All Relationships & sex Articles

NEW YORK -- Darin Riggio has a thing for older women -- he dated his first "cougar" when he was a 19-year-old college student. She was 43. Since then, the 24-year-old who lives in Boca Raton, Fla., has dated women old enough to be his mom. "Women my age don't know what they want," said Riggio, ticking off his list of why older women are better. "Two, they are Read more...

The oxytocin hormone, known as the "love hormone," also affects antisocial behaviors, such as envy and gloating, Israeli researchers found. Researchers at the University of Haifa said oxytocin, which affects behaviors such as trust, empathy and generosity, also affects opposite behaviors, such as jealousy and gloating. "Subsequent to these findings, we assume that the Read more...

WASHINGTON -- Eli Finkel was still an undergrad when he realized "somebody could spend his life asking questions about relationships, trying to find the answers to those questions and then teaching interested young minds about the research." But when, as a newly minted psychology professor teaching a course on romantic relationships, he faced questions from a discerning student Read more...

A few years back, Marla Thomas received some very good advice. It came while she was working as a waitress and completing her undergraduate degree at Valdosta State University. "One of my 'regulars' was a sweet couple in their mid-50s. They would talk to me about my classes, ask me about my major, what I planned to do after graduation and life in general. I told them that I was thinking Read more...

First Jerry Reiser married his high school sweetheart. But that ended after 14 years. A softball umpire introduced him to his second wife. That, too, ended in divorce. Then two years ago, Reiser -- now 58 -- decided he wanted another long-term relationship -- but found singles dances weren't cutting it. He turned to online dating. Reiser quickly received more than 70 matches. He dated a handful Read more...

MIAMI -- Lily Pabian and her husband Jeff learned to tag-team household tasks when he lost his job and she went from stay-at-home mom to part-time consultant. But the give-and-take turned into a juggling act when Jeff found work again three months later. Lily, a 37-year-old mother of three from Mapleton, Ga., kept working, but also kept most of the parenting responsibilities and Read more...

Having children improves life satisfaction in people who are married, but not for those who are unmarried, researchers in Scotland found. Dr. Luis Angeles of the University of Glasgow said the finding challenges previous research that increasing numbers of children do not make people any happier, and in some cases the more children people have, the less satisfied they are with their lives. Read more...

"In sickness and in health" now has a whole new meaning. New research from Mintel shows married men are possibly healthier men. According to a Mintel survey of adult men, those who are married are more likely to have had a physical with a registered physician within the past year compared to their single counterparts (55% versus 35%). In addition, Mintel found 88% of Read more...

So much for candlelit dinners, romantic weekends away and showering your other half with compliments ... Scientists reckon the secret to a happy marriage is easy -- the woman should be smarter than the man and at least five years younger. They developed a distinctly unromantic formula to predict how compatible a couple are, based on their ages, education and relationship history. Read more...

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- When Sex and the City's Samantha Jones was diagnosed with breast cancer, her boyfriend pledged to stay with her through treatment. Meanwhile, celebrities such as Sheryl Crow, Kylie Minogue, Edie Falco and Christina Applegate, battled the disease single. Since October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, leading online dating sites Date.com (http://www.date.com), Read more...

WASHINGTON -- The institution of marriage in the United States has steadily declined in strength over the past four decades, according to a report released last month by a panel of scholars and advocates. The U.S. Marriage Index, the brainchild of David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, seeks to quantify the health of marriage in the United States in the same way Read more...

Two decades ago, they were high school sweethearts. On a whim, he Googled her on his office computer, and found she lived in a nearby state. "It's innocent enough," he told himself as he fired off an e-mail to her, "just two old friends reconnecting." Months later, after an exchange of e-mails, then cell phone calls, in which they eventually talked about their Read more...

Looking for success on the dating scene? MIT Sloan Assistant Professor Joshua M. Ackerman suggests it might be a good idea to bring a friend. Friends will try to help you find partners to your liking, weed out undesirables, and support you in other ways, says Ackerman, a social psychologist and expert on consumer behavior and marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Read more...

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Most people think it's probably unwise to have an affair with one's boss or someone else with whom you work, but is it unethical? Well, yes and no -- depending on whether you are a man or woman, according to the Ethics Resource Center, which today released initial statistics from its sixth biennial National Business Ethics Survey (NBES). While only 14.9 percent of Americans Read more...

If you're looking for love at work, you might want to consider how an office romance can affect your career and whether it's worth the risk to go there. Here are a few tips to help keep you out of hot water. 1. Before launching into an office romance, know the company's policies regarding office relationships. Some companies have rules against it. If relationships are forbidden, you Read more...

Divorce could give you more than a broken heart -- it could also give you a heart attack. The finding emerges in one of a number of pieces of research which remind us that emotional and mental states can have a dramatic effect on health. The study suggests that the effects of divorce on physical health are significant, negative and long lasting. Another study found that the pain Read more...

From the hoopla, you'd think 40-something women only recently looked up from their quarterly reports, household chores or pre-teen children to cast an eager eye on verdant pastures of younger men. But long before Courteney Cox prowled the cul-de-sacs of ABC's Cougar Town and tongues wagged over Demi Moore, Madonna or even Elizabeth Taylor, women of a certainage have tangled with the young and the Read more...

When California became the first state in the nation to legally adopt "no-fault" divorce in 1969, it accomplished by legislative fiat what no unhappy couple ever had -- making divorce completely blameless. Few of life's contractual arrangements seem better suited to the assignment of fault than divorce -- the dissolution of a legal contract to which both parties pledged to remain Read more...