Lots of successful women are freezing their eggs

“Freeze Your Eggs, Free Your Career,” announced the headline of a Bloomberg Businessweek cover story in 2014. It was the year that Facebook and then Apple began offering egg freezing as a benefit to employees. Hundreds of think pieces followed, debating the costs and benefits of “postponing procreation” in the name of professional advancement.

In the years since, many more women across the world have frozen their eggs. Many are highly educated. But the decision may have very little to do with work, at least according to a new study. In interviews with 150 American and Israeli women who had undergone one cycle, career planning came up as the primary factor exactly two times.

Instead, most women focused on another reason: they still hadn’t found a man to build a family with.

“The stereotype that these ambitious career women are freezing their eggs for the purposes of their career — that’s really inaccurate at the present time,” said Marcia Inhorn, a medical anthropologist from Yale University, and one of the authors of the study, which was presented Monday at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s conference in Spain.

Most of these mid-to-late 30s women were already established in their careers by the time they got to the clinic, the study found.

“They weren’t freezing to advance; they were facing the overarching problem of partnership,” she said. This was the case, even among those who worked for companies that offered to pay for the procedure.

Though a single woman, headed toward 40, may feel like a freakish anomaly as she freezes her eggs because she hasn’t found a partner, she’s not. This finding echoes other studies in the United States and Britain that have similarly found that it’s the absence of a partner that drives most women to freeze their eggs.

The subjects in this particular study, which has not yet been published, came from seven different fertility clinics. In the United States, the women generally lived in cities along the East Coast or in the Bay Area. They ranged in age from 29 to 42, with three-quarters falling between 35 and 39.
The research approach taken by Dr. Inhorn and her co-authors Dr. Pasquale Patrizio, director of the Yale Fertility Center, and Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli of the University of Haifa, involved asking women — both single and those who had partners — to share their egg freezing stories and then analyzing their responses to try to understand their primary motives.

Of the participating women, 85 percent were single and most were heterosexual. For about half of these single women, it was uncertainty about when they would meet a man to build a family with that brought them to the clinic, they told the researchers. The next largest group was driven there by a divorce or breakup. (Egg freezing was actually covered by several of these women’s divorce settlements.) This was followed by a smaller group of women who were deployed overseas and felt it was wise to freeze their eggs first and then a handful of women who were preparing to have a baby on their own. Career planning was the least common reason.

Among the 15 percent of the subjects who were in relationships, the reasons for freezing their eggs were not unlike the single women’s: though they had a partner, he was not yet ready or not interested in building a family.

Why are so many women having a hard time finding men to have children with? One hypothesis that researchers often cite is that it’s related to demographics. Women in many developed countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Japan, Norway and Australia, are now more educated then men. This could be creating a dearth of appealing male partners for these women.

An American doctor in Dr. Inhorn’s study voiced this concern, saying “Most men don’t want relationships,” and are willing to date uneducated women, whereas most educated women will not. “So I think I have about a .09 percent chance of meeting someone.”

While a number of her subjects seemed to feel empowered by their decision to freeze their eggs, this sense of frustration was common.

“Why me? Why did I end up this way?” was a question that came up a lot. Yes, they had focused on their careers — but they had relationships over the years as well. Neither they, nor their friends, had expected to find themselves without a partner at this stage in their lives.

“It’s not something you’ve done,” Dr. Inhorn said she found herself wanting to tell them. “It’s you and thousands of other women.”

(Source: NYT)

Disney fans like their princesses like their coffee: Hot, skinny and white

Disney reaches a huge, young audience that is internalising ideals of white supremacy and sexualisation, writes Bidisha in The Guardian. Read on: 

Elsa from Frozen has been chilling in her ice closet for a long time: the hit Disney musical was released in the UK in 2013. Since then, like passive-aggressive Christmas carollers who won’t go away, fans have taunted her with the loaded words, “Do you want to build a snowman? … Come out the door,” while she stalks through her fortress of solitude like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, or US first lady Melania Trump.

Elsa may soon be building a snowman without shame or secrecy: the film’s director and writer, Jennifer Lee, is considering bringing the ice regent’s homosexuality out to thaw in a Disney dawn of acceptance and financial profit in the Frozen sequel.

‘The YouGov poll, while seeming to probe the wokeness of the Mouseketeers, is just another Miss World beauty pageant for assessing and ranking women.’ Elsa in Frozen. Photograph: Allstar/Disney/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

This seems in step with its audience’s views. According to a YouGov poll of people happy enough to answer a YouGov poll on Disney princesses, 49% of British fans would be “comfortable” with a gay Disney princess, and even more would be comfortable with one who was overweight, a feminist, more than 40 years old, non-white and even a parent. Great! I’m nearly all those things. I say we play those excellent odds, bundle them together and introduce a full roster of non-white, middle-aged, body-positive separatist feminist single mother lesbian queens. You know: the way Wonder Woman’s Amazon island should have been. We can call it Disney: The Collective.

When it comes to desired characteristics of Disney princesses, the usual things come up in YouGov’s poll: independence, confidence, intelligence, ambition and bravery. Nobody wants a protagonist who is a needy, dim, mousy coward with no life goals. But the top quality? Kindness. You’re joking. Disney princes should be kinder – like that manipulative hostage-taker and groomer the Beast, or the prince in Sleeping Beauty who sexually assaults a drugged-by-magic princess. These are the Disney douchebags who need a kindness makeover, or a prison sentence.

This poll, while seeming to probe the wokeness of the Mouseketeers, is just another Miss World beauty pageant for assessing and ranking women. Who is the nicest, the fairest, the sweetest in the land? Which girl-woman, tiny-waisted fantasy figure, exotic or not, occupies the impossible sweet spot of nice face, true heart, great hair, good humour, fine mind, high spirits, brave soul and strong resolve?

Snow White … voted Britain’s most popular
princess in YouGov poll.

No woman, real or cartoon, can match up to that. What I want to know about Disney is this: how does it treat the women and people of colour in its own company? How much does it pay us? How does it treat its cleaners and support staff, its new mothers and the young women who want to work in the industry? What are its pitch meetings like: 10 rich, loud-talking men around a table, inventing poor “diverse” heroines? Is it time for Disney to hear a #MeToo song?

In the YouGov poll, Moana, Mulan and Merida from Brave (a lovely and strange matriarchal story based on Celtic myth) won in the best role model category. But of all the princesses, only Moana escapes being presented as lithe, nubile, big-eyed and sexually alluring to straight adult men (in a cartoon for little children!). And of the many producers, directors and writers of these three films with their great role models, 90% are white and male. So, in Disneyland head office, you and your team of bros feminist-wash or brown-wash a film, the global audience feels a lovely glow – and all the profits seem to flow to white men.

In life as in fairytales, the truth comes out in the end. The kicker is when YouGov asks people to rank their favourite Disney princesses. Out of 14, the top six chosen are white. Of the non-white women, Tiana from The Princess and the Frog is rock bottom and Pocahontas second from bottom. Jasmine, Moana and Mulan cluster behind Merida, Rapunzel (fun girl, great hair, hostage), Cinderella (domestic slave goes to party, meets a foot fetishist, marries up), Ariel (gets a boyfriend, loses her athletic ability and her literal voice) and Belle (trafficked by her father, sold to a dog). The winner? Snow White, the ultimate masochist. Finds her bliss cleaning seven men’s toilet.

Disney reaches a huge, young audience that is absorbing and internalising white supremacy, the tyranny of femininity, female isolation (few of the princesses have prominent female friends), ageism against women (so many Disney villains are older women), the class system (if in doubt, marry rich), bullshit romantic myths and US cultural dominance. Disney is the western patriarchal capitalist industrialist complex in cartoon form and its female characters are overwhelmingly beautiful, feminine, sexualised, nubile, Aryan, thin, young and adorable, like snack items modelled out of refined sugar. When its fans aren’t carefully answering poll questions to make themselves look open-minded and just list their favourites, they reveal that they like their princesses just like their Starbucks coffees: hot, skinny and white.

Elsa from Frozen could be a lesbian? Cue the outrage

Outrage is an infinitely renewable resource and everyone is mad about everything all the time. Here is a guide to the indignities of the week, writes Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian. Read on: 

What I love about Disney films is the way they always celebrate good old-fashioned family values. Princes go around kissing random unconscious women, for example, and there are various inter-species relationships between beauties and beasts or men and mermaids. It’s all very wholesome.

So, when news recently came out that Frozen 2 may include a lesbian relationship, right-thinking people were immediately outraged. I mean, can you imagine the message that would send to children?!

Degenerate Frozen fans have long suspected that Elsa might harbor lesbian tendencies and have internet-campaigned to #GiveElsaAGirlfriend. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Frozen director Jennifer Lee responded to questions about whether Elsa might, indeed, get a female love interest with: “we’ll see where we go.”

The HuffPo immediately translated this non-answer into a headline announcing there was a “Glimmer of Hope” Elsa was going gay, and the media then turned this glimmer into a firestorm.

Now there are petitions asking Disney not to cave into the sinister lesbian agenda and various conservatives are clutching their pearls and screaming about the upcoming gaypocalypse.

You’d think, what with the state of the world today, a fictional character’s sexuality might be at the bottom of people’s “things I’m going to get mad about” list. You’d think they might be able to let it go. But, no, that’s not the way things work today.

Outrage appears to be an infinitely renewable resource and everyone is mad about everything all the time. It can be hard to keep up with it all, so I have helpfully put together a guide to other indignities the internet couldn’t let go of this week.

 ‘Now there are petitions asking Disney not to cave into the sinister lesbian agenda.’ Photograph: Everett/Rex/Shutterstock

Barbara Streisand is an evil dog-cloner
Perhaps the most White Person thing I have ever done is spend $60 getting my adopted mutt a DNA test, because I wanted him to know more about his family background. The DNA test was completely wrong, by the way, but that’s another story. This story is about Barbara Streisand who took “crazy dog lady” to a whole other level.

In a recent interview with Variety, Streisand casually mentioned that two of her three Coton de Tulear dogs had been cloned from cells taken from her late dog, Samantha. People immediately went berserk and this was one of the rare instances where outrage was bipartisan.

The right tweeted things like: “Trump hating Barbra Streisand spent $100,000 to clone 2 dogs while in her city women and children go hungry, homeless and no medical care.” The left tweeted things like: “not rescuing a dog out of the millions in need of it and instead paying absurd amounts of money to clone one is PEAK rich white people.”

Peta obviously got involved in the debate and urged people to adopt, not clone. Call me cynical, but I really don’t think Streisand is going to start a trend of people paying $100,000 to clone their dog. Perhaps we should just let the lady clone her pets in peace and worry about other things.

It’s actually really mean to call a white person ‘colonizer’
Speaking of white people – which we rarely do, I know – some of them are a little peeved at the moment because “colonizer” is taking off as an insult. This is thanks to Black Panther where there’s a hilarious scene in which Shuri says: “Don’t scare me like that colonizer!” to a white guy whose name I have forgotten.

Now it appears white people are getting called “colonizer” in real life when they do things that smack of privilege. Some white people are very upset and uncomfortable about this. So please don’t hurt any white people’s feelings by saying the nasty C-word. Not to mention, it’s just really unfair when People of Colour lump People of No Colour together into some sort of homogeneous group, OK?

It’s the perfect time of the month for a period drama
Women have been saying for centuries that period pain is excruciating. But, I mean, women are prone to being a little hysterical. It’s best to take everything they say with a pinch of salt and consult a man for a second opinion. So I’m happy to announce John Guillebaud, professor of reproductive health at University College London, recently told Quartz that his patients have described menstruation pain as “almost as bad as having a heart attack”.

Guillebaud didn’t finish this with “and we should believe them” or anything. It was literally just a male figure of authority reporting his patients’ comments – and yet it made international news.

Media outlets from India to Australia to Arizona covered the story. Excuse me, but next time I get cramps I am calling the papers and telling them to hold the front page. Anyway, as you can imagine these headlines immediately started a gender war on the internet, with lots of outraged men saying there is absolutely no scientific evidence to prove menstruation – or even childbirth, for that matter – is any more painful than their stubbed toe.

You know, I think that whatever your own feelings or experience on this matter, it’s important that we women pipe down for once and just listen to men. 

The treasure hunters on a deadly quest for an eccentric's $2m bounty

Four people have died seeking a bounty hidden in the Rockies, with only a riddle as a guide. As the casualties mount, the millionaire who concealed the treasure insists it’s not a hoax

Sacha Johnston was inching along a dirt road in a narrow canyon in northern New Mexico. “Just guide me,” Johnston said to her search partner, Cory Napier, who directed Johnston and her white Toyota 4Runner. “This road can be brutal.”

The pair had come to this starkly beautiful place, at the base of the Sangre De Cristo mountains, to hunt for a treasure rumored to be worth upwards of $2m.

Johnston, a 37-year-old real estate agent from Albuquerque, had invited the Guardian along on a search for a 10in-by-10in box of gems, gold, cash and precious antiquities that an eccentric millionaire named Forrest Fenn says he hid somewhere in the Rocky Mountains in 2009. To find it, one must solve the clues in a cryptic poem written by Fenn, a kind of literary treasure hunt that has inspired thousands of people to take to the country’s wildernesses and has transformed, consumed and even destroyed lives.

In 2016, a man named Randy Bilyeu went missing while searching in northern New Mexico. Since his death, at least three others – some say as many as five – have perished while searching. Bilyeu’s ex-wife blames Fenn for every one of them.

“You created a monster,” Linda Bilyeu wrote in an email to Fenn that she shared with the Guardian. She called his treasure a dangerous hoax – but whatever the case, its allure is irresistible.

“Something about this gets inside you,” said Johnston as she parked at the base of a ridge and removed her “treasure-hunting backpack”, as she calls it, along with small pink handgun from the back of her SUV. “For protection,” she explained.

Inside the home of Forrest Fenn, an eccentric millionaire who says he hid his treasure somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Photograph: Gabriela Campos for the Guardian

Johnston began searching in 2015 and has i gone on over 125 trips. Fenn’s Treasure, as it is known, has become a full-time hobby for her, with hours spent poring over maps, researching the history and geography of her search area, and above all trying to decipher Fenn’s poem.

“Lots of life is complicated and messy,” said Johnston, a single mother of two. “This is the one thing I do for me.”

She had parked near a small ridge leading to Agua Caliente Canyon, which she believed was referenced in the poem. To cover more ground, she and Napier split up, yelling “Marco”, “Polo” at one another to stay connected. At these moments the hunt had the sweet sincerity of a childhood adventure.

“There is nothing else like this,” Johnston said as she scoured the landscape for what the poem described as “rocks with a human touch”.

“Forrest lit a fire under everyone’s ass. I’m not sure he knew what he was starting.”

‘I’m of a different kind’
The man behind it all sits in a high-walled study in Santa Fe. It is part office, part treasure-hunting lair, almost every inch covered with artifacts that Fenn acquired during his career as an art and antiquities dealer. On one wall is a large collection of ancestral Puebloan pottery, Apache polychrome baskets and shields. On another are indigenous weapons from numerous Plains Indian tribes, alongside medicine bags and ornate moccasins. Fenn also owns Sitting Bull’s peace pipe, one of his most prized possessions.

Objects inside the home of Forrest Fenn. Photograph: Gabriela Campos for the Guardian

At 88, Fenn has light eyes, stark white hair that he often covers with a cowboy hat, and a twinkling yet wary demeanor. “I’m of a different kind,” he said. “If you spend enough time around me, you will come to see that.”

A 20-year veteran of the air force who survived being shot down in Vietnam twice, Fenn moved to Santa Fe in the 1970s and began searching the American south-west for artifacts to both sell and fill his own collection. He gained renown nationally as an Indiana Jones figure, an adventurer and self-taught archaeologist who is said to have made, or claims to have made, sales to Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, Michael Douglas and other notables.

But just as the fictional representation of Jones was criticized by professionals for glorifying irresponsible archaeological practices and even looting, Fenn has faced a backlash. He was criticized for purchasing and excavating the San Lazaro ruin, an ancient pueblo south of Santa Fe, potentially hindering scholarly understanding of its history. In 2009, federal agents searched Fenn’s home, along with the residences of three other collectors in Santa Fe, looking for artifacts they believed were taken illegally from public lands. Fenn was never charged and denies any allegations of illegal activity.

The treasure that Fenn claims to have hidden. Photograph: Addison Doty

The idea of hiding a treasure came to Fenn in 1988 after he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of kidney cancer. “That changes your perspective on everything,” he said. Thinking he was about to die, he contemplated an ending that sounds cribbed from a movie – like Steven Spielberg’s latest, Ready Player One, in which a wealthy old man leaves a trail of clues to his fortune. Fenn would retreat to the mountains with some of his objects and leave a poem that would, if deciphered, lead to his riches and his bones. Though he survived, the idea persisted.

Fenn says he spent years writing and rewriting the poem and painstakingly curating the contents of the treasure. He avers that it contains a miniature version of his memoir, The Thrill of the Chase, and valuables including a bracelet with 200 rubies and sapphires, gold jaguar claws, a 200-year-old necklace made of quartz crystal, and ancient Chinese jade carvings that Fenn says would make someone “just want to cry when you see them”.

Douglas Preston, the writer and author of the bestselling book The Lost City of the Monkey God, said he could vouch for the existence of the chest. “He kept putting things in and taking other things out,” he said. “For a while, he had $1,000 bills.”

Forrest Fenn’s poem, which he says hints at the location of his treasure.
Photograph: Gabriela Campos for the Guardian

Preston believes the undertaking is a bid for immortality. “All of us as human beings want to do something that will live on past our own lives, and Forrest came up with an incredible way to do it.”

Sometime between 2009 and 2010, Fenn says he hauled the 42lb antique bronze lockbox into the Rockies. The poem came out in 2010, and Fenn says every word is a clue.

Interest in the treasure was minimal, according to Fenn, until the inflight magazine of United Airlines published an article about it in 2013. That “changed everything”, and Fenn says he received 1,200 emails the next day. He is proud that the search has led so many people into the outdoors.

“We sit on our couch and watch the TV, or play with our little machines. We’re too comfortable because we know what to expect.”

To friends like Preston, Fenn is a fabulous storyteller and a man with a penchant for mischief. These characteristics, and the absence of any physical evidence of the treasure, have led some skeptics to believe that the treasure itself is a hoax. For others, Fenn’s treasure has endowed their lives with a profound sense of meaning and direction.

“We want to imagine ourselves as great explorers, doing bold deeds fearlessly, the like of which aren’t available or feasible in today’s world,” says Chris Hanson, another longtime searcher from Colorado.

“I have learned how to identify animal tracks, to track the position of the sun to determine your position in the forest, and the history of the south-west,” said Johnston. “The chase did not spark my love for the outdoors; rather it gave me the excuse to play outside.”

 Sacha Johnston hunting for treasure. ‘Something gets inside you.’ Photograph: Gabriela Campos for the Guardian

“Forrest has introduced me to Yellowstone,” said Cynthia Meachum, another devoted treasure searcher who has over 100 trips under her belt and is planning her second trip to Wyoming this summer. “People that have never seen America have now discovered it.

“There is definitely an obsessive side of this,” she added. “I don’t know if other people have told you this, but we can’t turn this off.”

While positive stories like these are common, there are also unhappier outcomes of the hunt. “Rangers have initiated 12 cases in response to Forrest Fenn hunters’ distress or illegal actions since 2013,” Jake Frank, of the Yellowstone national park public affairs office, wrote in an email to the Guardian.

 We want to imagine ourselves as great explorers, doing bold deeds which aren’t available or feasible in today’s world
Chris Hanson, treasure hunter

Randy Bilyeu’s personality “changed drastically” when he began searching for the treasure, said Linda Bilyeu, whose ex-husband moved halfway across the country, from Florida to Colorado, to be closer to his search area. She said he had become “obsessed” with the treasure after he saw Fenn on the Today show. In September 2016, Randy wrote Fenn an email with the line: “I will find your treasure or die trying.” Four months later, he went missing after trying to cross the Rio Grande in a small raft he bought at a sporting goods store. His remains were later found near Taos, New Mexico.

In June 2017, an Illinois man named Jeff Murphy fell 500ft to his death while hunting for Fenn’s treasure in Yellowstone national park. That same month, the body of the Colorado pastor Paris Wallace was found near Taos. In July 2017, the body of Eric Ashby from Colorado was discovered in a river in the state. Some in his family believe he was out searching for the treasure when he died.

 Sacha Johnston displays the gun she takes with her outdoors. Photograph: Gabriela Campos for the Guardian

“More will die while trying to find the chest,” Linda Bilyeu said in an email.

“I would implore him that he stop this nonsense,” the New Mexico state police chief, Pete Kassetas, said after Wallace’s body was found in 2017. He told another news outlet: “I want people to have fun and I want people to be adventurous, but the reality is when you have $2m or so, as it’s rumored to be, at stake, people make poor decisions.”

Meachum, the veteran searcher, said she hated “the negativity that’s placed on Forrest. So many people die from falls or dehydration, but no ones blames the Grand Canyon.”

Asked about the deaths, Fenn replied: “Of course it’s very tragic. But every time you get in a car you put yourself at risk.” He has long stressed that the treasure is not in a dangerous or hard-to-reach place.

The cult of Forrest
The treasure has taken its toll, said Fenn. “You know I get beat up a bit,” he explained, referring to the hundreds of emails he receives each day from avid and at times obsessed searchers. There have been death threats, harassment and attempts to break into his home. Public events such as book signings now require bodyguards.

While the response to the treasure has been intense, it has also been of Fenn’s own making. When he wrote his memoir he included his phone number and email address, and sends emails by the thousands. He periodically weighs in on the treasure hunt and drops clues for searchers: that the treasure can be found between an altitude of 5,000 and 10,000ft, that it is at least eight miles north of Santa Fe, and it is not located in a house, grave, mine or cave.

A kind of infatuated cult following has emerged, with innumerable websites, blogs, Facebook pages and message board postings by people who painstakingly deconstruct every aspect of Fenn’s poem, his life and writings. There is now an annual “Fennboree”, a two-day gathering to celebrate all things Forrest Fenn, though this year’s was canceled due to forest fires.

Forrest Fenn at his desk. Photograph: Gabriela Campos for the Guardian

This year there will be a “holy shrine to golden Fenn”, its website promises. “Leave anything and everything that might please golden Fenn and perhaps induce him to shower down upon you treasure-finding inspiration.”

Such enthusiasm contains an echo of the desperation that Fenn often encounters. A few minutes after he sat down with a reporter recently, an erratic-sounding and increasingly emotional man called Fenn to say that he was convinced he was close to the treasure. (He wasn’t.)

He rang again, and again, and by the third call the man began to sob loudly and asked Fenn for a prayer. Fenn obliged.

When he hung up the phone, he looked tired. He got one or two calls like this every day, he said. “I don’t think you realize how much of myself I have given to this.”

There is a weariness in the voices of the treasure hunters, too.

“It is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me,” said Meachum. “But sometimes I wish someone could find it just so I could be released.”

Searching in the New Mexico desert, Johnston concurred – in a way. “Well, it would kind of put us all out of our damn misery,” she said as she rode home empty-handed. “On the other hand, this is my favorite thing to do. It has been a great gift.”

(Source: The Guardian)

The surprising sign that indicates a couple will divorce, according to researchers

Researchers followed 168 couples for 13 years to understand what makes couples divorce

Each relationship is different, but researchers have found there could be one unlikely sign capable of predicting divorce - and it affects the couples that are overly-affectionate in their first few years of marriage.

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, followed 168 couples for 13 years to discover what signals predict divorce and what signs indicate a healthy long-lasting marriage.

According to the study, evidence shows that couples who are overly-affectionate from the beginning, meaning they display more than understandable levels of affection towards each other, are more likely to divorce.

“As newlyweds, the couples who divorced after seven or more years were almost giddily affectionate, displaying about one-third more affection than did spouses who were later happily married,” the authors wrote.

But is too much affection always a bad thing? We asked dating and relationship experts their thoughts.

Madeleine Mason Roantree, dating and relationship psychologist and director of PassionSmiths told The Independent: “If you think about it, it makes sense.

“Some people get caught up in the infatuation of a relationship, hence the term ‘love is blind,’ and it is known that infatuation is not a long-lasting state. Once that disappears, one has to look at what is left between the two people, and if there is no bond other than passion, then the relationship is likely to fall apart,” she said. “There is also the danger of falling in love with an aspect of someone, knowing that it’s not long-lasting or sustainable but hoping that things will change. For example, a couple gets together in a partying environment, but when kids come along, one person does not intend to give up the party lifestyle."

Susan Winter, New York City relationship expert and bestselling author, agreed.

“Over-the-top emotions (and their physical expression) are hard to sustain. This type of behaviour is most commonly found in the honeymoon period, which is a short-lived phase from three to nine months,” Winter told us.

“Life and life’s challenges can get real very quickly,” according to Winter. “That’s when you’ll see each partner’s true personality emerge. The person you thought you married has vanished and discontentment occurs.”

It is this disillusionment that ultimately leads towards divorce - the “decline in overt affection, a lessening of the conviction that one’s spouse is responsive, and an increase in ambivalence,” according to the study authors.

But there are always exceptions to the rule - for example, on your wedding day.

Mason Roantree said: “You would think on their wedding day a couple would display a lot of affection. In general, I think displaying and being affectionate towards one another is a good sign.”

And affection towards your spouse is not always a bad sign - it is only when the strength of the feelings errs on unhealthy.

“There is a difference in being so much into one another that the surroundings and social context are ignored versus a couple generally being ‘touchy-feely’ towards each other,” Mason Roantree said. “The former is likely to be unhealthy, the latter is fine.”

Alternatively, couples who fought from the beginning and did not display affection also indicated an increased likelihood of divorce, according to the study - with those couples divorcing within two years.

Additional signs of divorce, according to Winter, are “a lack of effort for the relationship and a lack of appreciation for one's partner.”

“Also, couples get into a routine. Being together becomes a habit, rather than an ongoing adventure of discovery. It’s easy to become complacent. This is where we quit adding value to the relationship and begin to take our partner for granted - two key factors that lead to divorce,” Winter said.

For a marriage to be successful, a steady and unwavering affection towards one another is important to establish a “stable marital bond,” according to the study authors.

(Source: The Independent)