This episode summarizes a Swedish longitudinal sibling-comparison study (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-024-09722-6) showing that cohabiting people have mortality risks between single and married individuals, with differences growing with age.

Dr. Marcus C. Shepard discusses health benefits of partnership, implications for aging and COVID-19, and ideas for future research on cohabitation and community health.

Dr. Marcus C. Shepard reviews a new multi-country study reported by the Institute for Family Studies showing that couples who met in person report higher relationship satisfaction and stronger experiences of intimacy, passion, and commitment than couples who met online (https://ifstudies.org/blog/couples-around-the-world-who-met-in-real-life-are-happier-than-those-who-met-online).

The episode discusses possible reasons—such as shared contexts, transparency, and selection criteria—offers practical advice for using dating apps (including setting non-negotiables and timelines), and explores limitations of the research.

The episode closes with an Ask Dr. Shepard segment advising a student on how to repair a strained relationship with a professor: request a meeting during office hours, document the conversation by email, and keep a respectful paper trail if problems continue.

Dr. Marcus C. Shepard explains how verbal communication creates meaning—covering symbols, arbitrariness, abstraction, ambiguity, brute vs. institutional facts, and how language evaluates and organizes experience.

He outlines communication rules (regulative and constitutive), punctuation, totalizing, loaded language, and offers practical guidelines: use person-centered language, specify levels of abstraction, qualify generalizations, and own your feelings with I-statements.

In Ask Dr. Shepard, he advises a listener who feels excluded to have one-on-one conversations using I-language to clarify feelings and consider hosting or re-engaging to repair friendships.