Never partnering through emerging adulthood has psychological consequences that compound over time.
How to predict if a relationship will end in marriage.
How to predict if a relationship will end in marriage.
When looking back, couples destined to marry accurately recall the ups and downs of their relationship.
Happy couples have no reason to try and hide any problems from themselves to make it feel like they are moving forward.
On the other hand, people with poor relationships have distorted memories that bear little relation to reality.
Misremembering the past may be a way of papering over the cracks in a failing relationship.
Professor Brian G. Ogolsky, the study’s first author, explained:
“People like to feel that they’re making progress as a couple.
If they’re not — if, in fact, the relationship is in trouble — they may have distorted recollections that help them feel like they’re moving forward because they need a psychological justification to stay in the relationship.”
The results come from a nine-month study involving 232 heterosexual couples who had dated for around two years.
All rated their chances of eventually getting married every month, for eight months.
Three groups of couples emerged: those whose relationships were getting worse, those who were staying the same and those who were improving.
Professor Ogolsky said that those whose relationships were improving had remarkably accurate memories:
“Couples who had deepened their commitment remembered their relationship history almost perfectly.
The graphs for this group were really interesting because the plot of the end-of-study recollection could be placed right on top of the one we had graphed from the monthly check-ins.”
Those who had maintained their relationships without really moving forward, fooled themselves slightly to get the feeling of progress, said Professor Ogolsky:
“They had given themselves some room to grow and remembered the recent past as better than they had reported it being.
If they saw maintenance as stagnation, that’s a way of addressing that cognitive gap.
It helps them feel that their relationship is developing in some way — that they’re making progress.”
Lastly, those whose relationships were on-off, or just off, were mostly in denial, Professor Ogolsky said:
“If we looked at their history as they reported it to us over the nine-month period, we could see that their chances of marriage were plummeting.
Yet their recollection was that things had been going okay.
Of course, they hadn’t seen the graph so they didn’t know their trajectory looks this dire, but it’s fair to say they were in denial about the state of their relationship.”
The study was published in the journal Personal Relationships (Ogolsky & Surra, 2014).
Your romantic history may be more typical than you realise.
How income affects whether people cheat on their partner.
How income affects whether people cheat on their partner.
People who earn less than their partner are more likely to cheat on them than those earning equal amounts.
Men may be more tempted to cheat in this situation because they feel threatened by their partner’s income.
However, men earning much more than their female partner are also more likely to cheat than those earning equal amounts.
Similarly, women were more likely to cheat when dependent on their partner — although not if they earned more.
Explaining the findings, Dr Christin Munsch, the study’s author, said:
“At one end of the spectrum, making less money than a female partner may threaten men’s gender identity by calling into question the traditional notion of men as breadwinners.
At the other end of the spectrum, men who make a lot more money than their partners may be in jobs that offer more opportunities for cheating like long work hours, travel, and higher incomes that make cheating easier to conceal.”
The conclusions come from a study of 18- to 28-year-old married and cohabiting couples; all had been together for at least a year.
The results showed that men whose income is either significantly higher or lower than their female partner are more likely to cheat on them.
Men who were most faithful generally had partners who earned around 75 percent of their own income.
In the six-month period of the study, 3.8 percent of men reported cheating on their partner, while 1.4 percent of women reported cheating.
Women who earned more than their partners, though, were actually less likely to cheat on them.
The study was published in the journal American Sociological Review (Munsch et al., 2015).
It leads to improved relationship satisfaction and connection the very next day.
It leads to improved relationship satisfaction and connection the very next day.
Being grateful to your partner works as an instant ‘booster shot’ for relationships, research finds.
Among couples, feeling grateful leads to improved relationship satisfaction and connection the very next day.
Little thoughtful gestures by one partner — like a back rub, a small gift or holding hands — increased feelings of gratitude.
Feeling grateful then generates a cascade of positive feelings.
The study’s lead author, Dr Sara Algoe, said:
“Feelings of gratitude and generosity are helpful in solidifying our relationships with people we care about, and benefit to the one giving as well as the one on the receiving end.”
The study tracked the day-to-day experiences of 65 couples in ongoing, committed relationships.
The results showed that the effects of gratefulness could be seen the next day, in terms of increased relationship satisfaction.
Partners responded strongly when shown their needs were being acknowledged.
Dr Algoe said:
“Gratitude triggers a cascade of responses within the person who feels it in that very moment, changing the way the person views the generous benefactor, as well as motivations toward the benefactor.
This is especially true when a person shows that they care about the partner’s needs and preferences.”
The study was published in the journal Personal Relationships (Algoe et al., 2010).
Getting married at this age linked to lowest divorce risk.
Getting married at this age is linked to the lowest divorce risk.
Getting married at 28 to 32 years old carries the lowest risk of divorce, according to statistics on marriage.
Marriage before the late twenties, or after the thirties are both linked to a higher risk of divorce later on.
The marriages most likely to end in divorce are between teenagers or those in their early twenties, or those who get married after the age of 45.
Waiting to get married until you are 25 instead of 20, for example, reduces the risk of divorce by 50 percent.
The conclusions come from an analysis of a national survey of families that included over 9,000 people.
Dr Nick Wolfinger, who conducted the analysis, writes:
“Delaying marriage from the teens until the early twenties produces the largest declines in divorce risk, for totally understandable reasons: we’re all changing a lot more from year to year as teenagers than when we’re in our twenties or thirties.
Our parents and friends are likely to disapprove of a teenage marriage, but their feelings probably won’t change much once we hit our mid-twenties.”
It makes sense that delaying marriage until later in your twenties is beneficial.
However, why does getting married in your late thirties or forties present a higher risk of divorce?
Dr Wolfinger write:
“…the kinds of people who wait till their thirties to get married may be the kinds of people who aren’t predisposed toward doing well in their marriages.
For instance, some people seem to be congenitally cantankerous.
Such people naturally have trouble with interpersonal relationships.
Consequently they delay marriage, often because they can’t find anyone willing to marry them.
When they do tie the knot, their marriages are automatically at high risk for divorce.”
The study was published on the Institute For Family Studies website (Wolfinger, 2015).
The study tested how good we are at assessing a stranger’s personality in a few minutes.
The study tested how good we are at assessing a stranger’s personality in a few minutes.
The personalities of happy, confident people are particularly easy to read at first glance.
It may be because happier people are more likely to project their true personalities.
However, even the personalities of those lower in well-being are relatively easy to read, the research revealed.
The study tested the ability to assess other people’s personalities when speed dating.
It emerged that most can make reasonably accurate judgements about major aspects of personality, such as how open, extraverted and agreeable another person is.
However, some people are much easier to read than others, said Ms Lauren Gazzard Kerr, the study’s first author:
“Some people are open books whose distinctive personalities can be accurately perceived after a brief interaction, whereas others are harder to read.
Strikingly, people who report higher well-being, self-esteem, and satisfaction with life tend to make the task easier.”
The study used a speed dating format in which 372 people met for the first time for only a few minutes.
Afterwards, they were each asked to rate the personality of the person they had met.
The results revealed that the impressions they formed were generally accurate.
However, people were worse at judging the personalities of potential romantic partners than strangers in whom they had no romantic interest.
Perhaps nerves were getting in the way.
One thing emerged strongly: the personalities of happier people are easier to read at first glance.
Dr Lauren Human, study co-author, said:
“Perhaps people that have greater well-being behave in ways that are more in line with their personality — being more authentic or true to themselves.”
Alternatively, it may be that some people tend to be happier because their personalities are perceived more accurately by those they meet.
The researchers next want to find out why some people’s personalities are easier to read, explained Dr Human:
“Understanding why some people are able to be seen more accurately could help us determine strategies that other people could apply to enhance how accurately they are perceived.”
The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Kerr et al., 2020).
Does total warmth matter more than balance in romantic relationships?
While men are guided by their personality, women’s loyalty is tied directly to the health of the bond.
While men are guided by their personality, women’s loyalty is tied directly to the health of the bond.
Men with performance anxiety who like to take risks are most likely to cheat.
Women, though, tend to cheat if they are dissatisfied with their relationship.
The standard of a man’s relationship does not have much effect on whether he cheats; instead, it is his personality that matters.
The study supports the stereotype that men who are cheaters will continue to cheat, whatever kind of partnership they are in.
Risk-takers tend to be impulsive and can have problems controlling themselves.
Gambling, drug-taking and aggressive behaviour can all be signs of someone who is a risk-taker.
Cheating is one more way for this type of man to find excitement.
The pattern is different among women, where unhappiness in their current relationship predicts cheating.
In fact, women who are dissatisfied with their relationship are twice as likely to cheat on their partner as those who are satisfied.
The study included almost one thousand men and women in (supposedly) monogamous relationships.
The results showed that 23 percent of men and 19 percent of women admitted being unfaithful at some point.
Men’s infidelity was predicted by personality factors like risk-taking.
Professor Milhausen, who led the study, said:
“All kinds of things predict infidelity.
What this study says is that when you put all of those things together, for men, personality characteristics are so strong they bounce everything else out of the model.
For women, in the face of all other variables, it’s still the relationship that is the most important predictor.”
The study was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior (Mark et al., 2011).
Certain types of anxiety can cause massive ups and downs in relationships.
Certain types of anxiety can cause massive ups and downs in relationships.
Partners who have attachment issues can cause considerable instability in their relationship.
One type, known as ‘attachment anxiety’ by psychologists, involves see-sawing feelings.
It is the same reason that babies cry when they are taken from their mothers.
Around one in five people has an anxious attachment style.
A classic sign is having wildly varying feelings about the relationship from one day to the next.
People experiencing attachment anxiety spend a lot of time thinking about what the other person wants.
They can easily move from feeling strongly attached to wanting independence.
Ms Ashley Cooper, the study’s first author, said:
“For people anxious in their attachments, they have anxiety as to whether the person is going to be there for them and whether they are worthy of others.
I was interested in how attachment security impacted partners’ experiences in their relationship on a daily basis.
Some couples experience instability from one day to the next in their relationship, so we sought out to explore what could increase or decrease this volatility.”
The second problematic type is attachment avoidance: this describes someone who wants to avoid getting too attached to the other person.
Around one in four people has an avoidant attachment style.
High levels of attachment anxiety are linked to more ups and downs in the relationship, while avoidance is linked to low relationship satisfaction.
The study of 157 couples — half of whom had been dating for two years or less — found that high attachment avoidance in one partner was linked to low relationship satisfaction for both.
Ms Cooper said:
“For the average person, stay attuned to what your partner is saying and avoid making assumptions that can escalate conflict.
Trusting in your partner and your relationship is important to daily interactions and stability for your relationship.”
The study was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (Cooper et al., 2017).
Join the free PsyBlog mailing list. No spam, ever.
