Love is not constant. It waxes and wanes like the moon. Having an argument or feeling bugged by your partner’s demands or desires doesn’t mean that your relationship needs to be put in the recycle bin. It means that you have to understand and talk about the natural course of feelings that ebb and flow throughout emotional connections. Some people have trouble knowing whether they are feeling love or not. This is much different from the heady “in love” emotions which I think are temporary insanity. It is more a sense of knowing that you are with someone who’s got your back and won’t turn his or hers on you. When you are with someone who embodies the qua

Earlier this month I wrote about how to handle multiple desires – for career success and relationships, for independence and someone to count on. But how do you start to work on relationships when you’ve been busy avoiding them? The first step is to invest in relationships you already have. With friends, mentors, and family members who see you as a complex and nuanced person, who don’t just see one side of you. Who ask you questions about your desires and assumptions. You can also challenge yourself when you find yourself denigrating/putting down the impulses, wishes, and pleasures that come with relationships - to care and be cared for, to need and be needed, to be mut

Washington: A probiotic bacterium which is used to treat irritable bowel syndrome has been found to soothe gut bacterial infections caused by salmonella, paving the way for potential relief from foodborne illnesses that affect millions of people annually, a new study has revealed.   Manuela Raffatellu, assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, and colleagues at UC Irvine and the University of Washington identified how a probiotic strain of E. coli reduces salmonella colonization by competing with this pathogen for iron, an essential nutrient that salmonella acquires in the gut in order to replicate at high levels.   In fact, the researchers discovered that

New York: Coffee may lower suicide risk in men and women by 50 percent, a recent study by Harvard researchers has found.   Reviewing data from three large-scale US studies, the team from the Harvard School of Public Health compared the risk of suicide for adults who consumed two to four caffeinated cups per day with that of non-coffee drinkers, those who drank much less coffee per day and people who chose decaf.   Comparatively, the suicide risk for those who drank two to four cups per day was about 50 percent less than the risk for subjects in the other groups, the Huffington Post reported.   The total sample included more than 200,000 participants, who were studi

  London: Tea drinkers who opt for cheaper supermarket blends could be at a higher risk of bone and teeth problems, researchers, including an Indian origin scientist, have claimed.   Many supermarket value brands have been found to contain potentially harmful levels of fluoride, a mineral that can severely damage bones if consumed in large amounts, researchers said.   Levels of fluoride found in 38 tea products were compared with each other and to the US National Academy of Sciences` (NAS) daily dietary reference intake in the research by Laura Chan, Professor Aradhana Mehra and Professor Paul Lynch from the University of Derby London.   Using Ion Selecti

 Researchers questioned more than 1,500 couples about their relationships and drinking habits.   They found that concordance – where partners have roughly the same amount of alcohol and at the same time – breeds happiness, the Daily Mail reported.   The authors also discovered that satisfaction with domestic life rose with every occasion partners share a tipple.   Women were four times more likely to be happy if they drank at least once a week with their partner than if they never do. Meanwhile, men were more than three times more content.    “A graded association was evident between time spent drinking as a couple and the odds

 According to scientists from the University of Rochester in New York, men really do prefer a lady in red because they are less likely to be rejected.   The finding of this study may help to explain why red is the hue most associated with love and romance in popular culture.   For the study, the researchers asked men to rate photographs of women framed by different coloured borders - and the same women in red were consistently rated more attractive.   The men were then shown women wearing shirts of different colours, and asked how receptive they thought the woman would be to romantic and sexual propositions.   Another question asked "imagine that

 Sometimes expressing anger might be necessary to resolve a relationship problem – with the short-term discomfort of an angry but honest conversation benefiting the health of the relationship in the long-term.   The research is part of a larger effort to better understand the contexts in which some relationships succeed and others fail, and also to understand how close relationships affect our health.   A popular research trend in recent years, positive psychology has offered the promise that with forgiveness, optimism, kindness, and positive thinking, people can turn around their relationships even after a serious transgression.   But as James McNulty o

 Experts have revealed five habits of these folks that make them the happiest couples, Huffington Post reported.   First and foremost is that they never let the third date end.   Keeping up those revealing conversations is key to staying out of the unhappiness gulch, said Terri Orbuch, psychologist and author of 5 Simple Steps to Take Your Marriage from Good to Great.   Orbuch has followed 373 Midwestern couples since 1986 in a large research study. Of those people who are very happy in their marriages, 98 percent say they intimately know and understand their partner. Half say they often share intimate details of their lives -- their dreams, stresses, values a

 Studies show that if a mobile is visible during a conversation, it causes people to feel less positive towards the person with whom they are chatting.   The findings suggest that fiddling with your mobile or simply leaving it in view during a romantic dinner or a meeting with a friend could be a serious social faux pas.   Psychologists who conducted the experiments at Essex University believe mobile phones automatically trigger thoughts about wider social networks, reducing the level of empathy and understanding in face-to-face conversations.    “In both studies we found evidence mobiles can have negative effects on closeness, connection, and conve

Panaji: Indian bones are conventionally weaker, deformed and more osteoporosis-prone compared to Americans or Britons, say leading knee replacement surgeons who participated in a knowledge-sharing exercise here on replacement surgeries.   The exercise also threw up insights about how Africa could also emerge as a major resource pool for tapping patients in India`s quest for medical tourism.   Speaking to a news agency on the sidelines of the event, Erik Zeegan, a leading Las Vegas-based orthopaedic surgeon, said that knee replacement surgeries in India tended to be a lot different from those in the US owing to the more deformities of the bones found in the sub-continent.

Strange as it might sound, the economic concept of scarcity (less supply, more demand) holds relevance even in dating world. Or at least, relationship self-help books will have you thinking likewise. At the forefront was the 1995 published book, The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr Right by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider.    The acclaimed guidebook to dating emphasised on how playing hard to get (paying scarce attention to your suitor, rarely returning their calls, etc,) could help you get your love interest to notice you, court you and eventually pop the question to you.   Now, the duo is back with their latest book — The New Rules: The

Washington: Menthol or mint-flavoured cigarettes pose a greater health risk than non-menthol ones, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a scientific review.   "While there is little evidence to suggest that menthol cigarettes are more or less toxic or contribute to more disease risk to the user than non-menthol cigarettes, adequate data suggest that menthol use is likely associated with increased smoking initiation by youth and young adults," Xinhua quoted the FDA as saying.   Further, menthol in cigarettes is likely associated with greater addiction.   Menthol smokers show greater signs of nicotine dependence and are less likely to successfu

Festivals are a great place to have a good time and meet some amazing people. No doubt, with the alcohol flowing and the free-spirit vibes flying high you’ll want to get a little frisky in your tent.   If you’re looking for love this Festival season they we’ve got a few tips to keep you on the straight and narrow whilst still have a great time!   DO: Be Forward   You’ve got a max of five days to find your festival love so put yourself out there! If you see a nice looking guy, then approach him and introduce yourself.   DON’T: Be Aggressive   Although people often say being aggressive when you want something is a good

The nice summer weather puts us all in a much better mood so it’s a great time to start dating!   Celebrity Psychologists Nik and Eva Speakman have given us some great tips for summertime dating so what are you waiting for?   1. If you don't want to be alone all summer, then don't be! Accept all the invitations you receive. You need to get out and go to social events to find summer Love.   2. If there aren't enough events around you that you have been invited to, consider hosting a few yourself & encourage your friends and their partners to bring along any single, eligible friends or family with them.   3. More people eat out, and go

Want a younger looking skin? Get some sleep!   Sleep-deprived people show signs of premature skin ageing and a decrease in their skin's ability to recover after exposure to sun, a new study has found. In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, scientists at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center in US found that sleep quality impacts skin function and ageing.   The demonstrated that poor sleepers had increased signs of skin ageing and slower recovery from a variety of environmental stressors, such as disruption of the skin   barrier or ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Poor sleepers also had worse assessment of their own skin and facial appearance.   &quo

Wish to know more about your date on the first day? Show genuine interest by asking questions that cover important aspects of his life.

Make sure to ask the following questions on a first date, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

What do you like to do to chill out?
It is a good way to find out whether you two are compatible or not. So, knowing his hobbies will give you some idea about how well you gel with him. If he likes to go mountain biking to beat the weekend boredom and you prefer lazying around at home, then you might have a problem.

What job is it that you do?
We often get to know personality of people by knowing about their professi

Sam Sheppard, 34, claimed that she did not even realise her lover was popping the question and the experience was more like “being asked out for pizza” - so she set up a company to train other men in the art of proposing.   She has started her own company, The Proposal Expert, and has already helped couples all over Britain to take the first step toward tying the knot, the Telegraph reported.   Although most of her customers have kept secret the fact that they paid her for help.   “The idea came from my own disappointing experience - my boyfriend proposed to me during an argument in the same way you might ask someone if they'd like to go for a

 To find out if this really were true, Dr Ben Jones in the Face Research Laboratory at the University of Aberdeen and a team of researchers carried out a study that involved volunteers looking at four different sets of digital images -- women looking happy, women looking disgusted, men looking happy and men looking disgusted.   In each case, the boffins paired together images that were identical except that in one the person was looking directly at the camera and in the other their gaze was averted.   The volunteers were then asked to rate the relative attractiveness of the images in each pair.   The researchers found that attraction is based on social cues th

 The study - that helps to explain the enduring allure of "bad boys" and other iconic gender types - found dramatic gender differences in how men and women rank the sexual attractiveness of non-verbal expressions of commonly displayed emotions, including happiness, pride, and shame.   The study is also the first to investigate the attractiveness of displays of pride and shame.  'While showing a happy face is considered essential to friendly social interactions, including those involving sexual attraction, few studies have actually examined whether a smile is, in fact, attractive,' said Jessica Tracy of UBC's Dept. of Psychology.   'This