Love at first sight, or in half a second?

Don't believe in love at first sight? New research shows it only takes half a second to decide if someone is attractive and a potential mate.

Psychologist Jon Maner of Florida State University discovered that people tend to fixate on attractive faces within the first half-second of seeing them before sizing them up as a possible mate or rival.

In the study university students were shown pictures of very attractive or average-looking people for one second before being asked to look at something else. By measuring people's reaction time, Maner and his team were able to determine that half a second is all it takes to decide if someone is attractive.

The researchers also noticed that people fixated on attractive faces for half a second longer after the one second time limit.

Single people in the study were interested in members of the opposite sex.

"These are the kind of people we might prefer as romantic partners, but it doesn't mean we'd be able to have a relationship with them because highly attractive people are very sought after," said Maner.

But people in committed relationships who viewed the pictures were interested in attractive members of the same sex.

"These are the type of people we are jealous of and vigilant towards, worrying about infidelity as we try to guard our mates," Maner explained.

The study also showed the pitfalls of visual fixation, including negative effects on self-esteem when looking at an attractive person of the same sex. Maner said the negativity could potentially be linked to illnesses such as bulimia.

Another pitfall is that people may become less satisfied in their current relationships.

"The evidence shows when we see attractive alternatives to our partners it can make us feel less satisfied and less committed with our current partner, which clearly has implications for relationship success," said Maner.

The findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

© The Calgary Herald 2007 - taken from here.

Definition of Sex and Love Addiction

Love addicts go through life with desperate hopes and constant fears. Fearing rejection, pain, unfamiliar experiences, and having little faith in their ability or right to inspire love, they wait and wish for love, perhaps their least familiar real experience.

Addictive sexuality is like most other compulsive behaviors: a destructive twist on a normal life-enhancing activity. Defining sex addiction depends less on the behavior itself than on the person's motivation.

Sex addicts lack the ability to control or postpone sexual feelings and actions, with the need for arousal often replacing the need for intimacy. Eventually, thrill seeking becomes more important than family, career, even personal health and safety.

The sex addict follows a routine or ritual leading to acting out on desires, and is then fraught by feelings of denial then shame, despair, and confusion.

Addiction is characterized by the repeated, compulsive seeking or use of a substance or activity despite negative social, psychological and/or physical consequences. It is often (but not always) accompanied by physical dependence, withdrawal syndrome and tolerance.

Withdrawal consists of a predictable group of signs resulting from abrupt removal of, or a rapid decrease in the dosage of, a psychoactive substance or activity. The syndrome is often characterized by overactivity of the physiologic functions that were suppressed by the drug and/or depression of the functions that were stimulated by the object of addiction.

Tolerance is a state in which a drug or activity produces a diminishing response. That is to say, higher doses (or in the case of sex addicts, riskier behavior) is needed to produce the same effect that the user experienced initially.

Taken from here.

relationship rules (part 2)...

Tips on how to build a healthy love life with your spouse.

* Work hard at maintaining closeness. Closeness doesn't happen by itself. In its absence, people drift apart and are susceptible to affairs. A good relationship isn't an end goal; it's a lifelong process maintained through regular attention.

* Take a long-range view. A marriage is an agreement to spend a future together. Check out your dreams with each other regularly to make sure you're both on the same path. Update your dreams regularly.

* Never underestimate the power of good grooming.

* Sex is good. Pillow talk is better. Sex is easy, intimacy is difficult. It requires honesty, openness, self-disclosure, confiding concerns, fears, sadnesses as well as hopes and dreams.

* Never go to sleep angry. Try a little tenderness.

* Apologize, apologize, apologize. Anyone can make a mistake. Repair attempts are crucial--highly predictive of marital happiness. They can be clumsy or funny, even sarcastic--but willingness to make up after an argument is central to every happy marriage.

* Some dependency is good, but complete dependency on a partner for all one's needs is an invitation to unhappiness for both partners. We're all dependent to a degree--on friends, mentors, spouses. This is true of men as well as women.

* Maintain self-respect and self-esteem. It's easier for someone to like you and to be around you when you like yourself. Research has shown that the more roles people fill, the more sources of self-esteem they have. Meaningful work--paid or volunteer--has long been one of the most important ways to exercise and fortify a sense of self.

* Enrich your relationship by bringing into it new interests from outside the relationship. The more passions in life that you have and share, the richer your relationship will be. It is unrealistic to expect one person to meet all of your needs in life.

* Cooperate, cooperate, cooperate. Share responsibilities. Relationships work ONLY when they are two-way streets, with much give and take.

* Stay open to spontaneity.

* Maintain your energy. Stay healthy.

* Recognize that all relationships have their ups and downs and do not ride at a continuous high all the time. Working together through the hard times will make the relationship stronger.

* Make good sense of a bad relationship by examining it as a reflection of your beliefs about yourself. Don't just run away from a bad relationship; you'll only repeat it with the next partner. Use it as a mirror to look at yourself, to understand what in you is creating this relationship. Change yourself before you change your relationship.

* Understand that love is not an absolute, not a limited commodity that you're in of or out of. It's a feeling that ebbs and flows depending on how you treat each other. If you learn new ways to interact, the feelings can come flowing back, often stronger than before.

*taken from here*

relationship rules (part 1)...

Tips on how to build a healthy love life with your spouse...

Human beings crave intimacy, need to love and be loved. Yet people have much trouble doing so.

It's clear from the many letters I get that lots of folks have no idea what a healthy relationship even looks like. Because I care about these things, and care about the environments children grow in, I'm using this space as an attempt to remedy the problem--again.

From many sources and many experts, I have culled some basic rules of relationships. This is by no means an exhaustive list. But it's a start. Print them out and pin them up on your refrigerator door. I won't test you on them--but life will.

* Choose a partner wisely and well. We are attracted to people for all kinds of reasons. They remind us of someone from our past. They shower us with gifts and make us feel important. Evaluate a potential partner as you would a friend; look at their character, personality, values, their generosity of spirit, the relationship between their words and actions, their relationships with others.

* Know your partner's beliefs about relationships. Different people have different and often conflicting beliefs about relationships. You don't want to fall in love with someone who expects lots of dishonesty in relationships; they'll create it where it doesn't exist.

* Don't confuse sex with love. Especially in the beginning of a relationship, attraction and pleasure in sex are often mistaken for love.

* Know your needs and speak up for them clearly. A relationship is not a guessing game. Many people, men as well as women, fear stating their needs and, as a result, camouflage them. The result is disappointment at not getting what they want and anger at a partner for not having met their (unstated) needs. Closeness cannot occur without honesty. Your partner is not a mind reader.

* Respect, respect, respect. Inside and outside the relationship, act in ways so that your partner always maintains respect for you. Mutual respect is essential to a good relationship.

* View yourselves as a team, which means you are two unique individuals bringing different perspectives and strengths. That is the value of a team--your differences.

* Know how to manage differences; it's the key to success in a relationship. Disagreements don't sink relationships. Name-calling does. Learn how to handle the negative feelings that are the unavoidable byproduct of the differences between two people. Stonewalling or avoiding conflicts is NOT managing them.

* If you don't understand or like something your partner is doing, ask about it and why he or she is doing it. Talk and explore, don't assume.

* Solve problems as they arise. Don't let resentments simmer. Most of what goes wrong in relationships can be traced to hurt feelings, leading partners to erect defenses against one another and to become strangers. Or enemies.

* Learn to negotiate. Modern relationships no longer rely on roles cast by the culture. Couples create their own roles, so that virtually every act requires negotiation. It works best when good will prevails. Because people's needs are fluid and change over time, and life's demands change too, good relationships are negotiated and renegotiated all the time.

* Listen, truly listen, to your partner's concerns and complaints without judgment. Much of the time, just having someone listen is all we need for solving problems. Plus it opens the door to confiding. And empathy is crucial. Look at things from your partner's perspective as well as your own.

*to be continued, taken from here*

bad date stories to link people looking for love...

Have you ever had a date that has gone horribly wrong? A new Web site will allow people to share their bad experiences -- and possibly to fall in love.

The site, set to launch next month, is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based author and dating veteran Jennifer Kelton.

"It's more lifestyle-based, it's less about 'I look sexy in jeans and flip-flops and I like to go to the movies on Tuesday nights,"' said Kelton.

"It's a combination of MySpace and Match.com."

With the explosive popularity and dominance of the other sites such as MySpace, which has 200 million users, and Facebook which has more than 41 million, Kelton faces stiff competition.

She hopes to lure members who are looking for the best of both worlds. BadOnlineDates.com is free to join and lets users set up a profile that includes characteristics such as eye color and religion.

But it also leaves room for members to share their nightmare date stories, as well as photo albums and blogs. Keyword matching finds similar themes in the members' profiles and bad date experiences to make a match.

Standard privacy and online safety links are also incorporated into the site.

Kelton, 41 and single, has drawn on her own experiences from decades of dating -- not always successfully. One of her worst dates inspired the title for her book "Don't Use My Sweater Like a Towel," after a man she was seeing did just that.

She has also been abandoned in a restaurant after the man she met online left before introducing himself because he saw her talking to other people.

"I got a really angry email from him a few days later telling me how rude I was," said Kelton.

Another uncomfortable encounter involved getting fleas from her date's infested couch.

Kelton believes matching people through stories about the cheap or bad-mannered date can be more effective than providing details such as blue eyes, swimsuit model and live in a mansion, which are not always true.

"I'm really passionate about creating a community for people who are out there in the dating world...by turning a whole negative experience into a positive one," she said.

*taken from here*

men attracted to beauty, women to money...

People may claim looks or money aren't everything when picking a mate, but when it comes to the crunch, men go for beauty and women choose wealth and security, according to an international study.

Indiana University cognitive scientist Peter Todd and colleagues from Germany, England and Scotland used a speed-dating session in Germany to look at what people said they wanted in a mate with whom they actually chose.

"While humans may pride themselves on being highly evolved, most still behave like the stereotypical Neanderthals when it comes to choosing a mate," Todd said in a statement.

"Evolutionary theories in psychology suggest that men and women should trade off different traits in each other, and when we look at the actual mate choices people make, this is what we find evidence for."

The study, being published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was based on a speed-dating session in which men and women had "mini dates" of between three to five minutes with up to 30 different people.

After every date, the men and women marked a box on a card saying whether they would like to see the other person again.

Before the session, Todd also asked 46 adults to fill out a questionnaire assessing themselves and their ideal mate according to traits like attractiveness, financial status, health and parenting qualities.

He said participants stated they wanted to find someone like themselves -- a socially acceptable answer.

But once the sessions began, the men went after the more attractive women and the women were drawn to material wealth and security, setting their standards according to how they viewed themselves.

The men were not as picky as the women.

The men, on average, wanted to see about 50 per cent of the women again, but the women wanted to meet only about one-third of the men for a second time.

"Ancestral individuals who made their mate choices in this way -- women trading off their attractiveness for higher quality men and men looking for any attractive women who will accept them -- would have had an evolutionary advantage in greater numbers of successful offspring," said Todd.

*taken from here*