Michigan Daily Online ran an earlier article on happiness in marriage.
Couples strong as newlyweds after 35 years
The Ups and Downs of Marriage
If married couples can stay together for 35 years, they’re likely to find themselves as happy with each other as newlyweds, according to a University study of marital quality published in the current issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.
The study analyzed links between marital quality, duration and various social and economic factors among 1,470 individuals in first marriages.
“Marital happiness follows a fairly predictable trajectory,” said Terri Orbuch, sociologist at the Institute for Social Research and co-author of the study.
The study found that after the first few years of marriage, marital happiness tends to go down for about 20 years. But by the time the couple is married for about 35 years, they are as happy as when first married – during the so-called “honeymoon period.”
“Our results show that declines in work and parental responsibilities explain a large portion of the increase in marital satisfaction in later years of marriage,” Orbuch said. “Declining income and increasing assets in later life also explain a small portion of the increase.”
The study also showed that after 15 or 20 years of marriage, couples don’t consider divorce or separation nearly as much as couples who haven’t been married as long.
The study was funded by grants from the National Institute of Health and National Institute on Aging.