adult relationships
Negative marital communications leave literal, figurative wounds
Study links destructive interaction patterns to lower immune function
Newswise — COLUMBUS, Ohio – A tendency for one or both spouses to avoid or withdraw from tough conversations could set up married couples for emotional distress, bad feelings about their relationship, chronic inflammation and lowered immune function, new research suggests.
The analysis revisits data from a 2005 Ohio State University study that showed the stress couples feel during a brief argument could slow their bodies’ ability to heal from wounds by at least a day – a landmark finding at the time showing how psychological stress affects immunity.
A fresh look at the data shows that when married couples typically communicate with each other in negative ways, both spouses – and women in particular – suffer emotionally and their immune function wanes, in the form of having wounds that take longer to heal. The analysis revealed that the health consequences of negative communication patterns were evident even before the 2005 study began: These couples arrived at the lab with higher blood markers for inflammation.
The initial trial showed that one stressful argument – in a lab, recorded and analyzed by researchers – could harm immune function. This new study suggests that the more combative arguments in the lab were linked to more negative typical marital communication for these couples – and those daily patterns are a likely culprit behind persistent negative emotions and biological markers that can lead to poorer health outcomes.
“Marriage is associated with better health, but chronically distressed marriages can worsen health,” said first author Rosie Shrout, who completed this work as a postdoctoral researcher in Ohio State’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research (IBMR). “It’s important to understand what is going on behind the scenes that contributes to these effects.
“What we’re seeing is that both chronic daily negativity and acute negativity, and their combination – experiencing both of those – is particularly bad for couples’ emotions, relationships and immune functioning,” said Shrout, now an assistant professor of human development and family science at Purdue University.
The new study was published recently in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.
The 2005 research was co-led by Jan Kiecolt-Glaser, senior author of the new study and professor emerita of psychiatry and psychology at Ohio State, whose decades of discoveries as a leader of the IBMR have shown the many ways in which stressful life events are detrimental to health.
The 2005 work involved 42 married heterosexual couples who had been together for an average of 12 years. Researchers tested the baseline level of a proinflammatory protein in their blood and used a device to raise small blisters on each partner’s forearm – the wounds’ healing progress was monitored as an indicator of how well each participant’s immune system was functioning.
Participants completed questionnaires assessing their typical communication patterns when problems arise – mutual constructive or symmetrical positive communication, or variations of negative communication patterns that involved either mutual avoidance or instances where one partner made demands and the other withdrew from the discussion in response.
Couples were recorded having discussions in two separate lab visits: The first focused on social support and the second was an attempt to resolve a known source of tension in the marriage, such as finances or in-laws. Researchers coded negative and positive behaviors during these talks.
In follow-ups, couples evaluated the discussions – whether they were satisfied with the conversation, and the degree to which they felt supported and understood by their partner, and in control and working productively while sorting out a problem. Their blister wound healing was assessed daily for eight days and then again on day 12.
In the new study, statistical modeling of the qualitative and biological data showed that couples’ negative communication patterns – specifically mutual avoidance or demand/withdrawal – had cascading effects on how they felt after the lab conversations, and on their inflammation and immune function measures.
“If they were more negative typically on a day-to-day basis, and were negative in those specific interactions, they rated the discussion more negatively and less positively, they felt fewer positive emotions, and their wounds healed more slowly,” Shrout said. “That chronic negativity and acute negativity had emotional, relational and immune effects – most notably for women.”
In contrast, couples who reported more mutual constructive communication patterns rated the lab conversations more favorably.
A few specific findings suggested how insidious the effects of poor communication patterns could be: Wounds healed more slowly in couples who mutually avoided talking about tough topics and also showed fewer positive behaviors during lab discussions. Even when mutual avoiders were more positive while trying to resolve conflict, that positivity didn’t help their wounds heal more quickly.
Kiecolt-Glaser, who has led a number of marriage and health studies, said it doesn’t take long for married couples to have expectations of what the marriage is like that can override any evidence to the contrary. In a bad marriage, a negative behavior is perceived as reinforcement of this expectation, while in a good marriage, a negative behavior is taken as a sign one’s partner is in distress.
“This study provides a window into relationships: What couples say about their relationship really did translate not only into how they behaved, but also what they said about the behavior, and their biology,” she said. “They walked into this study situation, and the way they’re responding may in part be because that’s what they’re expecting. They have such well-worn tracks in terms of interactions that it’s hard to derail the train.”
That doesn’t mean all is lost, Shrout noted – couples have lots of options to pursue education or therapy to help them learn better communication skills.
This work was supported by an Ohio State Presidential Postdoctoral Scholars Fellowship and the National Institutes of Health.
Additional co-authors include Megan Renna of the University of Southern Mississippi, and Annelise Madison and William Malarkey of Ohio State.
Source: Ohio State University
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love and romance
Love Your Space: 4 Valentine’s Day Home Decor Ideas
Valentine’s Day offers an opportunity to enhance home decor with love-themed touches. Key ideas include using a classic red and pink palette, incorporating soft lighting and inviting textures, adding fresh flowers and heartfelt accents, and personalizing decor with meaningful items. Each element contributes to a romantic and welcoming atmosphere.
Last Updated on February 14, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Love Your Space: 4 Valentine’s Day Home Decor Ideas
(Family Features) From planning a romantic night in with your significant other to hosting friends for Galentine’s Day, Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to fill your home with love and heartfelt style.
Whether you add subtle accents or bold pops of color, decorating for the season of love is about adding intentional touches that make your spaces feel special.
1. Choose a Valentine’s Palette
The classic red and pink motif is a perfect starting point. A few heart-shaped throw pillows, blush pink accessories or a rich red accent blanket can capture the spirit without overwhelming. If bold colors don’t match your current design style, ground them with neutrals like soft whites, creams or grays to create a romantic look that feels intentional and cohesive.
2. Set the Mood with Lighting and Texture
Soft lighting – think string lights draped along a mantel, clusters of warm-hued candles or a table lamp with a rosy glow – can make rooms feel cozier, as can layering sensual textures like velvet pillows, knit throws and lace or crochet accents. These elements feel inviting and chic, creating a relaxed, intimate ambience perfect for a celebratory evening at home.
3. Fresh Florals and Heartfelt Accents
A timeless Valentine’s Day tradition, fresh flowers can bring life, color and fragrance to any room. A vase of red roses, pink tulips or mixed seasonal blooms can serve as a centerpiece on your dining room table or entry console. For an added seasonal touch, consider heart-shaped garlands or DIY paper hearts on shelves, mirrors or around picture frames.
4. Personalize With Love
Much like heart-warming gifts, the most meaningful decor often has a personal story. Frame a favorite photo, display a handwritten love note or incorporate a treasured keepsake into your Valentine’s arrangement to make your space feel uniquely yours.
For more ideas to celebrate love every time you walk through the door, visit eLivingtoday.com.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
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How Valentine’s Day was transformed by the Industrial Revolution and ‘manufactured intimacy’
Last Updated on February 14, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Christopher Ferguson, Auburn University
When we think of Valentine’s Day, chubby Cupids, hearts and roses generally come to mind, not industrial processes like mass production and the division of labor. Yet the latter were essential to the holiday’s history.
As a historian researching material culture and emotions, I’m aware of the important role the exchange of manufactured greeting cards played in the 19th-century version of Valentine’s Day.
At the beginning of that century, Britons produced most of their valentines by hand. By the 1850s, however, manufactured cards had replaced those previously made by individuals at home. By the 1860s, more than 1 million cards were in circulation in London alone.
The British journalist and playwright Andrew Halliday was fascinated by these cards, especially one popular card that featured a lady and gentleman walking arm-in-arm up a pathway toward a church.
Halliday recalled watching in fascination as “the windows of small booksellers and stationers” filled with “highly-coloured” valentines, and contemplating “how and where” they “originated.” “Who draws the pictures?” he wondered. “Who writes the poetry?”
In 1864 he decided to find out.
Manufactured intimacy
Today Halliday is most often remembered for his writing on London beggars in a groundbreaking 1864 social survey, “London Labour and the London Poor.” However, throughout the 1860s he was a regular contributor to Charles Dickens’ popular journal “All the Year Round,” in which he entertained readers with essays addressing various facets of ordinary British daily existence, including family relations, travel, public services and popular entertainments.
In one essay for that journal – “Cupid’s Manufactory,” which was later reprinted in 1866 in the collection “Everyday Papers” – Halliday led his readers on a guided tour of one of London’s foremost card manufacturers.
Inside the premises of “Cupid and Co.,” they followed a “valentine step by step” from a “plain sheet of paper” to “that neat white box in which it is packed, with others of its kind, to be sent out to the trade.”
Touring ‘Cupid’s Manufactory’
“Cupid and Co.” was most likely the firm of Joseph Mansell, a lace-paper and stationary company that manufactured large numbers of valentines between the 1840s and 1860s – and also just happened to occupy the same address as “Mr. Cupid’s” in London’s Red Lion Square.
The processes Halliday described, however, were common to many British card manufacturers in the 1860s, and exemplified many industrial practices first introduced during the late 18th century, including the subdivision of tasks and the employment of women and child laborers.
Halliday moved through the rooms of “Cupid’s Manufactory,” describing the variety of processes by which various styles of cards were made for a range of different people and price points.
He noted how the card with the lady and gentleman on the path to the church began as a simple stamped card, in black and white – identical to one preserved today in the collections of the London Museum – priced at one penny.
A portion of these cards, however, then went on to a room where a group of young women were arranged along a bench, each with a different color of “liquid water-colour at her elbow.” Using stencils, one painted the “pale brown” pathway, then handed it to the woman next to her, who painted the “gentleman’s blue coat,” who then handed it to the next, who painted the “salmon-coloured church,” and so forth. It was much like a similar group of female workers depicted making valentines in the “Illustrated London News” in the 1870s.
These colored cards, Halliday noted, would be sold for “sixpence to half-a-crown.” A portion of these, however, were then sent on to another room, where another group of young women glued on feathers, lace-paper, bits of silk or velvet, or even gold leaf, creating even more ornate cards sometimes sold for 5 shillings and above.
All told, Halliday witnessed “about sixty hands” – mostly young women, but also “men and boys,” who worked 10 hours a day in every season of the year, making cards for Valentine’s Day.
Yet, it was on the top floor of the business that Halliday encountered the people who arguably fascinated him the most: the six artists who designed all the cards, and the poets who provided their text – most of whom actually worked offsite.
Here were the men responsible for manufacturing the actual sentiments the cards conveyed – and in the mid-19th century these encompassed a far wider range of emotions than the cards produced by Hallmark and others in the 21st century.
A spectrum of ‘manufactured emotions’
Many Victorians mailed cards not only to those with whom they were in love, but also to those they disliked or wished to mock or abuse. A whole subgenre of cards existed to belittle the members of certain trades, like tailors or draper’s assistants, or people who dressed out of fashion.
Cards were specifically designed for discouraging suitors and for poking fun of the old or the unattractive. While some of these cards likely were exchanged as jokes between friends, the consensus among scholars is that many were absolutely intended to be sent as cruel insults.
Furthermore, unlike in the present day, in the 19th century those who received a Valentine were expected to send one in return, which meant there were also cards to discourage future attentions, recommend patience, express thanks, proclaim mutual admiration, or affirm love’s effusions.
Halliday noted the poet employed by “Cupid’s” had recently finished the text for a mean-spirited comic valentine featuring a gentleman admiring himself in a mirror:
Looking at thyself within the glass,
You appear lost in admiration;
You deceive yourself, and think, alas!
You are a wonder of creation.
This same author, however, had earlier completed the opposite kind of text for the card Halliday had previously highlighted, featuring the “lady and gentleman churchward-bound”:
“The path before me gladly would I trace,
With one who’s dearest to my constant heart,
To yonder church, the holy sacred place,
Where I my vows of Love would fain impart;
And in sweet wedlock’s bonds unite with thee,
Oh, then, how blest my life would ever be!”
These were very different texts by the very same man. And Halliday assured his readers “Cupid’s laureate” had authored many others in every imaginable style and sentiment, all year long, for “twopence a line.”
Halliday showed how a stranger was manufacturing expressions of emotions for the use of other strangers who paid money for them. In fact, he assured his readers that in the lead up to Valentine’s Day “Cupid’s” was “turning out two hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of valentines a week,” and that his business was “yearly on the increase.”
Halliday found this dynamic – the process of mass producing cards for profit to help people express their authentic emotions – both fascinating and bizarre. It was a practice he thought seemed like it ought to be “beneath the dignity of the age.”
And yet it thrived among the earnest Victorians, and it thrives still. Indeed, it remains a core feature of the modern holiday of Valentine’s Day.
This year, like in so many others, I will stand at a display of greeting cards, with many other strangers, as we all try to find that one card designed by someone else, mass-produced for profit, that will convey our sincere personal feelings for our friends and loved ones.
Christopher Ferguson, Associate Professor of History, Auburn University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Skip the Reservation: Kroger’s Surf-and-Turf Deals Make Valentine’s Day Easy (and Affordable)
Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to mean fighting for a last-minute reservation, overpaying for a fixed menu, or rushing through dinner because your table is booked for the next couple. Kroger is leaning into a simpler (and honestly more romantic) idea for 2026: bring date night home with a restaurant-style surf and turf dinner—plus flowers, dessert, and weekly deals that keep the whole plan budget-friendly.
Kroger shares expert meat and seafood tips, special offers for date night at home
In a new announcement released Feb. 10, The Kroger Co. says it’s making it easy for couples to pull off an impressive meal at home with premium meat and seafood options, expert counter tips, and limited-time savings starting Feb. 11.
A steakhouse-style dinner—without the steakhouse price tag
Kroger’s pitch is straightforward: quality ingredients are the foundation of a great meal, and shoppers can get “night out” vibes from the meat and seafood counter without the hassle.
“Quality ingredients are the foundation of any romantic dinner and Kroger consistently delivers on quality and affordability,” said Carlo Baldan, Group Vice President of Fresh Merchandising at Kroger.
To help home chefs level up, Kroger’s culinary experts shared practical tips for building a surf-and-turf plate that looks (and tastes) like it came from a restaurant.
Kroger’s surf-and-turf tips: what to buy and how to nail it
1) Choosing the right steak
If you’re shopping the meat case and want a tender, flavorful steak, Kroger recommends looking for marbling—those thin white flecks throughout the cut. More marbling typically means more flavor and tenderness.
For surf and turf, Kroger points to classic picks:
- Ribeye
- New York strip
- Filet mignon
- Sirloin
For seasoning, Kroger suggests Private Selection® Cracked Peppercorn seasoning (a blend designed to hit that steakhouse-style balance of salt, garlic, and pepper). One pro move: salt your steak 30–60 minutes before cooking to help deepen the seasoning and improve the crust.
2) Lobster tails and crab legs: what to look for
Seafood can feel intimidating, but Kroger’s guidance keeps it simple:
- For lobster tails, look for solidly frozen tails with no heavy ice crystals.
- Aim for a 4–6 oz. tail, which tends to cook more evenly and stay tender.
- For crab legs, look for intact shells and minimal ice buildup.
3) Sides and finishing touches that make it feel “special”
Surf and turf doesn’t need complicated sides—just the right supporting cast:
- Roasted asparagus or broccolini
- Garlic mashed potatoes
- A salad with citrus vinaigrette
To finish like a steakhouse, Kroger recommends a quick garlic-herb butter baste after cooking your steak. For seafood, keep it clean and classic: melted butter, fresh lemon, and a light sprinkle of salt and parsley.
Don’t sleep on the in-store experts
If you’re not sure what to buy (or how much), Kroger is also encouraging customers to use the best resource in the building: the butchers behind the meat and seafood counters. They can help with portion sizes, selecting cuts, and picking the right seafood for a special occasion.
For more ideas, Kroger says shoppers can visit its blog for surf-and-turf recipes and inspiration.
Flowers delivered on-demand (and a deal to go with it)
Dinner is only part of the Valentine’s Day equation. Kroger—America’s largest florist—also highlights on-demand floral delivery from more than 1,700 locations nationwide through DoorDash and Uber Eats.
Orders are prepared and packed by in-store floral associates, then delivered by couriers straight to the recipient’s door. Kroger is also promoting a limited-time offer: $25 off $75 on the Bloom Haus storefront on DoorDash and Uber Eats through Feb. 14.
Dessert is handled, too
To round out the night, Kroger is pointing shoppers to its bakery for Valentine’s-ready sweets, including:
- Chocolate dipped strawberries
- Cakes
- New cupcake bouquets
Valentine’s week deals to watch (starting Feb. 11)
Kroger’s announcement includes a lineup of weekly promotions and digital deals designed to make the surf-and-turf plan (and the rest of the week’s grocery run) more affordable. Highlights include:
- Boneless strip steak: $9.99 per pound
- Wild caught lobster tails: 2 for $10
- Wild caught snow crab clusters: as low as $9.99 per pound with a digital or in-store accessible coupon
- Kroger Russet Potatoes: $1.99 for five pounds
- 20% off any six bottles of wine
Plus, additional weekly staples and BOGOs, including blueberries, apples, cereals, cheese, yogurt, cage-free eggs, and ground chuck.
Prices are valid beginning Feb. 11, and prices/products may vary by geography.
The takeaway
Kroger’s Valentine’s Day message is clear: skip the reservation, keep the romance, and build a date-night meal around premium meat and seafood—without turning it into an all-day project. Add flowers delivered on-demand, a bakery dessert, and a few well-timed weekly deals, and you’ve got a full Valentine’s plan that feels elevated but still practical.
At our core, we at STM Daily News, strive to keep you informed and inspired with the freshest content on all things food and beverage. From mouthwatering recipes to intriguing articles, we’re here to satisfy your appetite for culinary knowledge.
Visit our Food & Drink section to get the latest on Foodie News and recipes, offering a delightful blend of culinary inspiration and gastronomic trends to elevate your dining experience. https://stmdailynews.com/food-and-drink/
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