Some Things You Didn't Know About Marriage And Love

Having a tough time finding love? Is your marriage dull? You could be sabotaging your relationship and not even know it.

Here are Some things you probably don't know about your relationship or marriage — or you knew, but needed scientific proof to back up your theories.

Marriage doesn't make you wealthier...or poorer.

Marriage may not actually make you poorer, said Barbara Kiviat in Time. But it probably won’t make you richer, either. The “conventional wisdom” is that sharing a mortgage and other big expenses lowers the cost of living, but “the economic benefit of marriage isn’t what it used to be.” Why? There are several factors, but the main reason for the narrowing married-single gap is that single women make a better living now.

Even if marriage doesn’t make you poorer, said Debbie Robins in The Huffington Post, money issues might well make you less likely to stay married. “Financial disagreements” are the reason 90 percent of divorcing couples give as the “primary cause for why their love turned to loathing.” Of course, the chances are if you’re “warring over money,” you’re really fighting over something else. But it’s good to keep in mind, in marriage and life, that money isn’t everything.

There are ways to find that perfect partner.

Marriage isn't all fun and games, So if you're gonna do it, do it right. But how do you know who to marry? Should you just trust your feelings or pick the person who "looks good on paper"? Luckily, science has answers for us:

• Find someone who you idealize and who idealizes you. If you're already cynical about the person by the time you hit the altar, you're in trouble.

• Marry somebody with high self-esteem. Ladies, you're probably already attracted to this. Guys, watch out for women who don't feel good about themselves.

• Ladies, want a husband who is actively involved with his kids' lives? Find a guy with higher socioeconomic status. Plus it'll make your kids smarter. (Money never hurts, does it?)

• Guys, you want to avoid that whole "involuntarily celibate" situation that men fear after years of marriage? Don't marry a woman who is sexually submissive.

• Find someone who is conscientious and even a bit neurotic if you want a long and healthy life together:

Physical attraction does make a difference in a marriage.

Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction.

In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied.

Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages.

Marriage kills your sex drive.

 

Unfortunately, adults who responded to a 2004 poll by ABC reported that the quality of their sex lives does correlate negatively with the length of time they’ve been married. The odds they have sex at least several times a week worsen from 1 in 1.39 (72%) if they’ve been married for less than three years to 1 in 3.13 (32%) if they’ve been married for ten or more years.

The odds they actually enjoy the sex they’re having a great deal worsen from 1 in 1.15 (87%) to 1 in 1.43 (70%) for the same range, and the odds that their sex life is something they’d call “very exciting” decrease from 1 in 1.72 (58%) to 1 in 3.45 (29%).

Handsome men shouldn't get married.

Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction.

In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied. Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages.

The value of an engagement ring is indicative of a couple's happiness.

Cronk and Dunham found that both men's and women's incomes were positively correlated to the amount spent on an engagement ring. These two findings are indicative of marriage customs found in other cultures such as bridewealth and dowries. Furthermore, the authors uncovered a negative correlation between the amount spent on a ring and the bride's age.

In other words, the younger the bride, the larger the expenditure. Cronk and Dunham argue that their findings suggest that the amount spent on an engagement ring is linked to the mating "quality" of each of the two partners (as gauged in this case by the respective incomes of both sexes, as well as the age of the brides-to-be).

Premarital sex is VERY common, and always has been.

 

More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer’s analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

Men cheat more than women.

While the odds suggest that men are somewhat more likely to cheat than women, a small study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in May 2009 suggests that women might be more likely than men to commit another relationship indiscretion—mate poaching. In fact, single women might be the likeliest to pursue mates who are already in relationships. Researchers based their study on the common complaint of single women: “All the good men are taken.” The study was fairly small but offers some support for the idea that single women are more likely to pursue men who are attached because the men have been “pre-screened” by other women.

Marriage can make you fat.

According to a study published last July in the journal Obesity, love + marriage = weight gain isn’t inevitable, but the odds are stacked in favor of some weight gain. The study looked at almost 1300 “romantic partners” and found women who lived with a partner for at least a year increased the likelihood of being obese.

For men, the odds of being obese doubled after 1 year of cohabitation. The study also found that couples who lived together for two or more years were significantly more likely to have at least one partner be obese, and they were also less physically active than couples who were dating.

When living with your partner, less sex increases your chances of breaking up.

Prior research found that lower sexual frequency and satisfaction were associated with higher rates of divorce, but little research had examined the role of sexual activity in the dissolution of cohabiting unions. We drew upon social exchange theory to hypothesize why sexual frequency is more important in cohabitation: (a) cohabitors' lower costs of finding sexual alternatives, (b) cohabitors' lower barriers to ending the relationship in the form of union-specific economic and noneconomic capital, and (c) cohabitors' higher expectations for sexual activity.

Using the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 5,902), we examined the relationship between sexual frequency and union dissolution. Results indicated that low sexual frequency was associated with significantly higher rates of union dissolution among cohabitors than married couples.