The Psychology of Visual Heating

[ToughButterCup]

10 hours ago, Sparrowhawk said:

... "I've changed my plans for the room, the sockets aren't now where I need them". #$@&%*!

 

Mine uses the following technique:

 

"Well how do I know what I want until I see what you've done? Eh? Answer me that?"

 

I'm afraid I lost it, and answered....

 

"How do I know what I think until I hear what YOU say? Since you won't tell me what you want until AFTER I've done it, I'm on a proper loser here sweetheart" 

 

Silence.

 

Rictus grin. 

 

Still married. 

[SteamyTea]

Why frenemies, or love-hate relationships, are so bad for your health

Friends who blow hot and cold put more strain on your physical and mental health than enemies. Here's how to spot them and handle them

By David Robson

15 October 2024

Mariana Castel/Millennium Images, UK

 

When I contemplate the members of my social network, I am mostly filled with unadulterated feelings of love and warmth: I simply can’t wait to see them again, in the knowledge that we will bask in mutual affection and support.

A handful, however, arouse quite different emotions – a mixture of eagerness and dread. They promise encounters that are the conversational equivalent of Russian roulette. In the right mood, these individuals can deliver a fun-filled evening, but if I catch them at the wrong moment, they can drain me of all my goodwill. There is simply no knowing what is to come.

If this sounds familiar, then you too have frenemies. Psychologists call them “ambivalent relationships” and they don’t just have the potential to ruin a good party, they also have surprising consequences for your well-being. According to a wealth of research, these love-hate relationships are often more stressful than interactions with people who are consistently nasty. They can damage your mental and physical health. They might also be prematurely ageing you.

 

 

Knowing this, the simple solution would seem to be to cut ties with these people. But our relationships with frenemies aren’t simple, and ditching them isn’t always possible or even desirable. However, a deeper insight into your ambivalent relationships will help you deal with them more effectively. It could make you a better friend, too. Because, when you know the signs to look out for, you might discover that the frenemy in some of your relationships is you.

Since the 1970s, huge studies examining thousands of people over extended periods have shown that those with more vibrant social networks tend to live longer and are less susceptible to a host of different illnesses – from the common cold to Alzheimer’s disease and heart attack. Many of these studies focus on the sheer size of people’s social circles: those with larger networks appear to live longer than those with smaller ones.

 

The nasty behaviour of frenemies can be enough to make your hair curl

Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

 

Over time, however, it has become clear that the quality of our relationships can matter as much as the quantity. After all, the benefits of social connection come from feeling well understood and supported: if we know that others will have our back when we are threatened and vulnerable, life is less stressful. But not all our acquaintances leave us feeling like this. Not only do some fail to protect us from life’s slings and arrows – they will sometimes slide the knife in themselves.

How to spot a frenemy

To capture these interpersonal dynamics, Julianne Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues at Brigham Young University in Utah have designed a simple scale that identifies four broad categories of relationship. You can try it for yourself. Pick a couple of people within your social network and answer the following two questions on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 6 (very much). When you are feeling in need of advice, understanding or a favour, how helpful is your connection? Likewise, how upsetting is your connection?

People who score 1 on both questions are your indifferent relationships – a neighbour, perhaps, who is rather bland company with neither good nor bad qualities. Those who score highly on the first question, while getting the lowest possible rating on the second, are your supportive social ties – the people who are an unalloyed good in your life. Others are the mirror image, with the lowest score on the first question and high marks on the second. These are purely aversive relationships. You will probably do your best to avoid talking to them unless you are forced to interact, such as in a business meeting or at a family gathering. Finally, there is the fourth category: people who are both nice and nasty. Anyone with a score of 2 or more on both scales is considered an ambivalent connection – your frenemies. They may be incredibly generous when you have a problem yet can also lash out with a bitter put-down when they feel envious or threatened.

 

 

Ambivalent connections could include a friend, parent, sibling, colleague or even a spouse – anyone with whom you have a love-hate relationship. And their ambivalence can come in many forms: it might be a lack of interest in your life rather than overt disrespect, or a general unreliability that means they are often unavailable when you need their support. It could be a partner who love-bombs you one day, but who is fiercely critical the next, leaving you unsure about their true feelings.

We might hope that in such relationships, the good would outweigh the bad, with a net positive to our overall well-being. At the very least, you would expect them to be better for us than our aversive relationships. Unfortunately, the research suggests things aren’t so simple. Holt-Lunstad’s team, for example, hooked 102 people up to portable blood pressure monitors for three days. During any social interactions, the participants could press a button to trigger the device, and after they had finished the conversation, they recorded who they had met and rated them on the scales above. As you might expect, people’s blood pressure was higher when they met an ambivalent tie compared with when they met someone who was uncomplicatedly supportive. Surprisingly, however, the ambivalent ties also provoked a stronger reaction than aversive ones.

 

The unpredictable nature of our interactions with frenemies is what makes them so bad for our health

Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

 

It gets worse. In another study, Holt-Lunstad and her colleague Benjamin Clark, also at Brigham Young University, found that simply knowing that an ambivalent connection was in the next room as participants prepared to give a speech was enough to send their blood pressure rocketing. It also slowed their recovery after the task. The frenemy didn’t need to say a word to evoke anxious feelings. In fact, even subliminal reminders of a frenemy can shatter our peace of mind.

A team led by McKenzie Carlisle at the University of Utah asked people to take a reaction-time test. She found that rapidly flashing the name of an ambivalent connection on the computer screen – so quick that it couldn’t be consciously detected – amplified their stress response. Seeing the name of an entirely unpleasant connection failed to create such a large effect.

It seems that our frenemies have us in a kind of stranglehold. We may depend on their support and try our best to please them, but that emotional investment makes their occasional nastiness especially hurtful. Moreover, the uncertainty about which side of them we are going to see – Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde – only compounds the stress of meeting them, so that we feel anxious before they have even opened their mouths. Contrast this with our aversive social ties, which mean very little to us: if we know someone is a jerk, we can more easily discount their unkind behaviour.

 

Frenemies can put extra strain on your heart and can raise levels of inflammation

 

 

The long-term effects of ambivalent connections may be just as bad as having few connections. Through the stress they create, regularly interacting with frenemies can put extra strain on the heart and raise levels of bodily inflammation – both of which have been associated with an increased risk of mortality.

The effects have even been seen in measures of cellular ageing. At the end of our chromosomes, we have protective caps called telomeres that prevent DNA from being damaged when cells replicate. As we age, our telomeres slowly wear down and, when they become too short, cells may start to malfunction or die. Shorter telomeres are thought to put us at greater risk of many of the diseases that come with ageing – and our ambivalent connections appear to contribute to their decline. If you live with someone who often makes you feel like you are on a knife edge, or if you regularly see friends who leave you feeling that way, you are more likely to have shortened telomeres, relative to other people of a similar age.

Unpredictable bosses

It isn’t just our physical health that is at stake. Good relationships with our colleagues are one of the best predictors of job satisfaction and resilience against burnout, so it should be little surprise that toxic dynamics can be a serious cause of workplace distress. Ambivalent bosses can be especially damaging. A recent survey examining 993 employees from 27 work groups found that bosses who provide unreliable support and sporadic unkindness can take a serious toll on their employees’ mental well-being, raising the risk of depression, anxiety and emotional exhaustion.

The paradoxical nature of our ambivalent connections means that there is no simple solution. If you feel someone has become too toxic a presence in your life, you may decide to cut off contact – but that may not be possible if they are your boss or a family member, or if they are so deeply integrated into your social network that you would also risk losing supportive relationships with other people. So, what can be done?

 

The problem with frenemies is that they are inconsistent, sometimes full of smiles and fun

Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

 

Simply being aware of the ambivalent nature of a relationship might offer some protection. Personally, I have found that knowledge of this research helps me to manage my expectations and mentally prepare myself for the mixed feelings that interacting with frenemies might bring. This allows me to focus more on the good in these people and to feel compassion for their more unpleasant streaks, while also attempting to reduce contact when I feel that they may only add to the stresses I am facing in other areas of my life.

 

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Just as importantly, this research has prompted me to consider my own behaviour – are there relationships in which I am the frenemy? The truth isn’t always easy to swallow. Unlike my worst frenemies, I don’t tend to lash out with barbed comments and sarcasm, but I do often fail to show others the appreciation and respect I feel for them – accidental neglect that could be taken as a sign of indifference. I am surely not alone in this. Studies show that we often fail to express our gratitude as regularly as we could, either through thoughtlessness, shyness or the assumption that the other person will already know how important they are to us.

I am resolved to be a little more mindful of my interactions with all my ties – indifferent, aversive, ambivalent and supportive. What’s more, I now know who to hold at arm’s length and who to keep close.

[ToughButterCup]

That post (the one immediately above) was unkind, unnecessary and hurtful.

[Kelvin]

Plug sockets can be hard work where to put them. Before we moved from the house we sold and the house we rented I went round and made a note of every plug socket that was in the rooms highlighting the ones in the wrong place for our use and why and the number of plug sockets in the room and everywhere we were using a plug extension. Now that doesn’t translate to the house you’re building obviously but it makes you spend time thinking about why things are in the wrong place.  When we were designing the layout of the house we placed all the sockets where we thought we needed them as a first pass. When the house went up we went round and marked them on the walls which led to some changes as a second pass. I then 3D rendered every room and placing furniture in different configurations which made some more changes as a third pass. When the electrician came to do the first fix he made some suggestions so that was a fourth pass and then when it came to the second fix we made a few more changes. So 5 iterations of where do the sockets go. Additionally our electrical service void runs horizontally around the room so it’s easy to move sockets and pull cable through etc. should that ever be needed. 

 

The result of all of that was we don’t have a single plug extension in the house. Every socket is exactly where we need it. We possibly have too many sockets 😂 There are two odd sockets in the house that I can’t recall why on earth we put them where we have. 
 

 

[G and J]

50 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

we don’t have a single plug extension in the house

Yet. 😉 

[Kelvin]

1 hour ago, G and J said:

Yet. 😉 

Nope. Everything is in and there are sockets spare (all double sockets) should anything else be added. Plus, the service void makes adding sockets easy.  Two things I hate are extension and trailing cables along skirting boards or tacked above skirting boards. They either collect dust or dog hair. 

Edited October 21 by Kelvin

[G and J]

42 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

Nope. Everything is in and there are sockets spare (all double sockets) should anything else be added. Plus, the service void makes adding sockets easy.  Two things I hate are extension and trailing cables along skirting boards or tacked above skirting boards. They either collect dust or dog hair. 

I admire your confidence lol

[Kelvin]

56 minutes ago, G and J said:

I admire your confidence lol

I’m so confident I gave away all my multitude of extensions. 😂 The biggest test was the Hi-Fi/AV corner. Everything is in and I have three plug points spare. 

[G and J]

Should we run a BH sweepstake on how long before the first extension lead is deployed?

 

My guess is two days after you start putting up Christmas deccies.

[Iceverge]

@Kelvin. 

 

Might I suggest cancelling Christmas. 

[PNAmble]

15 hours ago, ToughButterCup said:

That post (the one immediately above) was unkind, unnecessary and hurtful.

Agree.  Don’t understand why it was thought it was a good / relevant thing to post. 

[PNAmble]

We thought about this (a visual heat) with our build.  We are near passiv and radiators running at about 30-40 degrees depending on outside temp.   We looked long and hard at LED fires.  
 

in the end we thought ‘we’ll live a year in the house and decide’ but made allowances if we thought it was necessary in the future. 
 

So far the heating hasn’t come on, but we felt we needed something visual as a focus point. So we bought a lava lamp.  😂

 

[Jenni]

For visual heat how about a bioethanol burner? My mum is considering one instead of a log burner.

[ToughButterCup]

10 hours ago, Iceverge said:

@Kelvin. 

 

Might I suggest cancelling Christmas. 

Humbug.

Sorry I'll get my coat 

[ToughButterCup]

@PNAmble, that's exactly our approach.

- It's new, it's different , go carefully -

 

Passiv Design backs you into a visual corner.

 

Humans crave focus, visually interesting focus. And I don't know about you, but I can stare for hours at a log fire and feel soothed by heat, warmth, a freezing back, and  endless visual drama of a log giving up the ghost.

Passiv Design says in that horribly Germanic way -

 

Das ist Verboten! Boody Germans (for those who don't know , I'm German)

 

What's more delicious than sitting with your best mate , silent except for the sparkles and warmth of a fire.

@Jenni, that's all that's left, I think.

[G and J]

54 minutes ago, ToughButterCup said:

@PNAmble, that's exactly our approach.

- It's new, it's different , go carefully -

 

Passiv Design backs you into a visual corner.

 

Humans crave focus, visually interesting focus. And I don't know about you, but I can stare for hours at a log fire and feel soothed by heat, warmth, a freezing back, and  endless visual drama of a log giving up the ghost.

Passiv Design says in that horribly Germanic way -

 

Das ist Verboten! Boody Germans (for those who don't know , I'm German)

 

What's more delicious than sitting with your best mate , silent except for the sparkles and warmth of a fire.

@Jenni, that's all that's left, I think.

We’ve looked at spirit burners.  I made one up from a foil takeaway container and some bits I had around the garage - I had a bottle of fuel anyway for my camping stove.  The flame is better than the best electric ones we could find, but what put us off is the sheer volume of single use plastic containers that it would mean.

 

I believe 5l packs are available but that would still be a mountain of plastic, and for peeps who try hard on that front (and get our legs pulled for our 70’s throwback Sodastream) it grates.  
 

So, we ended up thinking that:

nothing gets near to the comfort of watching brightly glowing logs;

the heat from a woodburner on cold days will reduce our leccie use;

retro fitting a woodburner is difficult (having done it before); and,

a spirit burner in a woodburner is easily the second best thing to a wood fire so we can use it on nights too warm for a fire.

 

So a small woodburner it is, (a Charnwood Aire 3 is the plan), with judicious use of a spirit burner to limit waste plastic to an acceptable level.

 

I would be chuffed if someone knows of a way of bulk buying bio-ethanol using reusable containers mind…..

[ToughButterCup]

3 minutes ago, G and J said:

...

So a small woodburner it is, (a Charnwood Aire 3 is the plan), with judicious use of a spirit burner to limit waste plastic to an acceptable level.

...

 

Hmmmmm. 

Time to bring this knotty problem out of the -its-too-hard- box , I think.

[SteamyTea]

Has anyone applied Hess's Law to home combustion?

 

Hess's Law is a modification of the 1^st Law of Thermodynamics.

[Kelvin]

On 21/10/2024 at 15:17, G and J said:

Should we run a BH sweepstake on how long before the first extension lead is deployed?

 

My guess is two days after you start putting up Christmas deccies.

Hold my beer.  There’s one obvious corner for the Christmas tree so I fitted two double sockets there just for that reason. 

[Kelvin]

23 hours ago, Iceverge said:

@Kelvin. 

 

Might I suggest cancelling Christmas. 

We are going to the old miserable mother in laws as it’s our turn and we live too far away to go and get her. Therefore no first Christmas in our new house unfortunately. Christmas may as well be cancelled as she hates Christmas and does nothing but moan about it. Ho ho ho! 
 

Technically our first Christmas was last year anyway 

 

Edited October 22 by Kelvin

[Iceverge]

You could hope for a blizzard 

[Kelvin]

Well Mrs Miggins in the local pie shop told me we are in for a bad winter this year. 

[Gus Potter]

What has happened to romance!

 

Too many folk thinking about cost and practicalities of stuff on BH and maybe not seeing the whole picture.

 

You can't beat a real fire / stove.

 

A home is not a home without compromise between needs and wants. Now I bet a lot of folk have an expensive car outside that is depreciating fast.. cf with making a home with a bit of comfort and luxury. We are not building a sanitised office!

 

We have a wood burning stove in a room and sometimes I shut the door, settle my self down in front of it with a large kebab.. that stinks, watch telly and.. be selfish.

 

Yes I know the flue cause probelms with air tightness but in the morning the air is purged.. I'm forgiven.

 

Self building is about compromise.

 

 

 

 

[G and J]

9 minutes ago, Gus Potter said:

What has happened to romance!

 

Too many folk thinking about cost and practicalities of stuff on BH and maybe not seeing the whole picture.

 

You can't beat a real fire / stove.

 

A home is not a home without compromise between needs and wants. Now I bet a lot of folk have an expensive car outside that is depreciating fast.. cf with making a home with a bit of comfort and luxury. We are not building a sanitised office!

 

We have a wood burning stove in a room and sometimes I shut the door, settle my self down in front of it with a large kebab.. that stinks, watch telly and.. be selfish.

 

Yes I know the flue cause probelms with air tightness but in the morning the air is purged.. I'm forgiven.

 

Self building is about compromise.

 

 

 

 

Well said GP. 
 

Man doth not live by U value alone.  

 

[ToughButterCup]

8 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

What has happened to romance!

 

Too many folk thinking about cost and practicalities of stuff on BH and maybe not seeing the whole picture.

 

You can't beat a real fire / stove.

 

A home is not a home without compromise between needs and wants. ...

 

We have a wood burning stove in a room and sometimes I shut the door, settle my self down in front of it with a large kebab.. that stinks, watch telly and.. be selfish.

...

Self building is about compromise.

 

Your post did me almost as much good as a log burner cackling away to itself quietly in the corner.

 

I have a new fantasy (Down @Pocster, DOWN).....

 

The minute we have sign off, we fit a small log burner. I can see where to fit it. I can see how to do it. I can see.....the Promised Land. A happy wife and a happy life.

 

As opposed to that hoary Land Rover dictum:

 

One wife. Livid.