apart sacred.

You’re probably not surprised to see “make time together” as a top tip. Date Nights have been standard marital advice since I was a kid. But date nights aren’t always practical, so figure out how to carve a few minutes out of your day for each other, without the kids.

Cliff and I used to take a drink to the back porch after the kids went to bed, and talk for 20 minutes or so. (This sounds terribly romantic, until you realize that our back porch faces an alley, and we have a car wash as neighbors.)

But time together also means being fully present when you’re in the same room. Cliff wrote about this in regards to how smartphones keep us from real conversation:

· Can You Hear Me Now?

Time apart may be almost as important as time together. Being an individual is an important part of being a couple. Here are two earlier entries on the value of individual hobbies, and the importance of friendship outside marriage.

· How Running Makes Me a Better Wife

· How Seeing Bridesmaids Might Help Your Marriage

3) Actively work to see your spouse as something more than a parent.

We’ve all heard the horror stories of couples who, facing a newly empty nest, found they no longer had anything to talk about. My as-of-yet unproven theory (which happens to align with all the women’s magazine articles I’ve read over the years) is that the antidote to this is maintaining your marital friendship all along.

To do this, you have to be committed to seeing your partner as more than a parent. You have to take interest in his hobby of writing plays, or her hobby of blogging about marriage, for example.

Research has my back on this one. Science says that happy marriages happen when you continue growing as an individual (see above). This means pursuing dreams, learning new things, looking for adventures. There’s actually a research-based quiz you can take to learn your own relationship’s capacity for self-expansion. Read more and check it out here:

· Sustainable Marriage

4) Talk good about your partner.

Nothing feels better than overhearing your partner talking good about you. So tell his mom what a great father he is. Tell your wife how amazing it was that she landed the big client the same week she coached little league soccer to their first win. Thank your husband for putting the laundry in the washing machine, or for saving the last slice of chocolate cake. Tell the neighbors about her amazing cookies. If he has a nice ass, tell your girlfriends.

We’ve not really written on the importance of this before, perhaps because it goes without saying. It is a bit obvious, but it’s also often forgotten.

One thing science says is that it takes a lot of positive comments to overcome the impact of one negative comment. The actual ratio is a bit fuzzy – somewhere between 6:1 and 12:1 is what I most often hear. So go out of your way to find things to compliment – it’s one of the best possible ways to say I love you.

And since I don’t have a link to share about this, I’ll share a link to a video that shows another great way of saying I love you: by doing something unexpected as a tribute to your spouse. Watch this for a good laugh:

· This Flash Mob is My Love Letter to You

Words You Can't Take Back

I'm not at my best in hot weather. This is what I've been telling myself for the last 48 hours, to offer some explanation as to why, at 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning while riding a crowded blue line train, I grew so frustrated at a conversation (about our upcoming vacation, no less) that I said some hurtful things to Cliff. Things, of course, that I didn't really mean.

We've all been there - watched the words stumble out of our mouths even as we wished we had the willpower to haul them back in. Watched the person we love most in the world flinch as the words make direct contact.

Of course it takes a few minutes (or hours) before you really regret what you've said. At first it almost feels good to suddenly have the upper hand in the conversation. Then, eventually, you realize that the upper hand does not mean the upper road: you've stepped over the line, and you can't take those words back. They're out there.

Marriage is full of these exchanges - I'm reading one marriage book that claims you can eliminate all negativity, but I don't buy it. I think what's more important is that you don't pretend the words haven't been said. Unchecked, they can accumulate until they become extra baggage in any fight, regardless of topic. Maybe there are some people that can live at peace with that baggage, but I'm not one of them.

I've apologized a half dozen times since then, and Cliff has graciously extended his forgiveness. Two days later, I can't even fully recall why I was feeling so on edge, so threatened. What I do feel is humbled by the reminder that emotions can so easily get the best of me. And committed, once again, to taking the upper road.

How Seeing Bridesmaids (Or The Hangover, Part 2) Helps Your Marriage

The other night I met two dear friends at a theater (with air conditioning!) to watch Bridesmaids.

(Side note: it's vulgar, and hilarious, and you totally have to see it. Unless you're the type that's offended by things that are vulgar. Or hilarious.)

We split a bag of popcorn and shared a pack of Kleenex when, at the end, we were all laughing so hard that sobbing was absolutely necessary. It was cathartic. A cleansing kind of laughter that made me feel refreshed. And the conversation in the car on the way home just added to the heightened sense of the enjoyment of life.

It was late when I got home, but Cliff was waiting up for me. And we talked animatedly for awhile, catching up like we'd been a part for a week instead of just a few hours. Turns out bonding with the girls had an added bonding-bonus for my marriage.

I'm not the only one who has noticed this trend. I saw a blog post recently titled "How Lunch with the Girls Helps Your Marriage." The author argues that having friends who listen to you rant, or help you decompress after a long day at work, decreases stress in your relationship at home:

"Don't get me wrong, my husband is my BFF, but that doesn't mean he should be the only person I confide in -- that would be a lot of pressure on him, on our relationship. Imagine if he's the only one I unload on about everything from the type of garbage bags we use to how I am feeling about Kiddo's night terrors to my struggle to find a swimsuit that covers decently but doesn't make me look like a granny. All of that muddles and takes up time when we could be reconnecting with each other after a long day."

I agree. And I'm pretty sure Cliff does too. In fact, I remember one time when he made this argument. I was 10 weeks pregnant with our first child, and I'd told no one but him and the midwife. Like any new mom-to-be, I was a muddle of excitement, hormones and anxieties. So much so that Cliff encouraged me to share the news with my closest girlfriends earlier than planned because, as he said, "I can't handle all your crazy on my own." (Perhaps I'm paraphrasing here, but you get the point.)

At any rate ... consider yourself granted permission to grab a drink with the girls, watch the game with the guys, or take a long lunch with your best non-spouse friend. It may be the best thing you do for your marriage this week.

Lab Rats in Polyester Pants: What Science Says about Your Sex Life

If you enjoy squirming while reading for leisure, you should check out Mary Roach's book Bonk. As the title suggests, it's about sex. More particularly, it's about the science of learning about sex. And while I can say it's a real page turner, it's also one of those books that leaves you turning the pages quickly while on the train, lest the pleasant looking elderly gentleman sitting next to you sees the bold headline "Dating the Penis Camera."

But here's the thing about this book: it's full of information you don't know. Most of what we know about sex we learn from doing - and let's be real: most of us can't even provide accurate names for all the body parts.

Science didn't have much in the way of answers until a few decades ago. And now, thanks to all sorts of intrusive measures that I don't even want to think about, we know more than ever and some of what we know is really interesting stuff.

Wade through the horror stories of experimentation gone wrong (he put a toothbrush where?) and the frightening-sounding names given on patent applications, and you'll find occasional gems worth repeating (though only in very select company).

Not heeding my own advice to select your company with caution ... here are some of the fascinating tidbits from Bonk.

• Perhaps you've heard that for women, emotional arousal is what leads to physical arousal. Here's the proof: park a woman in front of an erotic video to which she feels no emotional connection, and her body will immediately be physically aroused but (here's the kicker) she will be completely unaware of it. Until her emotions kick in, she has no idea her body is sending green lights. Men - use this information for good and not for evil. Remember, women are turned on by men who do dishes. (More on that at this previous post.)

• Contrary to what you may have heard, there's no scientific proof that a female orgasm aids in conception. Women who are trying to get pregnant - I give you full permission to hide this fact from your husbands.
  

• Apparently cave women were randy little creatures. Scientists think the shape of the penis tip served the evolutionarily beneficial purpose of pulling another man's semen from the woman's vagina.
  

• Viagra is a serious improvement over previous treatments for erectile dysfunction. The little blue pill sounds much better than, say, surgical implantation of a goat's sex glands, or eating tiger penis soup ($320 a serving, for the record).

• Oh, and the lab rats: one researcher dressed rats in pants of assorted materials for over a year and observed their sex lives. Rats who wore polyester or poly-blend materials had sex significantly less often than rats who wore cotton or wool. So ... keep that in mind as you put on your jammies tonight.

There you have it - mostly worthless knowledge from Bonk. If you've made it this far, you might love the book. Check it out.

Chillaxing

Every single time you flip on your television or open a magazine, you are besieged with suggestions on how you should relax. Have a beer with friends. Vacation at this exclusive resort. Buy something new for yourself. The basic premise is pretty simple: we’re all working hard, and we’re all deserving of some rest and relaxation. But even the entry level folks over at Leo Burnett know that some ads target men and some ads target women. The reasoning behind this strategy is that men and women relax differently. And now there’s a new piece of scientific evidence.

The Center for the Everyday Lives of Families at UCLA measured stress hormones and daily activities among 30 families, every one of which involved two working spouses and at least one child. Real relaxation typically involves a significant drop in cortisol levels, a sure sign that the day’s stress is fading away. Interestingly enough, women recorded healthier cortisol levels when their husbands helped with housework; men lowered their cortisol levels when their wives worked on housework while they relaxed. One of the study’s authors, Elinor Ochs, went so far as to say, “When (women) are alone, they tend to be doing housework. When men are alone, they tend to be relaxing.” Well – ahem – I was obviously shocked by these findings. Check out more about the study here:

http://www.digtriad.com/news/article/176139/176/Men-Relax-Best-WhenWives-Are-Busy-According-To-Study

Allow me to step away from these abstract studies for a moment and provide some real life examples from the Johnson household. When I arrive home from work every day, I am greeted by two of the most adorable and exuberant children on the face of the planet earth. They scream my name giddily, and hugs ensue. About five minutes later, I find myself desperate to go upstairs, change my clothes, pour a drink, check sports headlines or really participate in any activity that does not involve other human beings. Why am I suddenly attempting to escape my favorite people in the world? After reading this study, I would wager to say that I am seeking lower cortisol levels more than anything else. I actually love cooking, and I am the biggest neat freak in our home (for more on why I clean the shower, see this previous post - http://themarriageproject.blogspot.com/2011/05/trading-dusting-for-doing-it-or-honey.html). Still, that moment of solitary leisure is what I seek first.

This desire for relaxation eventually led to some conflict between myself and my lovely bride. There were Sunday afternoons where she embraced projects while I watched football. There were weekday evenings when changing my clothes turned into 15-20 minutes of reading internet headlines. At a certain point, we needed a frank conversation about how we could both accomplish some tasks and both relax. Otherwise, we were going to be pursuing our own individual relaxation within the same house…while the other spouse hung with the kids.

I would suggest we’ve met in the middle: she’s learned to value Sunday afternoon naps during football games, and I have learned to save my internet surfing for after our kids’ bed time. But it starts with understanding the different ways we relax. Thankfully, no one needs to measure two spouses’ cortisol level for that conversation to happen.

- Cliff (AKA The Husband)