Women ALIVE Ministries

People wanting fulfilling and stable romantic relationships should seek someone who recovers from a conflict well.

A study looked at how people recover or come down after a conflict with their romantic partner, said Jessica Salvatore, of University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development, who led the research.

In the past, marriage researchers have focused on how people resolve conflicts, but they never looked at what happens after the conflict ends and how people recover, said Salvatore, the journal Psychological Science reports.

If Im good at recovering from conflict, my husband will benefit and be more satisfied with our relationship, Salvatore said, according to a Minnesota statement.

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Shelby Misrasi

Cody Burns,afreshmanundecidedmajorfrom West Jordan, portrays how upsetting it is to get over a break-up. Breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend the right way can ease the pain and provide closure.

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Its Valentines Day, when romance blooms in the hearts of workers and employers worry about sexual harassment claims.

No matter how much employers fret about it, workplace romance isnt going away.

Check out these numbers from CareerBuilders annual survey:

• 37% of workers say they have dated someone they worked with over their career
• 18% report dating co-workers at least twice in their career, and
• 30% said they went on to marry a person they dated in the office.

What can companies do to prevent romantic relationships between employees? Although some firms have strict anti-fraternization policies, the real-world answer is – not much.

Many employers realize a blanket ban on employee dating is unnecessary and unworkable. But organizations should have a framework or policy for managing those relationships.

A lot at stake

For the most part, employers steer clear of legislating workplace relationships until they present some kind of problem for individual, team or organizational productivity.

No doubt, employee dating can carry some undesired consequences: If a relationship goes sour, the breakup can lead to charges of sexual harassment, retaliation and hostile work environment claims. Other times it’s just a matter of hard feelings, and people take sides, further polarizing the workplace.

Even if the pairing goes well, it could lead to charges of favoritism from other employees.

Here’s the latest thinking on workplace dating policies:

Supervisor/subordinate relationships

Not too tough to spot the pitfalls here: The boss and a direct report begin a relationship. From the moment the pair is exposed as a couple, every move the manager makes is suspect in the eyes of other department workers.

Although some employers flat-out ban manager/employee dating, many feel that’s too Big Brother – and if a top performer breaks the rules and must be fired, the organization suffers.

So the company’s penalized for preventing problems that might never have come up.

Best practice: Set up a policy that requires supervisors who become involved with a subordinate to report the relationship to upper management as early as possible.

This gives management the chance to transfer one of the parties (usually the subordinate) to another department. With that, the potential for charges of favoritism or special treatment is eliminated.

Manager training

Addressing a situation when two employees start seeing each other is not often a manager’s favorite issue to deal with.

It can feel like an invasion of privacy – after all, aren’t two grownups entitled to conduct their romantic lives however they choose?

Nonetheless, it’s an issue that’s got to be faced. Office relationships are often the focus of intense discussion – which can lead to workplace distractions and even unprofessional conduct on the part of co-workers.

Better to get everything out in the open. Managers must make sure both the romantic partners and their co-workers understand that cooperation and productivity expectations remain unchanged, no matter how personal relationships may develop.

Employee training

Managers aren’t the only ones who need to be aware of the rules surrounding workplace romance – employees do, too.

Organizations that don’t provide guidance about employee relationships do so at their own risk.

Will it may not warrant formal training, smart companies give employees a heads up on the kind of conduct that’s acceptable.

A couple examples:

• management expects both parties to perform their job duties to the same standards as any other employee – meaning that getting a romantic partner to “cover” for the other party, or swapping tasks without permission is not acceptable, and
• employees are banned from displays of affection at work, which can make co-workers uncomfortable. Such displays qualify as unacceptable and unprofessional behavior.

Stay vigilant

Naturally, these rules apply to relationships that are truly consensual.

HR should monitor these situations closely, because it’s possible that a supposed consensual relationship isn’t what it seems – like when a person is forced to “date” a supervisor as a condition of keeping his or her job.

If such a situation is uncovered, the company should immediately begin its normal sexual harassment investigation process.

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My girls loved Notting Hill, but found You’ve God Mail contrived. They aren’t miserable. I suspect that people who are miserable after watching these films have more deep-seated issues than unrealistic expectations created by cinematic depictions of romantic relationships.

Would 19th century readers of Bronte bodice rippers not have developed similarly unrealistic expectations?

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If you find yourself in a relationship rut, you and your better half might want to try spending more time with other couples.

Researchers from Michigan say couples who mingle with other couples tend to be happier in their relationships with each other.

This study suggests that if your romantic relationship has a case of the doldrums, having fun with another couple may help make your own relationship more satisfying, study lead author Richard B. Slatcher, an assistant professor of psychology at Wayne State University, said in a statement.

The team looked at 60 dating couples in a lab setting to learn how friendships between couples develop and how they affect peoples feelings about their own romantic relationships.

Each couple in the study was paired off with another couple and had to discuss questions provided to them. Half of the groups were given intimate questions meant to inspire emotional, intense conversations and the other half got superficial questions encouraging small talk.

The couples in the intense topic group said they experienced more of an increase in positive feelings than the small-talk participants after the discussions, according to the Personal Relationships study.

They also found their exchange to be novel and reported that they learned new things about their mates compared to those in the light chatter group who didnt feel that way.

But the connections apparently extended beyond the lab, the researchers learned in their follow-up.

Couples who were placed in the fast friends group felt closer to the couples they interacted with, and were more likely actually to meet up with them again during the following month, Slatcher said.

Even better, those who felt a little ho-hum about their honeys going into the study seemed to get a refreshing boost from their newfound friends.

These same couples felt that this friendship put a spark in their own relationships, said Slatcher. They felt much closer to their romantic partners.

Dr. Christos Ballas, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania, doesnt think the findings are terribly earth-shattering.

The couples were paired, artificially, with another couple they didnt know, and asked to talk about intimate things. Surprise, they bonded, he told AOL Health. And, after focusing on relationship issues, they felt closer to their own partner.

In fact, he suggested the study was simply stating the obvious.

Its the same as saying, We put a guy and a girl in a room and had them talk about sex, and we found that they tended to have a more romantic first date, Ballas offered. This is very different than having a couple go out with the same couple every day for a decade.

Still, he doesnt dispute the fact that socializing with others in romantic relationships may help put the zing back into your own.

Its probably true that romance is enhanced in the presence of strangers, Ballas said. It is a show, best performed in front of people who havent had to live with you.

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Science the City teams up with Scientific American MIND to present an event just in time for Valentines Day that will get to the heart of what makes romantic relationships succeed or fail.

The Neuroscience of Romantic Attachment will take place Thursday, February 10, 2011, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM at The New York Academy of Sciences, 250 Greenwich St., 40th floor, New York City.

According to Columbia University psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine, each of us has a distinct attachment style: anxious, secure, or avoidant. Every human being longs for closeness with a partner, but each of us expresses it differently, he contends.

Levine and Rachel SF Heller, are coauthors of the new book Attached. Theyll present research that is designed to help you recognize your attachment style, learn how to avoid relationship pitfalls, pick partners based on your style, and adopt secure relationship strategies.

University of California, Davis, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Phillip R. Shaver, calls Attached a …fascinating and enormously useful guide to one of lifes most important ventures?finding and sustaining a secure, satisfying love relationship.

Amir Levine, MD, is an adult, child, and adolescent psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He graduated from the residency program at the New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University, where he is currently a Principal Investigator on a research project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. He has a private practice in New York City, where he lives with his family.

Rachel S. F. Heller holds a masters degree in social-organizational psychology from Columbia University. She has worked as a corporate consultant and more recently with families, couples, and children within various educational settings to improve their relationships and their lives. She lives with her husband and three children in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Provided by New York Academy of Sciences

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The University of Georgia has received a $2.1 million federal grant to study how to decrease the rate of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases among black men in rural areas.

The grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse will allow UGA researchers to follow 500 young black men living across the state for up to five years. They will learn about the factors that affect the participants decisions about sex and romantic relationships.

The aim is to create educational programs for such groups.

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Online:

University of Georgia: http://www.uga.edu

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