The Deception of the Thrush

I got married about a year ago. In my experience, the first instinct one feels at getting married is to let oneself go physically. You're attached - no need to look good. Also, women in stable relationships, I've been told, tend to produce hormones that cause them to bulk up a bit. Then, probably married couples tend to have more organized meals, as opposed to the unplanned/irregular diet of my single years.

Women in stable relationships produce hormones that make them gain weight? Wow. Where did you hear about this? Putting on some good childbearing hips, maybe?

Can't remember where I heard it, but I think it was a good source. And anecdotally it seems to be true, at least if you ask most of my male friends.

As for the general PDA in which many young couples feel compelled to engage, I think it's sort of a status symbol to look as happily involved as possible when in public. My wife and I never really did stuff like that in public. Neither of us felt comfortable with it. And yet, we're quite happy with each other (as far as I know). I suspect that the display of physical intimacy is often used to mask shortcomings in other areas - for example, having nothing in common or not being all that comfortable around each other. If you're making out, it saves you from having to talk and realizing that your partner is a moron.

Er, I'm not sure about the correlation between being in "stable" relationship and weight gain or loss. However, it is notable that several recent studies have found that going off or changing contraceptive methods (which, presumably a newlywed might do) will certainly change hormone levels, which may result in weight gain. Similarly, a coupled life has been reported to increase certain types of daily stress, again found exacerbate weight gain. And in so far as "letting oneself go" is concerned, a weekly diet of "Desperate Housewives" will do much to dispel any prevailing faith in the "attachment" theory of coupledom.

As for affection, public or privately displayed, is all in how the couple allows the "outside" world to mitigate their "internal" desires. A little public lust, arguably, is as "good" for a relationship as the perception of more socially acceptable "comfort", in my opinion.

Jim & John,

I was also going to hypothesize that a spouse or significant other might bring you more stress than one may like to admit, and yes that could very well be part of the source of some compulsive eating. But I held that speculation back for fear that I've been cynical enough lately.

As for PDA, I don't know, I could see it arising for all sorts of reasons, like insecurity & inability to make decent conversation . But I'm sure there's plenty of healthy, articulate couples out there who publicly fondle as well. And it's not like I'm making a good/bad judgment call on this. Does it annoy me? Well, yeah, kind of. But should people do things that annoy me? Yeah, probably. Such is freedom.

Well said, Karin. Freedom means never having to say you're sorry for that episode of heavy petting in the 10-items or less aisle. Perhaps it is simply a strategy to avoid gaining excess blubber resultant from all those pent-up internalized social mores, eh?

On that note, the "stress = weight" thing seems to have really tugged on the public's coat of late. The studies I know about are all ongoing, but pretty old, like the one at UC San Fran (described in this 2003 ScienceDaily post: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030911072109.htm), but nowadays it seems to be everywhere, from infomercials to Anderson Cooper, which are, arguably, not the same thing.

Huh, glucocorticoids. Works for me.

The favorite study in psychology circles is where you have the subject doing something "stressful" (e.g., count backwards from 375 by intervals of 13, with someone monitoring you), and then you offer them a tray of snacks, including good stuff (Fruit?) and fatty stuff (Brownies? Mmm..) Anyways, as you guessed, if you've just been subjected to the mental arithmetic, you're more likely to tackle the brownies than if you haven't.

From an evolutionary perspective, it seems stupid to eat anything at all when you're stressed. So why it works this way is beyond me.

And you know another mystery? Although I don't own a TV, and only sneak in a few minutes when I'm visiting family or friends, or running in the gym, that meager viewing schedule still has been enough for me to think your Anderson Cooper joke was funny. Poor Anderson.

I can only speak of my own experience, but although I didn't gain weight after I got married, I did gain weight after my husband-to-be and I moved in together -- and so did he. I think several things contributed: we both started getting less exercise, because we wanted to spend more time just hanging out with each other (this isn't a good thing, and years later, we're still trying to fix it); the quality of the meals we ate went up dramatically when we started cooking together, because it's so much more satisfying and economical to cook nice things for two, so we ate more; and having combined expenses meant we could afford to go out more often (we were no longer forced to survive on grad-student subsistence diets).

My husband and I definitely among those couples who hold hands constantly. It isn't awkward, uncomfortable, limiting, or sweaty, though I can't explain why. It's just right. Most of the time now when we hold hands, we do it without thinking about it -- it's just more natural when we're walking together to hold hands. This is pretty weird, actually, when I think about it. I never liked to hold hands with the men I dated before I met my husband -- does that mean something?

Thanks Stacie, for your comments. I hope I didn't sound like I was berating those hand-holders out there in the world -- I just personally didn't understand how that could be a pleasant thing to do. But it sounds like for you that it feels quite natural. I guess that, unlike me in my imagined scenario, you're probably not thinking about the efficacy with which you move about on the sidewalk, or the production of your husband's sebacious glands (though maybe you just intuitively knew that those previously dated guys had really gross hands, and that's why you avoided it...sixth sense...)

As for your anecdote about weight gain, that does conform with some of my hypotheses -- better meals, both at home and outside from home. So, if you are getting more calories, at least maybe they're more nutrient-rich than what you were getting before.