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This fall, a friend's husband died of cancer after being diagnosed four months earlier.  Even though the end came so quickly, they were able to plan for a peaceful death at home, surrounded by loved ones. Now a new study says you will die as you live, but for surviving spouses, you will live as your partner died. Say what? A person's quality of life at the time of their death continues to influence his or her spouse's quality of life in the years following the person's passing, according to new research by University of Arizona psychologists, reports newswise.com. What's more, the association between a deceased and surviving spouse is just as strong as the association between partners who are both living, the researchers found. I'm sure my friend finds herself just as married to her spouse now as she was before his death. "If your partner has higher quality of life before they pass away, you're more likely to have higher quality of l...

Now this is a surprise (at least, to me). You're more likely to cheat if you're economically dependent on your spouse. Hmm, when I was, I was terrified to do anything that put me at risk.  Having no income, and nowhere to go, with a small son, when things got shaky I just had to hold on. Now a new study is saying that, in an average year, there is about a 5 percent chance that women who are completely economically dependent on their husbands will cheat, whereas there is about a 15 percent chance that men who are entirely economically dependent on their wives will have an affair. OK, I can see the male point (feeling less manly, maybe).  But women?  “You would think that people would not want to ‘bite the hand that feeds them’ so to speak, but that is not what my research shows,” says study author Christin L. Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, at newswise.com. “Instead, the findings indicate people like feeling relative...

My husband watches Fox News.  He loves Bill O'Reilly.  Mike Huckabee, too.  He's against allowing immigrants to remain in this country.  And he's not too crazy about the Affordable Care Act, or President Obama. We don't see eye-to-eye on anything. So how are we still together?  I like him. I wouldn't have said that  half our relationship ago.  In the beginning, there were many years when it was a competition.   Who could win first? But then, life intervened.  We had a child, I got cancer, our mothers both developed serious illnesses and died.  And suddenly winning didn't seem the point anymore. Of course, everything isn't perfect.  He still makes me furious, pretending he doesn't hear me when I ask him to take out the garbage or vacuum the family room floor.  He still comes home and drops his coat on the floor (as does our son now, too). And his idea of a birthday gift (even a big one) is well, a card, if I'...

Want to know if your spouse is cheating?  Forget the lipstick on the collar or the cologne in her hair.  Now researchers say it's all in the  voice . According to newswise.com, our voices give us away every time, and the Web site cites new research by   Albright College associate professor of psychology Susan Hughes, Ph.D., who has found that "men and women alter their voices when speaking to lovers versus friends and that such variations can potentially be used to detect infidelity." “It’s not just that we change the sound of our voice, but that others can easily perceive those changes,” newswise.com quotes Hughes, an expert in evolutionary psychology and voice perception, who wrote about this in a new article, “People Will Know We Are in Love: Evidence of Differences Between Vocal Samples Directed Toward Lovers and Friends.” The study looked at how individuals alter their voices, or engage in voice modulation, when speaking to romantic partners versus same-se...