Fighting for Your Marriage: A Deluxe Revised Edition

“Instead of just fighting about money or how frequently to have sex, couples are also fighting about time spent of Facebook or whether it’s OK to send a text during a romantic dinner or bring a laptop on a getaway weekend,” Howard Markman says. Regardless of modern challenges, the authors believe a happy and successful marriage is attainable.

The book includes information based on the latest professional research and includes a DVD showing real couples learning how to improve their marriages under the guidance of the experts.

Report: Marrying Out

Marriages between spouses of different races and ethnicities are more common than ever before, say authors of a report by the Pew Research Center. A record 15% — about one out of every seven — of new marriages in 2008 landed in the “Marrying Out” category. 

The number of UK children calling the national helpline Childline because they feel lonely has risen sharply. From April 2008 to March 2009, 5,525 children called the helpline due to loneliness, sadness or isolation, compared to 1,853 five years earlier. A further 4,399 children were counselled about loneliness as an additional problem, bringing the total to 9,924 – 6% of calls to the helpline. Counselors say changes within families and society could be behind the rise. Childline counsellors say changes within family structures and society as a whole could be behind the rise in these calls. ”Everyone’s so busy all the time,” said one counselor. ”The fact that families and people in general increasingly don’t eat together, and then go off and do their own things… I think that social skills among younger people are not being encouraged,” said another. They also suggest the rise may also be down to youngsters being better able to talk about feelings of loneliness. ”Some of the children who contact Childline are lonely because their parents are rowing or divorcing. Others are lonely because someone they love has died. (full article)

Infographic: Infidelity by the Numbers

Seth Godin & Tom Peters on blogging.

Link: chart: Social Media Cheat Sheet

Chart: The Social Landscape for Marketers (via: CMO.com )

Google Voice gives you more control over your phone calls. With Google Voice, you get one number for all your phones, cheap international calls, voicemail like email, and more, for free!

Link: study: Happy marriage cuts fatal stroke risk for men

A study of 10,000 Israelis found both bachelors and those in loveless marriages had a far higher risk of fatal stroke than happily married men. As a society we should invest in relationship support because happy relationships benefit us all by contributing to people’s wellbeing, increasing productivity at work and improving people’s health.

The State of the Internet