The Science of Happily Ever After: What Really Matters in the Quest for Enduring Love
The good news is that the beginning of marriage is almost pure bliss. In one landmark study, conducted by Ted Huston and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, it was found that couples in their first year of marriage scored in the eighty-sixth percentile on marital satisfaction. However, as the old saying goes, the honeymoon does not last. Dramatic declines in marital satisfaction occur in the second and third years of marriage. During the fourth and fifth years of marriage, couples can anticipate a less severe decline in satisfaction, before experiencing another large drop during years six and seven. By the end of the seventh year of marriage, couples on average score just below the fiftieth percentile on marital satisfaction and then experience a slow decline in satisfaction until about the twentieth year of marriage. (View Highlight)
One way to study lust is to ask research participants about their sexual fantasies, and in a review of gender differences in lust, Peplau found that boys fantasize 33 percent more often than girls do. The content of their fantasies differs, as well. Boys’ sexual fantasies are typically envisioned through a zoomed lens perspective on the mechanics of sex. Boys fantasize about many different sexual partners, and they often fantasize about partners they do not know well and even complete strangers. Girls tend to take a panoramic perspective, envisioning romantic scenes or meaningful conversation as a context for being physically intimate. Compared to boys, girls are twice as likely to fantasize about sexual partners they know well. In other words, girls tend to lust for partners they also like. (View Highlight)
According to the studies of liking, the components of liking (such as fairness and loyalty) are intended to help relationships endure over time. In contrast, lust stems from biological and psychological urges that motivate people primarily toward mating. In other words, lust is helpful for encouraging people to procreate, but less useful when it comes to sustaining a sense of happiness in a long-term relationship, because lust depreciates at a much faster rate than liking. If one is looking to stay in love for a long time, then investing disproportionately in liking over lust seems to be the smart investment strategy. (View Highlight)
There are now hundreds of studies that support the idea that during partner selection, men prioritize looks more than women, whereas women prioritize resources more than men, which, along with the finding that both men and women prioritize attractiveness and resources as two of their top three wishes, suggests that traits key to reproductive fitness play a prominent role in mate selection for modern singles. This robust finding is convenient for researchers looking to validate evolutionary theories of mate selection, but it raises a practical concern for outside observers. Why do modern singles spend so heavily on attractiveness and resources when the return on investing in traits associated with reproductive fitness is so low? Would men and women show the same pattern of wasteful wishing for traits when choosing an actual romantic partner? (View Highlight)
What these assortative mating studies collectively suggest is that singles’ mating selection strategies probably give them a good chance of finding partners who are about as attractive as they are and who have achieved the same socioeconomic status. (View Highlight)
how do we balance our urges for reproductively fit mates with our psychological wishes for happy romantic relationships? (View Highlight)
There are three main steps to accurately seeing your romantic future:
So one reason to look for traits in potential partners is that they are very stable over time. If you choose someone with traits that drive you crazy or make you sad while you’re dating, then those traits will make you crazy or sad for decades to come. So you want to choose well, because what you see is what you get. (View Highlight)
Everyone in a close relationship makes mistakes during the course of a day or a week, but it’s not one instance of a negative or positive behavior, but rather the ratio of positives to negatives, that matters in the long run. John Gottman calls this cumulative ratio of positive to negative behaviors an “emotional bank account.” The idea is that each partner can deposit in the couples’ account emotional capital (e.g., satisfaction) with positive behaviors and withdraw emotional capital from the couples’ account with negative behaviors. (View Highlight)