If you were asked whether you think men or women are the first to say, “ I love you” in romantic relationships, what would you say?

Most people – both men and women – believe it is women.  Such beliefs are congruent with those who have studied gender differences. For example,

• Women are generally thought to be more interested in and willing to express love and commitment than men.
• Women are considered to have an easier time than men expressing vulnerable emotions such as love.
• A content analysis of emotional expression in Valentine’s Day cards, for example, found that women were more likely than men to express love and fidelity.
• A questionnaire study of 55 men and women walking across a college campus which asked, among other questions, “Who normally says they are in love FIRST in romantic relationships?” found that both men and women believe that women are more likely to be the first to confess love in relationships.

REALTY suggests something different. MIT researchers Joshua Ackerman, Griskevicius & Li (authors of the questionnaire study above) found across a series of studies that what men and women believe and what they actually do is quite different.

If you are looking for the perfect partner or trying to be one – think twice. Perfection is painfully unrealistic for individuals and emotionally costly for couples.

While there is no doubt that striving to be your personal best and feeling good about your efforts is healthy as well as relationship enhancing – perfectionism is something else.

Perfectionism is the belief that a state of completeness and flawlessness can and should be attained. The literature on perfectionism underscores that there is an important difference between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. It is a difference worth considering.

The question of whether to end a relationship, be it a 20 year marriage or a 5 year commitment, is a painful and complicated one. It is a question that often implies loss, fear of judgment, sense of failure, self-blame as well as glimmers of hope and change.  At times we avoid this question, we ask others to answer it, we act on it impulsively, we never stop asking it or we recognize we have no choice – we have to ask it of ourselves.

Here are some issues and underlying questions that you may find helpful as you consider this life decision.

The Importance of Knowing Why You Want to Leave

If you are thinking of leaving a relationship, it is important that you know why. Understanding your past and present informs the decisions you make for your future. No matter what the circumstances of the relationship you are ending, understanding it offers something valuable for you to know about you.

• How did the relationship go from awesome to awful?
• Why couldn’t you change him/ her – why did you think you could? 
• What made the good times so good? What made the bad times so bad?
• What part did you play in the loss of hope in this relationship?

 The Importance of Your Partner’s Knowing Why

Except in those cases where interaction and discussion could be dangerous, it is important for your partner to know why you are thinking of ending this relationship. The very thought of this may make you want to scream, “How could she/he not know?”  The reality is that a painful familiar relationship is often preferable to change or the fear of being alone. Denial can be a powerful and long standing survival strategy. It makes communication crucial.

No one just shows up for a good relationship and relationships don’t just get better because time passes. It is what we do during that time that helps heal and enhance our relationships. Over the last few years I have written many blogs for couples. Here are six simple resolutions drawn from them that many have found enhance the bond they share with their partner.

Let It Go

If you are human and you are in a relationship, it is inevitable that at times you will be angry with your partner. Once you and your partner have come to some resolve or have agreed to a working resolution, let the contention and disagreement go.

You may think it is important to explain to your partner one more reason you were angry or to analyze his/her character flaw. It’s not. Your partner will not be grateful for this information. Let it Go!

Once you and your partner move on to a positive mood or enjoyable place, go with it, feel it- let it take. Positive memories and experiences build recovery momentum. They facilitate problem resolution because they broaden perspective, re-kindle appreciation of each other and build trust.

Few people have a long range goal of dating in midlife. To the many who find themselves faced with the possibility, midlife dating can seem like a mystifying, even overwhelming, journey to find a partner.

The reality is that despite the horror stories of friends or the fictional depictions of perfect couples repelling down snowy peaks, the experience of midlife dating really depends upon your goal.

When you expand the goal of midlife dating from finding someone to finding and re-defining yourself, the experience changes. Instead of a solution to being alone – midlife dating becomes an evolution of self.

Why Midlife Dating?

Usually something has or has not occurred in the lives or personal relationships of people ages 40- 65 that makes midlife dating a consideration. Some have left a troubled or contentious marriage; some feel they have been the one left; some have never looked up from a career; some have weathered the illness and death of a partner; and some have decided they are finally ready  to settle down.” Most don’t want to be alone.

“ Why Can’ t You Just Say, Thanks?”

If this sounds familiar it is because most of us have said it or heard it.

• Most people want to feel appreciated, particularly by the person closest to them but too often the expression of gratitude gets lost in the fabric of couple’s lives.
• Recent research in the field of positive psychology informs us that feeling gratitude, the awareness and appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself, has many benefits including positive mood, enhanced physical health and optimistic outlook. Actually expressing gratitude has proven to have even greater benefits in terms of personal happiness and relationship enhancement.

Then… Why is it difficult to express gratitude to a partner?

People are complicated. Add in couple dynamics, prior history, unconscious factors, cultural context and you multiply those complications.

• Most partners don’t consider how often they thank their partner or if not-why not?
• Few are aware of the proven benefits of expressing gratitude on their personal feelings, their view of the partner, the patterns and value of the relationship.

Consider Recognizing Your Resistance and Understanding the Possible Benefits of  “Just Saying Thanks.”

Given that there are now 81 million baby boomers in this country ranging from ages 46 to 66, there are many people navigating the transitions of midlife. When you add to that the fact that 80% of the male boomers and 77% of the females are married the journey gets more complicated.

Amazon lists over 2,000 books dealing with midlife with titles as different as Awakening at Midlife, Midlife Meltdown, Thinking about Tomorrow: Re-inventing Yourself at Midlife, How to Survive Your Husband’s Midlife Crisis, Midlife Crisis For Men: Male Menopause, My Favorite Midlife Crisis etc. The message is that against the backdrop of mortality and a story half told, men and women navigate their midlife passage in different ways with different challenges and different needs. When married, the impact they have on each other is inevitable.

It depends. It most cases it’s not the differences that threaten a marriage, it’s how the partners experience and react to those differences.

There Are Always Some Differences

Whether you were drawn together by the attraction of opposites or finally found your ideal match in terms of similar looks, education or socio-economic background, most partners at some point realize they are married “ with differences.” The fact is that no two people have the same goal, react the same way or enjoy the same thing, at the same time – ALL THE TIME. ( Thankfully)

• “ You really like working in the garden?”
• “ You don’t mind driving the kids for 8 hours to ski?”
• “ You really want that many pairs of shoes?”

When Do Differences become Problems?

Working with couples, it seems that differences become problems when they are unexpected, imply change or are experienced as a threat to either partner or to the relationship. Often partners react to the assumed threat with accusation or judgment which sets the stage for conflict. For example,

While most partners can live with having different tastes in foods and music, differences that emerge in the face of life events ( jobs, children, financial burdens) often threaten partners.

Numerous studies have identified exercise as a key factor in reducing depression symptoms. A recent study heightens the argument by finding that as compared to age, race, gender, body mass index cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes, it was the sedentary lifestyle of a depressed person that alone accounted for about 25% of the risk of heart-related deaths. The message is that we need to move because our lives depend on it!

The problem is that when you are depressed often the last thing you want to do is exercise.

Given the despair, lethargy, self-doubt, exhaustion, disinterest in activities and shame experienced with depression, the suggestion to exercise feels like adding insult to injury. “I’m not exercising because I’m depressed.”

Knowing exercise could help, but feeling unable to do so often adds to the self-recriminations and low self-esteem of depression.  In one case, the more the young woman watched other family members exercise – the less possible it felt.

Depression’s Landscape.

Given the recent discussion of the pros and cons of medications and treatments for depression, it seems clear that people need to have information and treatment options. It also seems important to stack the deck toward feeling better with anything that might work for you. If you have wanted to exercise but find it impossible – here are some suggestions.

With increasing longevity we have become very concerned about the impact of old age on memory. Notwithstanding the importance of this focus, it is worth remembering that we have been forgetting all kinds of things throughout our lifespan – our violin in fourth grade, the due date for the final paper in High School, and the time of our first job interview.

Understanding and enhancing memory is actually a life-long process.

A particularly interesting area is the way in which memory operates between partners.  Research findings remind us of the potential that couples have for maximizing mutual use of this precious resource.

Research Findings

A recent study in Science of “Google Effect on Memory” reports that our brains are adapting to technology such that we remember less information when we expect to have access to it on the computer. What we do remember is where to find it.

What the authors suggest is that we have come to use the computer as an external source of stored memory much like the transactive memory used between partners.