THAT'S MEN: THIS WEEK, for easy reading by that Spanish poolside, a few tips from recent research on how men can improve their happiness in relationships.
First tip: Marry a woman who is thinner than you are. This is based on research by Andrea Meltzer at the University of Tennessee. She studied the experience over a four-year period of 169 newly married couples, using body mass index (BMI) as a way of measuring their body fat.
She found that both husbands and wives are happier if the wife’s BMI is lower than the husband’s. Why this should be so is anybody’s guess – or it will be until Ms Meltzer does more research on the topic.
What if you are married to a woman whose BMI is greater than yours? Persuade her to go on a diet or eat lots of chocolate cake and other goodies to get your own BMI above hers. Health warning: the second option, and maybe even the first, may result in premature death. A safer bet might be to follow Tip Two.
Second tip:Cuddle her a lot. This comes from the Kinsey Institute, an organisation synonymous with sex research.
What it found in one of its studies is that cuddling makes men three times happier in their relationships than if they don’t cuddle. The couples studied were aged 40-70 years of age. The Kinsey Institute defines cuddling as hugging and kissing.
Third tip:Just marry her. Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University took saliva samples from 500 people. These were all master's degree students and the researchers fooled them into believing that a test they were asked to do would influence what job placement they got as part of their course.
What they found was that levels of cortisol, which they used to measure stress, were higher in single people after the test than in married people. In other words, marriage seems to dampen the stress response – a very different outcome to what the more curmudgeonly would have us believe.
Fourth tip: When she needs support, tell her she's great. If your wife or long-term female partner is stressed out about problems at work or elsewhere, what she will least appreciate is unasked-for advice, according to research reported in the Journal of Family Psychology.
She would much prefer to be told how confident you are that she will handle her problem. In other words, she wants her self-esteem boosted.
The study identified four kinds of support partners can give each other. The first is physical comfort such as handholding; the second is esteem support of the kind mentioned above; the third is information and advice giving; and the fourth is getting involved in the solution by helping your partner to work out what to do next or by freeing up your partner to take on the problem.
Giving information and advice, if taken too far and done too often, can harm the marriage, according to the study. Boosting self-esteem, on the other hand, is always welcome.
Fifth tip:Praise successes. Research going back some years suggests that if you notice and praise your partner's daily successes and even triumphs, then she will feel happier and so will you. Seem obvious? Believe me, there are people out there who are so emotionally ignorant that you could discover the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, bring it home and be rewarded with no more than a grunt.
There you are, five tips culled from the work of learned institutions. So even if she isn’t thinner than you, enjoy all that cuddling and praising and wallow in the happiness boost that goes with it.
Finally, last week I wrote about the value of exercise in reducing stress. A reader points out that in some people aerobic exercise can trigger anxiety attacks because of the elevated heart and respiration rates that result from it. For such people, a more gentle form of exercise is preferable.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind - Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas.