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"For the past three years, Brendon Ayanbadejo, a backup linebacker and standout special-teams player for the [Baltimore] Ravens, has been advocating for same-sex marriage-writing about it, talking about it, appearing as one of the stars of a video campaign launched by backers of a measure to legalize it in Maryland. It's not his day job, but he's gotten enough attention for it that an anti-gay-marriage Maryland state legislator wrote to the owner of the Ravens and demanded that he shut Ayanbadejo up."

Though the article is geared for married couples, some of the communication pointers are applicable to any situation where two people are trying to resolve a conflict. Psychologist Dr. John Gottman advocates the ATTUNE model, where both speaker and listener have responsibilities to uphold; the actual article further describes these responsibilities and what they entail. Speaker's Role A = Awareness T = Tolerance T = Transforming criticisms into wishes and positive needs Listener's Role U = Understanding N = Non-Defensive Listening E = Empathy During his research, Dr. Gottman discovered that problem solving or giving your partner advice before understanding their feelings or perspective is counterproductive and actually interferes with reaching a resolution. Learning how to use conflict as an opportunity to understand and get to know each other better is a vital part of attunement.

Grateful shout-out to Thomas Morris '13 for this link, which aggregates language-related podcasts from Public Radio International. Listen on iTunes for free or stream the story links on the website. Some of the highlights: "Dim Sum Warriors" a Chinese/English bilingual comic book app, the homophonic reason why Chinese marriages spiked on 1/4/2013, a 13 year old language activist teaching Kurdish, a banned language, in Turkey...

There are two versions of the writer Lauren Collins. There is the English-speaking Lauren, who, presumably, is the Lauren primarily responsible for writing her (wonderful) new memoir, When in French. And then there is the French-speaking Lauren, the one tasked with navigating a marriage and a life in a second language.

It's cool to think that speaking a language can change your perception of the world. I never thought about it before, but from studying Chinese, I feel like I have two sides to myself: an american point of view and an asian point of view. Language shapes who you are.

With studies showing that one-third of married couples started their relationships online, finding romance via URLs is no longer as novel - and creepy - as it seemed when dating sites launched in the mid-1990s. But now the digital aisle to marriage is transforming, moving from dating sites to social networks, where couples say encounters are more revealing and, with witty tweets and thoughtful status updates, more like flirting in the analog world. And they're free.

Lori Schade, a marriage and family therapist at Brigham Young University, led a study that surveyed 276 young adults from 2009 to 2011. All were in committed relationships; more than half were either engaged or married. Almost all texted their partner multiple times a day. Her findings: Texting terms of endearment seems to shore up relationships. Affectionate affirmations help mitigate hurts and frustrations. Women who texted their partner a lot considered the relationship more stable, yet men who received those texts or texted a lot themselves said they were less satisfied with the relationship. Working things out face-to-face, rather than texting, may be more beneficial when negotiating crucial conversations. With texting, people tend to keep responding, rather than slowing down to gain perspective on the situation. Also, unlike conversations, texts don't fade with time: the archive of messages allows people to review the exchanges and consequently, revive hurt feelings.

This article is geared for couples, but the advice could be extrapolated to any social relationship. Self-soothing is crucial for effective listening, and these are some strategies to help you do this: 1. Write down what your partner says and any defensiveness you're feeling 2. Be mindful of love and respect (remember the big picture and why you like this person) 3. Slow down and breathe. 4. Hold on to yourself: look inward and see what you are telling yourself about what this conflict means and how it may impact you. Also, consider that your partner's complaint may have truth to it. Sometimes we hold onto a distorted self-portrait. 5. Don't take your partner's complaint personally. 6. Ask for a reframe: if the other person is saying something that is triggering, ask them to say it in a different way. 7. Push the pause button: agree to take a 20 minute break, so the fight-flight response is deactivated, then resume.

Although this article is directed towards couples, the advice provided can easily apply to any relationship: familial, friendship, or professional, where a conflict needs to be resolved amicably.

A Yale-led research team examined the brains of 38 couples engaged in discussion about controversial topics. For the study, the researchers from Yale and the University College of London recruited 38 adults who were asked to say whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements such as "same-sex marriage is a civil right" or "marijuana should be legalized." After matching up pairs based on their responses the researchers used an imaging technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy to record their brain activity while they engaged in face-to-face discussions. Their findings: When two people agree, their brains exhibit a calm synchronicity of activity focused on sensory areas of the brain, such as the visual system, presumably in response to social cues from their partner. When they disagree, however, many other regions of the brain involved in higher cognitive functions become mobilized as each individual combats the other's argument. Sensory areas of the brain were less active, while activity increased in the brain's frontal lobes, home of higher order executive functions. Joy Hirsch, Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of comparative medicine and neuroscience, as well as senior author of the study, said that in discord, two brains engage many emotional and cognitive resources "like a symphony orchestra playing different music." In agreement, there "is less cognitive engagement and more social interaction between brains of the talkers, similar to a musical duet."

Sarcasm is more often than not found to be harmful and conflict inducing. This article touches upon some of the negative outcomes of sarcasm and examines how sarcasm can be beneficial to our creativity. In a study, researchers had their participants engage in simulated conversations containing sarcastic, sincere, and neutral dialogues. Then, they were asked to complete tasks that would test their creativity. Through this study, researchers found that those who participated in sarcastic conversations did better. To create or understand sarcasm takes creative thinking because one must distinguish between the literal and actual meaning.

According to communication experts and marriage counselors, we should stay away from sarcasm because it can hurt others and harm relationships. But in this article it explains how sarcasm can help creative sparks fly.