Although the degree of happiness does not change in long-standing marriages, behavior and relationship change dramatically

by StarFlames

There are various stages in marriage, and how you think about marriage and partners will also change with the date. So what do you see when you see the whole marriage? So, Paul Amato, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University, and Spencer James from Brigham Young University, conducted a survey.

Changes in Spousal Relationships over the Marital Life Course | Springer Link
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71544-5_7

How happiness in marriage changes over time - Quartz
https://qz.com/1315193/how-happiness-in-marriage-changes-over-time/

Two researchers analyzed the data of 1617 subjects in the research on marriage (PDF file) Marital Instability Over the Life Course conducted over the years from 1980 to 2000, and the couple's I examined how happiness and behavior change. All of the subjects in this study were married at the start of the study, and half of those who had been married at the time of the study's completion. The other half were divorced, deathbed, or simply dropped out of research.

Mr. Amato and Mr. James recorded the data of those who were divorced among the above subjects as those who sustained marriage. And not just focusing on the ambiguous concept of "happiness", we examined the proportion of discord between the two couples and the proportion of acting together.

First, the change in happiness degree is like this. A couple whose purple line did not divorce, and a blue line indicate a couple divorced. Couple who are sustaining marriage tend to be a little decreasing in happiness in the first 10 years, but have risen again 30 years after marriage. On the other hand, divorced couples are decreasing in happiness with the date.

However, while couples sustaining marriage had little change in happiness, it turned out that the relationship between couples had changed greatly. Below are the proportions of discord, dark violet line, degree of happiness, purple line shows the degree of happiness, light blue line shows the ratio of acting together. The proportion of discord decreased with time considerably. On the other hand, the proportion of acting together decreases until about 20 years of marriage, but since then it has increased greatly. Especially after marriage 40 years, we cook together meals as much as when we were newly married, we live a social life and have fun with us.

Also, even one marriage was found to differ depending on the viewpoint of each husband and wife.

The figure below shows the happiness of the couple whose top two lines are continuing marriage, light purple is husband, dark purple is wife's happiness degree. And the bottom two are the happiness degrees of the couple divorced, the light blue is the husband, the blue is the wife. In both cases, the degree of happiness of the husband is higher, especially in the couple who got divorced.

The degree of happiness is subjective, but the frequency of making arguments and the frequency of taking action together are objective indicators. Every marriage has its own ups and downs, but this research is different from previous studies, it is a new point showing how concrete behavior changes.

by Noelle Otto