From bad breakups to bathroom updates to the amount of bacon your best friend can eat in a single sitting, we've all grown used to oversharers spilling their guts both online and off.

"I share pretty much everything," says Laura Keesee, a 25-year-old public relations account coordinator from Orlando, Fla. "From my random ADD thoughts to when some food has upset my stomach to details about my relationship. I think oversharing is part of my personality."

It's also intrinsically rewarding, according to new research out of Harvard University that used fMRI scans to show how our brains react to sharing information about ourselves with others.

"The Internet has drastically expanded the number of mediums through which we can talk about ourselves to other people," says Diana Tamir, a graduate student in the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab at Harvard and lead author of a study published today in the journal PNAS. "We were interested in why people engage in self-disclosure so seemingly excessively. The hypothesis we wanted to test was whether or not this behavior provided people with intrinsic or subjective value -- did it feel good to do it."

As it turns out, it feels so good, our brains responds to self-disclosure the same way they respond to pleasure triggers like food, money or sex.

Tamir and her colleagues conducted five studies involving nearly 300 people, most of them from the Harvard and Cambridge community. In some studies, participants were asked to disclose their own opinions while being scanned using fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging, a technique that directly measures the blood flow in the brain, thereby providing information on brain activity.

In others, participants were asked to complete certain behavioral tasks in exchange for varying amounts of money. Study subjects, as it turns out, were willing to go without 17 to 25 percent of their potential earnings if they could reveal info about themselves to others.

"We called this the 'penny for your thoughts study,'" says Tamir. "We wanted to know if people would pay money to engage in this behavior -- to share information about themselves with other people -- and it turns out they will."

Brain scans of participants revealed even more about the rewards of self-disclosure.

"When you look at the neural regions generally associated with rewards like money or sex or food, those same regions seemed to respond more robustly when people were engaging in self disclosure than when they were not," says Tamir. "From the evidence we see, there are a couple of different metrics of value -- both monetary and neural -- that show that self-disclosure is subjectively rewarding to people. It's valuable. It goes towards explaining why people do it so often."

Lawrence Winnerman, a 42-year-old project manager from Seattle, says he definitely finds oversharing rewarding.

"If I post something on Facebook or say something that I think is going to be really funny and also particularly revealing about myself, I'm looking for a reaction and a laugh," he says. "And I get really disappointed if I don't get one. I know I'm absolutely doing it for the value of the rewards."

According to Tamir, both shy and TMI types feel rewarded when they can talk about themselves.

"You might think that gregarious people are more highly rewarded but shy people also like to share their thoughts," she says. "My hunch is that everybody can find some kind of value reward in having an audience or a sympathetic ear, regardless whether you do that behavior a lot or a little. It provides you with some sort of reward."

Unfortunately, oversharing can also provide the occasional admonition. 

"My new boyfriend posted a picture of me on Facebook in a Viking helmet that was taken in a sex shop," says Winnerman, who also posted on the social networking site that he and his beau were at the shop to buy, ah, supplies. "I thought it was funny even knowing my mother would read it."

Her response?

"She immediately posted, 'TMI,'" he says.

Related:

• Beware the overshare in everyday conversation
• Should we call it quits? A new kind of couples counseling
• Trying on swimsuits really is the worst, study confirms

Getty Images stock

Many unhappily married couples turn to marriage counselors to help them improve their relationship. Now a new type of couples therapy helps them figure out whether the best solution is to call it quits.

"We basically only see people where divorce is on the table," says Bill Doherty, a professor in the family social science department at the University of Minnesota, who was recently featured in a Wall Street Journal story about a new therapy called discernment counseling.

Unlike traditional marriage counseling, in which couples try to work through their marital problems, discernment counseling aims to help struggling couples decide whether to "improve the marriage or let it go," Doherty says.

According to Doherty, who developed the innovative therapy for the Minnesota Couples on the Brink Project, many marriage counselors discover during the first session that divorce is already being discussed.

"Around 30 percent of the couples coming into marriage counseling are mixed agenda couples," he says. "Divorce is on the table for one of the parties. Traditional marriage counseling has no way to deal with those people. It's been area of frustration for a lot of marriage counselors."

Joe Guppy, a couples counselor from Seattle, says this has definitely been his experience.

"Couples counselors have been aware for decades of the need to discern whether the couple has come in to stay together or to break up," he says. "Oftentimes, one of the couple knows he or she wants to leave, hasn't told the partner and is essentially bringing the counselor on board to help soften the blow."

Doherty refers to these spouses as "leaning out," while those who want to stay in the marriage are "leaning in."

"The name discernment counseling is important because sometimes the person who is leaning out will run the clock out on marriage counseling," he says. "They'll show up, but won't really try, then will pronounce that marriage counseling didn't work. What I say is, 'We don't know if marriage counseling will work. We haven't tried it yet. We're deciding whether or not to do it.'"

What makes discernment counseling different?

Aside from slapping out the D-word for all to discuss, the practice incorporates both individual and couples counseling.

"They both come in and there's a check-in [with a counselor], then you meet for part of the session with one [spouse] and part of the session with the other," says Doherty. "Then there's a check-out, where you meet with both and summarize what each is taking out with them. Marriage counseling is primarily both people in the room at the same time, working on their problems together."

Couples meet with a discernment counselor up to five times, but can stop whenever they want. During the first session, the counselor will talk to both about what's been good (and bad) about the marriage and will ask what they've done to iron out their difficulties. The counselor will also lay out three paths -- staying in the marriage as is, moving toward a divorce, or trying a six-month-long reconciliation path in which they work on the marriage via traditional couples therapy.

So far, Doherty and his colleagues have worked with 50 couples and are currently training additional counselors in the practice. While no data is available yet on whether discernment counseling is more effective than traditional counseling with regard to keeping a couple together (traditional marriage counseling has a success rate of 70 to 80 percent), Doherty says the response from marriage counselors has been overwhelming.

"They have not had any specific tools or protocols to deal with the mixed agenda couple," he says. "Over time, we have to evaluate and study it and it may be that better tools will come along. But there's been a big gap in the field."

Annie Lareau, a 43-year-old arts administrator from Seattle who divorced after several years of couples therapy, says she thinks discernment counseling sounds like a promising idea.

"I think it's a more realistic approach," she says. "It would be horrible if you went to a counselor, trying to save [your marriage] and then when it ended, you had no support. There's so much to work out as a couple in terms of your future, especially if you have children. Counseling allows you to move on faster."

Working with both parties individually helps ease what can be a traumatic process, says Doherty, especially in cases where one partner is left shell-shocked, bitter and angry by their spouse's desire to leave.

"We work with the leaning out person separately, helping them not do further damage to the marriage," he says. "And we help the leaning in person, too. A lot of times when the decision's been sprung on somebody, they complain and scold and call the relatives and tell the kids, 'Mommy's trying to throw me out of the house.' We help the leaning in spouse bring their best game to this crisis, as opposed to that desperate game you bring when you get that message."

Mainly, discernment counseling helps the couple truly think through what can be a life-altering decision.

"It's almost always a good idea to slow it down and look at the marriage from five different angles, including what your own role in it was," says Doherty. "You can't divorce yourself. If people end a marriage without looking at their own contributions to the problems, they are leaving with a big blind spot. And the divorce rate in second marriages is even higher than first marriages."

Related:

• Sex or generosity? What counts most in marriage
• Poll: How do you handle conflicts in your marriage?
• Video: Sex quiz! Will exercise raise your libido?

Have your healthiest summer yet! Ease into the dreaded "swimsuit season" with healthy tips from TODAY experts. All throughout May, we'll offer smart do-it-yourself ways to look, eat and feel better. So stop stressing about that swimsuit, and read on.

Robert Daly / Getty Images/OJO Images

Choose a buddy with similar goals so you can really support each other rather than sabotage each other.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to taking off weight or getting into shape isn't all the pounds you want to lose or all the healthy meals you'll need to cook and eat to lose them. The biggest hurdle might actually be your mind-set.

Most people end up feeling that the task is so big, the road so unpleasant and the outcome so doomed that they never really get started. That's why approaching your goal in a certain thoughtful way, where you basically “outsmart yourself,” can make a world of difference. Big goals can seem overwhelming and, therefore, easy to quit. Goals which require you to completely change your way of doing everything take too much effort to keep up day in and day out. And being completely alone in the task makes it too easy to cheat.

So with those issues in mind, here are some helpful ways to organize yourself psychologically to maximize the likelihood you’ll persevere.

1. Break down goals into bite sized pieces. Rather than saying to yourself, "I am going to lose 20 pounds for the summer," make a weekly goal. For example, "I am going to lose one to two pounds a week" is a completely reasonable, healthy and psychologically manageable idea. In addition, after losing the first pounds you will get the positive feedback of knowing you can complete your goal, which will inspire you for the following week. It's rather like a snowball gathering size as it rolls down the hill; in your mind you will gather speed as you complete manageable tasks.

2. Know thyself. Deciding you are going to run every day when you have always hated running is not going to happen. You have to know what you like -- and what you don’t -- and choose a plan that has as many methods incorporating what you like into it. Pick an exercise and dieting method you can like (or like enough). Find non-food treats to offer yourself as rewards: a new song from iTunes, a bubblebath with incense. If you are a meat lover, go with a high-protein style of diet; if you’re a veggie guy or girl then use veggies as a method of reducing, as opposed with going with whatever new fad your friend likes. If you love sweets the most, get some diet-friendly sweets to have and have them, or you will fall off the wagon fast.

3. Let others help. It is so easy to cheat alone -- not so easy when you have a partner or buddy in it with you, both watching you for cheating and encouraging you to cross the finish line. Choose a buddy with similar goals so you can really support each other rather than sabotage each other. Make dates to be active together and eat together, and then each of you stand strong for the other. There is pleasure in a shared experience, even one as tough as dieting. When you feel big brother is watching, you tend to hold yourself to a higher standard.

Also by Dr. Gail Saltz:

• Your partner's annoying habits: How to deal
• Eat a sandwich, Angie: Skinny shaming isn't helpful, either

Dr. Gail Saltz is a New York City psychiatrist and regular TODAY contributor.

We all have annoying habits, which, curiously, we don’t find annoying in ourselves. But when they come from someone living with you, such habits can definitely get on your nerves. The trouble begins when you enter a vicious cycle of resentment -- when you're fed up with your partner's irritating habits, or you're tired of getting picked on for your own.

Nagging, disdain and contempt can all end relationships. That annoying habit may appear to be the source, but it’s not the habit that is the problem; it’s how you deal with it. 

Here are some typical categories of annoying habits:

Bodily quirks: This includes non-clandestine nose picking, passing gas, burping, picking teeth and anytime when one releases things from orifices that no one else wants to smell, witness or be around. Of course everyone must do so at times, but how about in the bathroom or other private place? Explain to your partner you are inclined to feel more sexually attracted to them when not subjected to foul odors and the like. If you did this in front of him (it usually is the guy, sorry) he would not really like it or find it sexually alluring. Request he do it in private.

Selective listening: You are trying to talk and he or she is tuned out, staring at the TV, computer or phone. Agree upon a benign code word (like "banana") for when you really would like full attention. It lets your partner know that paying attention now is important to you, which avoids the mystery of when to be fully attentive.

Being a slob: Dishes, clothes, shoes, mud -- who, exactly, is supposed to clean that up? You think it’s you, but your partner may just be fine with the mess, planning to get to it later. A discussion of who will be cleaning the mess (and exactly how much later) will help. Sometimes messiness is about relaxing in the moment; if so, ask for a time when he or she will return to the scene of the crime, and then make sure you do leave the things for the return. You will likely see fewer things strewn around.

Bad manners: Scratching his back with a fork, leaving the toilet seat up, rearranging private parts in public -- things that never happened early on in the relationship are now a daily affair that makes you feel like you married a Neanderthal. But for him (or her!), being able to relax and not feel like he married Emily Post is important. The solution lies somewhere in the middle, a relaxed state of getting to be yourself, with a dose of courtesy for your partner. Have a conversation about what constitutes reasonable manners to both of you. You may have different standards because you grew up in different homes. The things that are most egregious to the other are things you should step away and do in private. The “note reminder” technique helps for some. So a Post-It on the toilet for two weeks that says "Please put down the seat” can help to change a long-time habit.

Control freaks: Monopolizing the remote control, ruling what happens in the kitchen, always picking what movies you two watch. Relationships inevitably have some power struggles, and they can play out in the form of annoying habits that look innocent, but are really about being in control. If the remote control is bugging you, ask yourself, where does that partner get to have some control? If the answer is nowhere, maybe you should let them have it here -- after all, it's pretty innocuous. But if the remote is just one of many examples of robbing you of a say, then it’s time to discuss the inequity of power. Address what is underneath a seemingly meaningless habit to find the real meaning, which is about learning to share the power.

Constant nagging about annoying habits can actually destroy a marriage so pick your battles, you can’t win them all. Think about what really matters and why. Do not nag; instead, devise a system to address the specifics. 

Overall, consider these steps for dealing with annoying habits:

Awareness: Sometimes you don’t say what exactly annoys you, and the other person just finds you grumpy and critical. So be specific: “I think you are fab, but when I hear you biting your nails its grates on me. I know it’s a hard habit to stop, but could you try?”

Prioritize: You can’t remake your partner, so only ask about one thing. Pick your battle wisely.

Make a “habit trade”: You have bad habits too; we all do. So ask which habit he’d like you to quit and you can make a trade of it --  each of you working on one thing for the other.

Emphasize the positive: You did not notice these habits when you first fell in love because love gives your partner “the halo effect." So each day for a week, write down three things you love about your partner, or admire in your partner, or think is hot about your partner, or why you fell in love. Putting on your rose-colored glasses will make those annoying habits seem far less annoying.

Also by Dr. Gail Saltz:

'Eat a sandwich, Angie!' Skinny shaming isn't helpful, either

Dr. Gail Saltz is a New York City psychiatrist and regular TODAY contributor.

Getty Images stock

By Paige Greenfield
Men's Health

You know you should take a few deep breaths when you feel stressed. Instead you inhale a doughnut (or five). Strange? Not at all. Your strained brain craves instant gratification, often in the form of a quick fix like food or alcohol, says James Herman, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of Cincinnati. "These things activate reward pathways while quieting the amygdala, the emotional, overwrought area of your brain."

The trouble with the Krispy Kreme cure, besides the inevitable risk of obesity and the powdered sugar on your neckties, is that it's really just a stress Band-Aid. In the long term you may feel more mentally steamrolled than ever. And when your psyche suffers, so does your body. In fact, in a new Oregon State University study, researchers found that chronically stressed middle-aged men were almost 50 percent more likely to die during an 18-year period than those who experienced fewer stressful events. Which of these guys do you want to be?

Good choice. Now follow this plan for replacing your current so-called coping strategies with techniques that'll feel like a shiatsu massage for your mind.

5 Hidden Causes of Stress

How you cope: Down a dessert
There's a reason you equate sugar with serenity. When you consume the sweet stuff, your prefrontal cortex, a part of your brain that helps control emotions, is activated, says Herman. The danger of a sugar binge: Men with higher anxiety are also more likely to have elevated glucose levels, according to scientists in Japan. In fact, the American Diabetes Association warns that long-term stress may push your blood-sugar levels into the diabetic range if they're already higher than normal.

Do this instead: Savor a small portion of ice cream
The stress-busting benefits of dessert are due more to the flavor than the fat and calories, says Herman. "High-calorie foods often taste better, but calories aren't necessary for food's effects on stress." Buy a single-serve treat and take half an hour to eat it; savoring the flavor can extend the calming effect.

14 Worst Desserts in America

How you cope: Pour a drink
After a few shots of Jack, the office jackass is the last person on your mind. When alcohol enters your bloodstream, it seems to activate reward pathways for temporary relief. Ultimately, though, it may intensify your depression, says William Pollack, Ph.D., a Men's Health mental health advisor. In a University of Chicago study, stressed-out men injected with alcohol felt anxious longer than guys in a placebo group. Booze may disrupt your body's calming process, prolonging the mental misery.

Do this instead: Self-medicate with music
A study in Nature Neuroscience found that listening to favorite tunes or anticipating a certain point in a song can cause a pleasurable flood of dopamine. Listen to a few songs in a row several times a day. "These doses of dopamine can lower your stress, removing the trigger that causes you to seek alcohol," says Edward Roth, M.T.-B.C., a professor of music therapy at Western Michigan University.

How Music Fights Depression

How you cope: Play Call of Duty all night
The lure of a record-breaking kill/death ratio isn't the only thing keeping you up till 3 a.m. Stanford researchers found that playing video games stimulates the brain's mesocorticolimbic system, a key reward region. And the more you win, the more the area lights up. The downside: Most video games are sedentary and mimic the competitiveness of a stressful job, which may negate any brain benefits, says Michael Addis, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Clark University.

Do this instead: Build a fence
Learn to braise meat. Practice the ukulele. Activities that give you a sense of mastery can also activate the mesocorticolimbic system, deploying a rush of dopamine. Plus, as you practice your new skill, you enter a healthy psychological state known as flow. "You lose track of time and are completely immersed in what you're doing," says Addis. "It's incredibly relaxing to the mind."

How to do Everything Better

How you cope: Drive too fast
Why do guys love Vegas? Or consider cliff jumping a worthy pastime? The same reason they speed: Risk taking produces a surge of endorphins, which numb pain, says Cleveland Clinic psychologist Michael McKee, Ph.D. But if you chase those thrills while you're stressed, they could kill you. Your judgment tends to become clouded, so it's harder to take calculated risks, explains Addis. "You're more likely to put yourself in unnecessary danger."

Do this instead: Hightail it to the gym
But don't default to your regular workout. If you're bored with your routine, you may not experience the normal post-gym endorphin rush, making exercise less effective as a stress fighter than it could be, says Addis. So try something new: Sign up for a martial arts class, check out an indoor rock-climbing center, or go mountain biking. These activities combine physical exertion with a bit of benign risk taking.

The Best Workouts to Relieve Stress

How you cope: Bury yourself in work
It's tempting to battle the stress of a massive workload by immersing yourself until it's done. Don't do it. "Concentration and productivity suffer when your brain doesn't have a chance to unwind, relax, and reset," says McKee. And your work performance may not be the only thing to suffer. In a new British study, people who worked 11 or more hours a day were nearly 70 percent more likely to develop heart disease over a 12-year period than those who worked 7-to 8-hour days.

Do this instead: Take a 60-second vacation
Each hour, spend a minute perusing a funny blog. (We like passiveaggressive notes.com.) Periodic breaks help you process and absorb new information, increasing your efficiency, says McKee. During your hiatus, take 10-second breaths, inhale 4 seconds, exhale 6, to bolster your heart's ability to recover from stress.

10 Ways to Beat Stress at Work

How you cope: Hibernate in your cave
If stress makes you want to retreat and hole up at home, here's why: Research shows that men generally favor the fight-or-flight stress response, whereas women are more likely to "tend and befriend" when they feel stressed. Which way is better? A 2009 British study linked social isolation with a more prolonged spike in heart-straining systolic blood pressure after a stressful event, and higher stress-hormone output throughout the day.

Do this instead: Watch the game with your buddies
And don't spend halftime bitching about your boss. Venting can actually be counterproductive; with men, it often turns into a stress-inducing "who has it worse" showdown, says Addis. Besides, the social aspect alone is enough to activate your brain's GABA receptors, which control fear and anxiety, in turn triggering feelings of calm and satisfaction, says Pollack.

More Links:
19 Ways to Live a Stress-Free Life
100 Ways to Protect Your Heart
7 Pains You Should Never Ignore
The Best Game-Day Recipes

By Leslie Meredith
TechNewsDaily

"Do I look fat?" The answer is a resounding yes if you're on Facebook. But it's not your friends telling you, it's yourself. 

Facebook is fueling our thin-obsessed culture, says a new study from the Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt in Maryland that surveyed 600 Facebook users, ages 16 to 40. More than half said that Facebook  makes them more self-conscious about their bodies and weight. And men were some of those with the most negative feelings.

While more women than men admitted they'd like to lose some weight, 75 percent compared to 58 percent, men were far more vocal about their dissatisfaction. Forty percent of men said they've posted negative comments about their bodies, while only half that number of women had done so.

"People are now constantly aware of their appearance, thanks to Facebook," Steven Crawford, associate director at the center, told TechNewsDaily. "A common reaction is, 'I need to be thinner' And it's that kind of thinking that can lead to hazardous dieting."

"Facebook is an influential factor in developing severe eating disorders," Crawford said.

When you're unhappy with the way you look, it's easy to avoid mirrors. But it's becoming pretty tough to go without Facebook. Eight percent of those surveyed log onto Facebook at least once a day. It's impossible to avoid seeing photos of yourself and your friends. But we're not just looking — we're comparing.

Timeline  — Facebook's new profile format — makes it easy. With a click you can see what you looked like five years ago, and the comparison can be depressing. Nearly a third of people felt "sad" when comparing photos of themselves and their friends, and 44 percent wished they had the same body or weight as a friend on Facebook.

Facebook photo  comparisons are also affecting the social lives of Facebook users. Like celebrities who worry about the paparazzi, Facebook users are concerned every time they go out that their photo will show up on the network.

"Facebook is fueling a "camera-ready" mentality," Crawford said. "People look at photos before an upcoming high school reunion and decide not to go." Why? Because they think they don't look good enough.

The center has tips for people suffering from Facebook-induced body envy, including subscribing to Facebook pages such as "Adios Barbie" and "End Fat Talk." But if you can't stop making negative comparisons between yourself and others, log off.

More from TechNewsDaily:

• Men Are from Detroit, Women Are from Dairy Queen, Study Says
• Women More Wary Than Men on Facebook
• Why Facebook Doesn't Help Boost Low Self-Esteem

More from TODAY Health:

• Eat This, Not That: 4 pointless supermarket foods
• Calling yourself fat increases depression risk
• When Facebook triggers an asthma attack

More from TODAY Health:

• Chocolate eaters tend to be skinnier, study says
• Secret superfoods you're already eating
• Joy Bauer: Popcorn as healthy as veggies?

Big bites lead to big bellies, researchers say, and they might have a solution: People take smaller bites of food when it's accompanied by stronger aromas, so infusing foods with strong aromas could get people to eat less.

We take bigger bites of foods we are familiar with and smaller bites of those that require more chewing. Those small bites are a good thing, as they actually make your stomach feel fuller faster, reducing the amount of food eaten and calories taken in, the researchers note.

To see how the smell of a food changes bite size, the researchers designed an interesting eating contraption to separate smell from other factors that affect how big of a bite participants take.

Participants were fed vanilla custard through a tube while "vanilla-custard" smells were delivered directly into the backs of their noses. They controlled the amount of custard fed into their mouth by pressing a button to stop the flow. The researchers weighed the custard cup before and after each "bite" to measure its size. Participants ate about the amount of a normal-size desert. [ 10 Tips for Sticking to Healthy Portions ]

The "back of the nose" presentation mimics the aroma during real eating, said Rene de Wijk, a senior researcher at the Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands: "[these] presentations resemble the situation of normal eating whereby aromas travel from the food in the mouth," he said. "We cannot say whether smells in the room or on the plate have the same effect because we have not tested it."

The researchers found that when food was associated with strong aromas, even of the pleasant natural cream flavoring the researchers used, people took smaller bites.

"Our aroma was a pleasant smelling cream aroma presented at low levels of intensity," de Wijk said. "We have not tested other smells, but believe that effects can be expected when the aroma 'fits' the food, i.e., unusual combinations may not work."

The researchers think this is a feedback loop: when a strong smell is presented in the nose, the participants pared their eating to reduce the amount of flavor they experienced.

The researchers suggest that infusing foods with stronger smells could be used to control portion size: manipulating the odor of food so that it was more fragrant could result in a 5- to 10-percent decrease in food intake per bite. Combining aroma control with portion control could fool the body into thinking it was full with a smaller amount of food, aiding weight loss.

"Aromas added at relatively low levels to the foods may already have the effect," de Wijk said, though they didn't study directly if the individuals actually ate less of the custard in the end.

The study was published Wednesday in the journal Flavour.

More from The Body Odd:

• Can you get addicted to ice cream? Maybe, study shows
• Better fuzzy brain cure: Sip some water
• Can eating too much make your stomach burst

Even though Americans are marrying older, the divorce rate has remained high, a new government report shows.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers found that the median age for women getting hitched for the first time has risen to almost 26 and to over 28 for men.

Among women there was just a 52 percent chance that a first marriage would survive for 20 years, according to the report from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Men appeared to be slightly more successful, with a 56 percent chance of a first marriage surviving for two decades.

The older marriage age doesn’t mean that people aren’t getting into relationships – they’re just choosing to live together instead.  “There’s been a real rise in the prevalence of cohabitation,” said the report’s lead author, Casey E. Copen, a demographer with the National Survey of Family Growth at the National Center for Health Statistics.

The percentage of women living with a partner (as opposed to marrying him) has nearly quadrupled from 3 percent in 1982 to 11 percent in the newest survey. The earlier surveys included data only from women so the researchers couldn’t look at whether there had been a change in the rate at which men were choosing to live together rather than to marry.  

The new report includes information from 22,682 Americans between the ages of 15 and 44 who were interviewed in their homes between 2006 and 2010. The researchers also had data from six earlier surveys dating back to 1973 to compare with the new information.

One intriguing finding from the study is that more highly educated people wedded later -- and had longer lasting marriages. Copen and her colleagues found that 78 percent of women with at least a bachelor’s degree had made it to their 20^th anniversary as compared to 41 percent of women with only a high school diploma. Similarly, 65 percent of college educated men saw a 20^th anniversary as compared to 47 percent of the men who hadn’t gone beyond high school.

That falls in line with other new research showing that blue collar folks are less likely to get married than their white collar counterparts, Copen said. “Research has shown that there’s a socioeconomic divide between those who marry and those who don’t,” she added. “People may be more likely to transition to marriage when they feel more economically stable.”

The researchers also found that the lack of a marriage certificate isn’t keeping people from having babies. “A lot of women and men have children while cohabitating,” Copen said.

So, did the new report shed any light on what it takes to stay married? Maybe - depending on how you interpret the results.

For one thing, if you want to stay hitched, you probably shouldn’t choose someone who’s gotten divorced. Looking only at first marriages, just 38 percent of women who chose to wed a divorced man were still married by their 20^th anniversary, as compared to 54 percent of those who wed a man who’d never been married.

Another possible predictor of a shortened wedded bliss: marrying someone who already has kids. Looking only at women in a first marriage, just 37 percent of those marrying a man with kids made it to their platinum anniversary as compared to 54 percent of those who wed a man with no children.

Still, children may indeed be the glue that keeps people together – if they’re conceived and born after the couple marries.

Among women who remained childless just 50 percent reached their platinum anniversary as compared to 77 percent of those who bore children at least 8 months after getting married.

In the end, the report may be telling us something good about the way Americans view marriage.  

Although women are taking longer to decide to get hitched, they are still doing it at about the same rate as they were back in 1995.