Cage Fighting Makes for a Happy Marriage

Do you train in any sport with your spouse?

One Couple, Two Trolley Cars, One Happy Marriage

When you read stories of couples working together, it's often within the same office or where one is assisting the other. Framingham, MA couple Diane and Ed Hyman run two roadside eateries, The Trolley Stop and Trolley Stop Jr. "We got married and we were just looking to do something together," says Ed. "It kind of came about by a fluke." The couple were dropping Diane's daughter off at a friend's when they spied the trolley trailer for sale. "We joked about it, then talked about it more seriously. We bought it a few weeks later." Ed works the Jr. store, while Diane attends the main Trolley Stop. The article from the Boston Globe doesn't go into detail on their marriage, but does talk a lot about the food deals. For example, a $2 trolley dog, plus for $1.25 more you can add chips, a drink and a chocolate chip cookie. A plain hot dog sound boring, how about a Snoop Dog with chili and cheddar cheese, or the Remdog adorned with sauerkraut. If visitors want something beyond a dog, they can get homemade soups, clam chowder, chili, sirloin angus hamburgers, mac and cheese. Morning patrons can also get coffee, cappuccinos, lattes, and chai tea. Do you have a favorite couple-run eatery near you? Maybe we should put together a list?

Boredom Can Doom a Marriage

It's the weekend. Are you doing anything fun with your spouse? Researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have been following 123 couples for 16 years. For all of them it was their first marriage and the average age for the women was 24 and 26 for men. At the seven year mark into their marriage, the researchers asked them to rate their level of boredom in their marriage through a series of questions. The resutls showed that greater boredom in year seven predicted significantly less satisfaction at year 16. Saying as much, researcher Irene Tsapelas and colleagues note that their findings suggest excitement promotes closeness, further promoting satisfaction."If partners experience excitement from other sources (such as novel and challenging activities) in a shared context, this shared experience can reignite relationship passion by associating the excitement with the relationship," the researchers write. Sound familiar? If not, listen to podcast Episode 61 with Dr. Karen Sherman. To read the complete article, click here.

Big Smiles Equal Happy Marriage

LiveScience reports that researchers studied college yearbook photos rating the smile intensity in pictures from 1 to 10. None of these who had the most intense smiles (fell within the top 10 percent in intensity) had divorced. Conversely, those who fell in the bottom 10 percent of smilers had about a 1 in 4 divorce rate. In a second study, they had people submit their own photos from childhood. Again, the big smilers had about a 1 in 10 divorce rate while over 30 percent of the frowners had been divorced. Overall, the results indicate that people who frown in photos are five times more likely to get a divorce than people who smile. This is a fascinating study, but the researchers say they can't conclude on the correlation between marital success and smiling. How big is the smile in your yearbook?

Is Your Husband's Biological Clock Ticking?

This video from the Today show explore's a relatively new concept...a man's biological clock. Watch the video below.

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Wife Wants to Die with Ill Husband

Betty and George Coumbias of Canada have been in touch Dignitas, a Swiss assisted suicide group. The reason is that assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland and George is ill. Betty, however, is prefectly healthy and wants to go if George passes, which is where the controversy lies. Dignitas came under fire last year for helping a 23-year-old Briton commit suicide after he was left paralyzed by a rugby injury, but was not terminally ill. So is it unethical for Dignitas to help Betty take her life if she wants to if/when her husband goes? We'll keep an eye on the news and see how this story plays out. In the meantime, we'd love to hear you weight in on the message boards. Click here to read the complete article.

Good Fat Burns More Calories

Three different studies from researchers in Boston, Finland and the Netherlands all found that there are two types of fat in the adult human body: good fat and bad fat. Think of the good fat as baby fat, which the researchers say is more brownish in color and stored in the neck and collarbone area, while bad fat is more yellow and white-ish and stored near the wasteline. The good fat is believed to spur the body to burn calories to generate body heat (which they previously thought only happened for babies). Because of this finding, scientists believe they may be able to create a pill that stimulates the brown fat to actually burn even more calories and in a sense become a weight loss pill. Here are some other findings about brown fat: Lean people had far more brown fat than overweight and obese people, especially among older folks; brown fat burns far more calories and generates more body heat when people are in a cooler environment; women were more likely to have it than men, and their deposits were larger and more active. Click here to read the entire article.

More Baby Formula Trouble

There might still be a battle going on between breast milk and baby formula, but some mothers out there might decide that nature's milk wins by default. After many recent scares about tainted baby formula, there is a new one. A new study from scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a small study of 15 powdered formulas and the scientists found that all were contaminated with perchlorate. Perchlorate is a component of rocket fuel that's linked to thyroid disease. The study did not name the companies it studied, but did reveal that cow's milk formula with lactose had the highest perchlorate levels, compared to formulas that were soy-based, lactose-free or "elemental." Not sure if this will make you feel any better, but the Environmental Working Group found that perchlorate has been found to contaminate the drinking water in 28 states and territories. The baby formula study was conducted with perchlorate-free water. So what's next? This article (click here) says concerned parents should make sure that their infants have a diet with sufficient iodine, which can counteract perchlorate's harmful effects. They also added that the study didn't actually measure perchlorate in infants and that a study of that nature is essential to determine if infants are actually absorbing the perchlorate to which they're exposed to.

Surviving the Battle of the Netflix Queue

A South Carolina newspaper callled, The State has addressed a very modern point of conflict among today's married crew: the Netflix queue. The battle of the husband moving Braveheart to the top of the queue not knowing that his wife adjusted the queue at the last minute resulting with the husband opening the red envelope stuffed with Pride and Prejudice instead, is raging on. The article offers many scenarios like this, and doesn't mention until the very end of the article that sharing a queue is an unnecessary strain on your marriage. In fact, Netflix subscribers can set up multiple profiles with individual queues so that each can receive the movie they want. My wife and I do that and it works great. The problem, as many couples in the article pointed out, is when the other expresses interest and so you hold off watching, then weeks go by and the movie is still sitting in the sleeve waiting to play. If you have something you want to watch or if you want to watch one of your movies, also try Netflix's Watch Instant feature, which you can watch right on your computer without waiting or even on your TV (third party equipment required). Click here to read the complete article.

We'd love to hear your Netflix stories...do you and your spouse fight over what movie gets played and/or added to the queue?

Guys, Take This Quick 5 Question Survey

Hey men, our Twitter friends at Simple Marriage are conducting a survey asking what are the five basic elements to make a marriage survive. The survey is anonymous and takes less than five minutes. So far, over 600 people have taken the survey, but roughly 75 percent of them have been women. I took the survey to try and help level the numbers out--now it's your turn. That doesn't mean that more women aren't needed, but ladies, if you do take it, get your husband to complete the survey as well. It'll be fun for you to share your answers afterward and see if you have the same perspective on making your marriage survive. Click here to take the survey.