Rekindle the Romance Despite the Economy

JL — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:59:26 +0000

Rekindle the romance despite the economy

Low on cash because of the economy? Don’t let your skinny wallet put a damper on your romance.

You may not have it like Obama– to take your significant other (SO) on a helicopter ride to the theatre in NYC. However, you still have some low cost and stress-free options.

10 Tips to rekindle the romance during the current economy:

1- Cook a special date night dinner at home

This doesn’t have to be a crazy production if you don’t know how to cook. Go online find a quick and easy recipe. Put your heart and soul into it. Your SO will appreciate the effort. If you were smarter than the rest of us and learned how to cook, this is the time to make your partner’s favorite meal.

2- Make it a movie night at home

Go to your local public library and rent your partner’s favorite movie for FREE. Stay away from the films that make them angry or sad. We want them to remain positive and think happy thoughts.

3- Take a bike ride or a long walk

Spend time each other outside of the house and far away from the stack of overdue bills on the kitchen table. Spend some time enjoying each other’s company.

4- Surprise your SO with a card just because

Your partner will appreciate the gesture even if you purchased the card from the dollar store. Don’t simply rely on the author of the card to express how you feel. Add your own special note. Be confident that your partner loves your chicken scratch–and will be able to read it!

5- Take a stroll to your nearest coffee or ice cream shop

Avoid taking the family car for this one. The goal is to spend as much time as possible with each other, and you will save on gas. You can buy one refreshing treat that you can both share.

6- Cut down on time spent with the boys

Man, you might want to cut down on some of the extracurricular activities with your buddies. Show your partner that you are actually focusing on improving the family’s current financial situation. Show your partner that you are constantly looking for work or business opportunities. If you hang with the boys 7 days/week, you might want to only do it 5 days/week. I’m just saying!

7- Pick up the slack

Do some extra work around the house. Help out with the household chores. This is not the time to do things your way. For example, if your SO likes the towels folded a certain way, do it their way– even if your way may be better. Your expertise is not required at the moment.

8- Make it a game night

C’mon you got this. Wii Fit, card games, board games, hide and go seek…Need I say more?

9- Take it back to the ol’ school

Play the songs from high school or college. The ol’ school joints seem to always bring on happy memories. Make your SO a special CD with all their favorites. They can play it around the house, in the car, or at work. They will be thinking and be appreciative of you.

10- Dance with each other at home

There is a reason why slow dancing was invented. On your Date Night, add slow dancing on the agenda at home. If you have kids, don’t hesitate to show them that you are enjoying each other’s company. Please keep it rated G.

BONUS

Tonight, while your partner is winding down after a long day, do the following:

- Sit them down in front of the TV or with a book

- Light up a couple aromatherapy candles in the area

- Get a 12” x 8”x 4” plastic container and two towels

- Fill the container with warm water, about half-way

- Add a few squirts of a scented liquid hand soap or shower gel

- Place one towel under the container, then soak your partner’s feet into the container for about 5-10 minutes

- Rub each foot with a foot scrub–a facial scrub will work also (check out her vanity for these items)

- Soak the feet again for about 5 more minutes

- Wash off the feet to get rid of any remaining scrub, then dry the feet with a towel

- Apply lotion to each foot and gently massage as your rub the lotion into the feet

Keep it simple, be creative, and show them that you care about the relationship. Your partner will appreciate the effort.

Getting back on your feet is certainly a priority. However, strengthening and nurturing your union should also be at the top on the list.

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Beauty Affects Men’s and Women’s Brains Differently

Shawn — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:25:43 +0000

Beauty is famously in the eye of the beholder; but it’s also in the beholder’s brain, and may work differently in the brains of men and women.

In men, images they consider to be beautiful appear to activate brain regions responsible for locating objects in absolute terms — x- and y-coordinates on a grid. Images considered beautiful by women do the same, but they also activate regions associated with relative location: above and behind, over and under. The difference could be the result of evolutionary pressures on our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

The findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are preliminary and based on a small number of people, but intriguing nonetheless.

“This the first study about neural activation in aesthetic tasks to include sex as a variable,” said study co-author Camilo Cela-Conde, an evolutionary anthropologist at Spain’s Universitat de les Illes Balears.

Earlier studies on sex-based cognitive differences have found that men seem to have a heightened sense of absolute location. Women, by contrast, are quicker to process relative values.

How these brain systems became tied to the perception of beauty, widely considered a defining human trait, is an evolutionary mystery. According to Cela-Conde, aesthetics may simply be a byproduct of other cognitive tasks.

Differences in cognitive tasks, however, may be less mysterious: For much of human history, men and women had different jobs. Their brains may thus have developed in subtly different ways.

“In current hunter-gatherer groups, men are in charge of hunting; meanwhile women collect,” said Cela-Conde. “If this is a scheme that can be extended to ancestors’ behavior, then we can think about a selective pressure to increase the capacity of spatial orientation in men, and the capacity to identify edible plants and tubers in women.”

In the study, 10 men and 10 women looked at images of modern and classic paintings, as well as photographs of landscapes, artifacts and urban scenes. The researchers recorded their reactions with a magnetoencephalograph, which monitors real-time neural activity by measuring magnetic fields generated by electrical currents in the brain.

(To avoid confounding by romantic regions of the brain, close-up images of people were not included.)

The subjects varied as to what they considered beautiful, but brain patterns were consistent: coordinate-processing activation in both men and women, and category-processing in only women.

These differences do not seem to translate into differences in the actual experience of beauty. In earlier research, said Cela-Conde, both men and women describe beauty as being “original, interesting and pleasant.”

However, as the differences were expressed only in response to images the subjects found to be beautiful, they do not seem to reflect a general sex-based difference in perception.

As the brain regions involved are far more developed in humans than chimpanzees — our closest living relative — Cela-Conde’s team suspects that the differences are rooted in early hominid divisions between men and women.

Another possible explanation is language-based: Coordinate-reading brain systems are less activated by linguistic communication than categorical systems.

The differences observed in the study would then originate in another sex-based difference, albeit an arguable one: Women are especially talkative.

Citation: “Sex-related similarities and differences in the neural correlates of beauty.” Camilo J. Cela-Conde, Francisco J. Ayala, Enric Munar, Fernando Maestu, Marcos Nadal, Miguel A. Capo, David del Río, Juan J. Lopez-Ibor, Tomas Ortiz, Claudio Mirasso, and Gisele Marty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No.8, Feb. 23, 2009.

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Bona Fide Confidence » Relationships

Rekindle the Romance Despite the Economy

Beauty Affects Men’s and Women’s Brains Differently