Our romantic happiness goes through normal ups and downs as we get older — and we’re least happy around age 40, a new study finds…
— ‘How Relationship Satisfaction Changes Across Your Lifetime’ by Kira M. Newman, in Greater Good Magazine, February 2022.
Actually, I’m not all that interested in how romantic happiness changes across your lifetime.
I’m concerned with how romantic happiness changes across my lifetime.
I know, pretty well, how it changed during my 20s and 30s. It changed for the worst, mostly, and if we’re really least happy around age 40, then I’m a perfect case study for researchers Janina Larissa Bühler, Samantha Krauss, and Ulrich Orth, who wrote a 94-page paper for the Psychological Bulletin last year, and blessed it with the scientific-sounding title: “Development of Relationship Satisfaction Across the Life Span: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.”
The paper starts off on a positive note.
Romantic relationships are a central aspect of most people’s lives. Research suggests that romantic relationship satisfaction is highly beneficial to well-being, health, and longevity.
And then goes quickly downhill from there.
Although most people wish to maintain a happy and fulfilling relationship, people’s satisfaction with their romantic relationship often decreases over the years.
One of the problems with the study, though, is that it looks at people who actually remain in the same relationship for, like, 30 or 40 years. Is that even a significant group of people?
People familiar with my past columns — here in the Daily Post — may be aware that I was married to my ex-wife Darlene for a number of years. (How many years? Too many to want to count.) But I haven’t written much about all the permanent relationships I’ve had since our divorce, some of which have lasted in excess of a month or more.
Scientists and researchers seem inordinately interested in couples that stay together for many more years than science and research suggests is healthy. Many of these couples are presumably scientists and researchers, who are smart enough to know that long hours spent digging into obscure databases are the same long hours they would otherwise spend arguing with their wife. (Or husband.)
In my humble opinion, what we need are more thoughtful news articles — in publications like Berkeley-based Greater Good Magazine — summarizing scientific research regarding the development of satisfaction from one-night stands. According to what I found on the U.S. Census website, nearly 50% of Americans are single. And really don’t mind it, except maybe when they come across articles in Greater Good Magazine.
Something I didn’t learn from Greater Good Magazine, or from Psychological Bulletin: that you can celebrate your satisfied singleness along with the rest of us, on National Singles Day, scheduled for September 17, 2022.
Of course, many of us are celebrating our singleness all year round.
I also found this photo, below, on the National Singles Day website.
Do these people look unsatisfied? Hardly. Even though they have no permanent relationship with one another, they are happy to throw their arms around one another and look up at someone in the classroom who’s apparently standing atop a tall ladder. (Except the lady on the far right, who is checking her ‘Bumble’ account.)
Could you ever find a group of married couples who looked this happy?
Call me a cynic (go ahead, I don’t mind) but I suspect some of these single people will end up getting married someday, and will never again look quite so satisfied as they appear in the above photograph. (Well, maybe during the honeymoon, but how long does that last? A couple of days?)
Some married people might be reading this little essay, and feel that I’ve utterly ignored the joy that comes from sitting across the breakfast table from your significant other while they check their text messages.
To those married people, (if any of them have managed to read to the end of this column), I can honestly say, “I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry, to hear that you’re still married.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.