What My Wife and I Talk about When We Talk about Love

My wife used to believe that romantic love is the most important and exciting thing in the entire world when she was a teenager. And the mark of true love is when two good-looking boys get in a physical fight over her. It’s even     1     that they both get injured but don’t end up going to hospital, not because she is worried about them but because it may cause her a lot of     2     and indirect responsibility. One day this will certainly happen to her, if she’s lucky. So you might understand her anger and frustration when I told her that if the other male competitor I have to “fight” with weighs more than 100 kilograms, I will simply hand her over to him without     3    , wish them a happy marriage and walk away with the feeling that tomorrow is another day.

Fortunately, we’ve both grown a lot older and grown out of expecting our life partner to “die” for us     4    . The older we get, the more honest, open and vulnerable we allow each other to be. One of the hardest things about getting older and being in love is knowing when something is just reality and when it’s too much hard work. Identifying what the calm, joyful but often challenging sensation of long-term love is and identifying what has just become totally intolerable is where we all have to really     5     our instincts.

Shared interests are one of the most overrated     6     factors when it comes to choosing a partner. Deciding that someone is a good person, or your soulmate, or made of exactly the same stuff as you just because you both love the music of Faye Wong is ridiculous. Having the same Agatha Christie collection or enjoying most of the movies directed by Richard Linklater will not help you     7     the various unexpected storms of life together.

A much more crucial factor in terms of finding a partner is how much you love their     8    . Since my son was born, I have experienced firsthand how overwhelming it is to be a working parent of a newborn. It has become even more apparent to me that the most important thing in a relationship is how well married couples work as a team. Couples need to be really, really good friends.

When you’re looking for love, and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have     9     to plenty of love already, just not the romantic kind. This kind of love might not kiss you in the rain or propose marriage. But it will listen to you, inspire and     10     you. It will hold you when you cry and celebrate when you smile. You can carry it with you and keep it as close to you as you can.

3 . Engaging in Family Meals

Engaging in family meals may be a matter of improving communication and support at home. A new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, connects less family discouragement and better family communication with a higher likelihood to eat evening family meals and family breakfasts together, and not in front of a television. The researchers surveyed 259 patients who participated in weight management and weight loss programs at the Ohio State University or Wake Forest University.     1    

“It’s important to note all family members in the home have influence,” lead study author Keeley J. Pratt, PhD, the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA, said of the findings that any family member can influence the adoption and maintenance of healthy patterns and behaviors in the home.     2     The study also found parents who perceived their child to be overweight were more than four times as likely to talk to them about the kid’s weight, also called “weight talk.”

“While open communication with children about health is beneficial, it’s important to ensure communication directly about children’s weight is not harmful in their development of a healthy body image and behaviors. That includes older children and adolescents who are at greater risk of developing eating disorders and disordered eating behaviors,” Professor Pratt said.     3     Families with younger children, regardless of gender, were more likely to eat family dinners and breakfasts together, and parents of older children were more likely to talk about their own weight with the child. As kids grow up, the relationship between kids and their parents becomes better.

    4     “Understanding these associations will provide essential evidence needed to design future family-based interventions for these patients to help in their behavior change and weight loss, prevent the beginning of obesity in children, and enhance positive family meal practices and healthy communication about weight,” Professor Pratt said.

4 . Like many parents working from home while their kids are learning remotely, we’ve been looking for creative ways to connect with our children — and nowhere has this been truer than in the kitchen.

Kitchen science, as Liz Heinecke, author of Kitchen Science Lab for Kids calls it doesn’t require any fancy equipment or ingredients (配料)—and, best of all in the era of remote education, we can combine science lessons with everyday meal preparations. By helping with cooking, kids can engage in lively, project-based lessons. Actually, even the easiest recipes include both simple and complex scientific concepts.

Kitchen science isn’t just about what we’re cooking: it’s also about understanding why It’s worth taking the time to figure out how ingredients and temperature interact and why substances behave the way they do. Everyone involved will learn something.

For example, we all know oil and water don’t mix easily, but we can change this by adding mustard (芥末) to the oil and water to make a salad dressing. This is an opportunity to teach kids about the science of emulsions (乳化). Adding lemon juice to a vegetable stops that vegetable from turning brown: cabbage changes color when you add vinegar to it. Both of those phenomena are the result of chemical reactions. In the classroom, it can be hard to see how scientific concepts will apply outside the lab. But when kids see these concepts play out in the real world, that sparks curiosity and learning.

“Every time you step into your kitchen to cook, you put science to work. In fact, physics and chemistry come into play whenever you steam, bake, freeze or boil. Thus, every time you step into the kitchen, it’s an opportunity for everyone to learn more about science,” Liz Heinecke said.