I usually write about news events and the latest research, but virtue is all around us — and our best chance of character development comes in our relationships with our families. So here’s your to-do list for the day

A recent study suggests that some 30% of Americans has trouble relaxing and putting work aside to enjoy vacation – and a handful of us suffer from more acute “leisure sickness” and “weekend headaches” from our attempts at fun.

Reports the Wall Street Journal

Only 53% of working Americans say they come back feeling rested and rejuvenated after vacation, and 30% say they have trouble coping with work stress while they’re away, according to an Expedia.com survey of 1,530. Some try to cram in so much activity that they come back more exhausted than when they left. Others stay so plugged on Blackberrys and cellphones that colleagues and clients don’t even suspect they’re away.

“It’s been my experience that an ‘out of office’ response means nothing anymore,” says Edward T. Creagan, a medical oncologist who writes the Mayo Clinic’s stress blog. “We’re driving ourselves wacko with no time to power down.”

Attempting to relax even makes some people sick. Some 3% of the population suffers from “leisure sickness” when they go on vacation. Symptoms include fatigue, muscle pain, nausea and flu-like symptoms, according to a 2002 study in the Netherlands. And a phenomenon of “weekend headaches” accounts for roughly one-third of all migraines and one-sixth of tension headaches.
Where do you fall? Take the Wall Street Journal’s interactive survey (adapted from the Work Addiction Risk Test – PDF) to see if you are a workaholic.

I scored at 63, making me a mild workaholic. “With acceptance and modifications, you and your loved ones can prevent negative lasting effects,” says psychologist Bryan E. Robinson of my results.

Advice for workaholics includes meditation, exercise and anything to make you more “present.”  As for enjoying vacations, I enjoy the idea of vacations, and enjoying having gone on them, but it’s hard to relax enough to have fun when I’m actually sitting by the pool with that frozen cocktail.

Want more advice? In a Huffington Post piece, Why Fun is a Serious Issue, psychotherapist Thomas Moore argues that we’re all taking …

When you plan a wedding, you might select the specific readings or poems to commemorate your love at the ceremony. You’ll invite friends and family to witness the event, sanctify the union and celebrate your commitment. There might even be a wedding planner to get all the details in place.

In Japan, that’s one of two possible ceremonies a couple can now have: First you get married in a symbolic ceremony.  And then you can end your marriage with a similarly elaborate event — divorce ceremony planner and all.

According to Reuters, businessman Hiroki Terai came up with the idea “to help couples celebrate their decision to separate after one of his friends was going through a bitter divorce.” He said 

“I started this ceremony in April last year thinking that there should be a positive way to end a marriage and move on by making a vow to restart their lives in front of loved ones,” Terai said.

Jezebel had more details:

Divorce ceremonies typically begin with friends and family traveling together in a procession to the mansion. Though some choose to dress up (one woman even wore her wedding gown), most divorce ceremonies are somewhat less formal. The unhappy couple marks the end of their marriage by bringing a frog’s head gavel down on their rings. After they’ve banged the circlets, most parties head to a local restaurant, where the former bride and groom sit at separate tables and entertain their guests.

As Rebecca Mead so eloquently wrote in her 2007 book, One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, the desire for a big party seems to have eclipsed the significance and sacrament of marriage. (The idea that a wedding is a day, but marriage is for a lifetime is probably not one of the aphorisms mentioned at divorce ceremonies.) Does the anticipation of a big party make people feel better about-or even encourage them to-divorce?

But I just have one question: Are the guests who come to divorce ceremonies expected …

A while back Tara Parker-Pope wrote a New York Times piece about the high toll of technology over-dependence that’s worth mentioning: With immediate access to information and online storage galore, are we getting more impatient… and more forgetful?

Typically, the concern about our dependence on technology is that it detracts from our time with family and friends in the real world. But psychologists have become intrigued by a more subtle and insidious effect of our online interactions. It may be that the immediacy of the Internet, the efficiency of the iPhone and the anonymity of the chat room change the core of who we are, issues that Dr. Aboujaoude explores in a book, “Virtually You: The Internet and the Fracturing of the Self,” to be released next year.

Dr. Aboujaoude also asks whether the vast storage available in e-mail and on the Internet is preventing many of us from letting go, causing us to retain many old and unnecessary memories at the expense of making new ones. Everything is saved these days, he notes, from the meaningless e-mail sent after a work lunch to the angry online exchange with a spouse.

I know I am — and these are issues I’ve blogged about before: Constant crackberry or iPhone use in social situations sends a message that you don’t care about the people sitting right in front of you.

Establishing community is a core element of well-being — and the best way to do this is through in-person interactions.

Need help getting present? Try this:

Turn off your “stuff” – your PDA, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry etc. And I don’t mean just putting ‘em on vibrate. There is an on/off switch for this very reason. Make your time with friends and family count.

Go for a walk. It’s easier for some people to put aside distractions when they take a walk in a park or on quiet neighborhood streets. You’re multitasking in some ways – burning calories while having quality time – but it also allows both of you …

A few weeks back, I blogged about new research that found, when searching for a relationship partner, we tend to gravitate toward people who are like us — because we’re looking for approval from our peer-group… and perfect strangers. The conclusion was that social information cues matter: We don’t live in a vacuum, and community matters. Researchers in England and Denmark just released even more research to support the idea that the opinions of others matter.

Reports medicalnewstoday.com

Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) in collaboration with Aarhus University in Denmark have found that the ‘reward’ area of the brain is activated when people agree with our opinions. The study, published today in the journal Current Biology, suggests that scientists may be able to predict how much people can be influenced by the opinions of others on the basis of the level of activity in the reward area.

We all like to think we’re mavericks, even though decades of experiments have shown that humans are often more like lemmings. What’s most interesting about this research is

That brain scans seem to be able to see where the reward area for agreement “lives” and
That it reminds us, once again, of the importance of good influences from our friends, families and our communities.

Do you have spring goals that you want to achieve? Surround yourself with people who will support you. Want to deepen your faith? Find a group that values spiritual seeking as a goal, and their positive opinions of your efforts will bolster you. And, on the flip side, if you’re always fighting about core issues with a friend, resolution will light up a lot more reward areas of your brain than constant bickering.

Bottom line: Opposites may attract on TV, but when it comes to success, find a team that will back you up every step of the way.

When I was a ‘tween and teenager, I had two best friends. The three of us were our own little clique — inseparable and bonded in a sisterly way. Having two best friends instead of one caused some problems, sure, because there was often a tension between who was closest to whom, but generally, it worked. We were the Three Muskateers. We were Heuy, Dewey and Louie. We sat in the same place in the hallway of our middle- and high-school, we helped each other with homework, we had sleepovers and weekend adventures our albums are now filled with photos from confirmations to graduations to weddings.

As an adult, however, I’m blessed to have expanded that friendship circle to at least six women (not to mention a husband) with whom I confide my deepest, darkest secrets and joys. Which is better? A New York Times article on whether the “best friend” is something to be discouraged among children grabbed my attention.

While kids want a best friend, their helicopter parents and well-meaning educators are concerned that socializing as a pack might provide more emotional support, especially when emotions run high. Writes Hilary Stout

Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond – the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school – signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.

“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults – teachers and counselors – we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to

…

Opposites attract, right?

Wrong.

It’s one of the myths marriage and family sociologists love to shatter: While Hollywood has romantic notions of maids in Manhattan finding love among the affluent, the truth is that assorative mating–the idea that we pair up with people quite similar to ourselves in terms of education, race, class and religious background–still rules.

New research in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior takes this one step further: The reason why we tend to gravitate toward people who are like us is that we’re looking for approval from our peer-group… and perfect strangers.

Reports ScienceDaily: 

Many people like to think they have discriminating tastes when it comes to romantic interests. An Indiana University study, however, found that men and women are greatly influenced not only by what their friends think of their potential fling or relationship partner, but also by the opinions of complete strangers.

“Humans don’t exist in a vacuum. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense that we have evolved mechanisms that let us take advantage of the additional social information in our environment,” said Skyler Place [for his previous research, click here], a researcher in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and lead author of the study along with Peter M. Todd, professor in IU’s Cognitive Science Program.

“We might think that searching for mates is a process best done individually, that we can best gather the appropriate information by ourselves,” Place said. But humans, like many other animals, also pay attention to the preferences of others, to make for a more efficient search process. Who others like might also be a good choice for ourselves.”

He’s right–and not just in terms of research: While we all like to think we’re different, paying attention to cues from others and making sure we are part of a larger community is a good thing for longevity of relationships. Conformity isn’t something we usually like to embrace, but when like marries like, and the community supports it, I give the union a …

Childbearing outside marriage is on the rise, with some 40% of all births to unwed mothers. And more than half of unplanned pregnancies occur among women who were not using any form of contraception the month they conceived. Were all of those women just being careless?

Nope.

According to new research, led by Julia McQuillan at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, some women are trying to conceive, others are trying not to conceive — but a significant proportion of women, both unmarried and married, don’t fall into either category: They’re OK with either outcome. And to understand the new realities of American fertility means learning more about these women and their choices.

McQuillan and her coauthors, Arthur L. Greil of Alfred University and Karina Shreffler of Oklahoma State University, found that women who plan pregnancies tend to married–and a bit older, wealthier and more educated than the average American woman. Those who are trying to avoid a pregnancy tend to be in a cohabiting relationship, or have several children and/or step-children already.

Using data from nearly 5000 women ages 25-45 collected by the National Survey of Fertility Barriers, the researchers, whose findings are forthcoming in Maternal and Child Health Journal,  found that 6% of women were trying to get pregnant, 71% were trying to avoid pregnancy and 23% were OK either way.

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes the Baby in the Baby Carriage… Right?

The traditionalists among us would assume that married women are more open to chance conception — more likely to be OK either way — than unmarried women, but the data doesn’t bear that out (all puns intended): About a quarter of married women and cohabitating women are OK either way.

To be clear, that means that in about 24% of all cohabitating couples, the woman is neither trying to prevent nor trying to achieve pregnancy.

Indeed, the percentages aren’t really that different for any of the three conception attitudes between married and cohabitating couples. Six percent of women in cohabitating couples are actively trying to achieve …

Here’s a plot of a future James Bond movie: The evil female character is lulled into trusting Bond after he spikes her drink with oxytocin, a brain hormone that gives her the warm-and-fuzzies. When her partner in crime realizes what’s happened, he drops the antidote-testosterone-into her mouth and she’s off to attack the world once more.

In 2005, Swiss researchers found in that a squirt of oxytocin would make players in an investment game more trusting. And recently, researchers at Utrecht University in Holland report that they have identified an antidote: Testosterone.

Reports the Independent of London:

The researchers found that when testosterone is administered as a small, one-off dose to female volunteers, their sense of trust towards strangers changes, but only if the women tend to be trusting in the first place.

Jack van Honk of the University of Cape Town in South Africa said the findings suggested that testosterone generated mistrust in more gullible individuals as a way of protecting them against the deceitful behavior of a competitive world.

He suggested that testosterone may work in opposition to the “love” hormone oxytocin, which is produced for instance in women during childbirth and promotes social bonding and trust between individuals.

Indeed, if our hormones do dictate so much, this may give new credence to a debate about the impact of birth control pills on our mate preferences.

Reports the New York Times:

Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, said the new finding was “very significant” and opened the door to studying the mechanisms that guide trust, social relationships and a sense of fairness, as well as the sources of variation between people.

Testosterone is known from other studies to enhance a woman’s libido, and there is a peak in production of the hormone just before ovulation. From an evolutionary perspective it seems natural that a woman should be most interested in sex when she is likeliest to conceive. But how does the hormone’s property of enhancing distrust fit into the picture.

…

Writing about the repetition in men’s magazines earlier this week made me look back at my research on men’s and women’s magazines from more than a decade ago. A few points to note:

1) Repetition isn’t anything new in the gendered magazine world. Cosmopolitan has been doing it for ages. In the January 1990 issue, a cover story announces: ‘Go North Young Woman! Alaska is Teeming with Eligible Men.’ The article features AlaskaMen magazine, a catalog of eligible bachelors hoping to find a mate. As Cosmo explains, “America’s last frontier is teeming with bachelors.” Just five years later, it seems the lonely guys in Alaska put in another bid. In April 1995 issue, Cosmopolitan called: “Go North, Young Woman! (Alaska is Where the Men Are).”

2) Gendered magazines offer highly stylized guides to the good life-and play on our insecurities. Stories of romance, love-at-first sight and mind-blowing passion abound. Few readers will have a great deal of experience with events like these, but they wish they did, and read avidly. While the average 31-year-old, middle-income Cosmo reader does not lead a life of threesomes, micro-mini-skirts, office affairs and celebrity-run-ins, the particular insecurities about men and relationships are noteworthy: As relationships moved in a direction of instant gratification rather than commitment over time, sexual advice and bedroom etiquette became increasingly important.

3) A content analysis of relationship advice in Cosmopolitan shows a move away from long-term relationship advice. The most noticeable difference between 1965 and 2000 issues of Cosmopolitan is the switch in focus from long-term to shorter-term commitments to men. In 1965 there were 32 articles that primarily dealt with a woman’s relationship with a man. Of those, 28 articles focused on marriage and four articles focused on dating. In percentage terms, during 1965, 87.5% of the articles about relationships focused on marriage. In 2000, there is a striking reversal. Of the 116 articles about relationships with men, only 6 articles-or 5%-focused on marriage.

In the 1960s, Cosmopolitan offered advice on how to be a good wife, where to find a …