McNulty and Neff (2008) propose that absolute attractiveness is not as important to marital success as relative differences in attractiveness. The psychologists found that marriages where the husband was more attractive than the wife were less successful. Specifically, the researchers found that "more attractive husbands behaved less constructively and were less satisfied with their marriages." The study interviewed and rated 82 pairs of newlyweds in their first six months of their first marriage. 54% of the men and 50% of the women were full time students, so the average combined income of these couples was under $20,000.
This seems to be part of the "men value attractive mates more" thing, if I'm interpreting it correctly. It could also be about the amount of attention each partner is getting, and how much they need. Alternatively, it could be about the fact that all of the couples are really young. It would seem to me that the important factor would be how each member of the couple perceived their relative attractiveness. I've known plenty of beautiful people who thought they were ugly, and vice versa. With this study, as with most others, if your partner is the same sex as you, you're on your own.
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I'd like to see the age distribution and how that correlates to whatever trend they're looking at. If half their sample has both people still in full-time school, that's got to skew the results. And 6 months into a new marriage is... well, frankly, not all that far. Takes a little longer to iron out any kinks, if there are any.
The average relationship length was 45.3 months, though (SD = 29.9 months).
Does the time married really have that much effect compared to the time together? You're married and I'm not, so I'm genuinely curious.
For many people it does, yes. Mostly it comes down to, not so much if they've been married, but whether or not they've actually lived together. Plus, how well they know themselves. Plus whether or not they've discussed some things that I think a lot of people don't discuss -- or even think about discussing -- until they get married. Then they get to the marriage counseling session, which many people do (if only to get the discount at the marriage license, or because their pastor/priest/minister requires it) and find out that hey, there are tons of things that we need to talk about that we just haven't. [Whether or not the counseling is worthwhile depends a lot on who's doing the counseling, as well. There are definitely priests I wouldn't trust on that account.]
Pretty much every married couple we knew told us that "things would change" when we got married. I don't think they have to. In our case I don't think it did. But we knew each other for more than 10 years before we got married. And this is very important: we also got together (*dating-wise*) well after we knew who *we* were as individuals (aka, I know who I am), which is not the case with many people who get married, no matter how long they've been dating. When we went through the marriage counseling, it was a breeze - we'd already discussed pretty much everything she brought up on our own (there was one thing we hadn't thought of, I can't remember... oh, I think it was living will stuff, but we sorted that out pretty quickly). From what other people tell me of their married lives, this is somewhat of an anomaly.
If your college kids have been in a relationship for almost 4 years, how much of *themselves* do they really know?
As always, YMMV.
I’m glad you posted a link to this on LJ, because I’d missed the fact that you’d moved Difference Blog here. (If I’d thought about it it would have been obvious that you’d be moving it somewhere, but I missed your announcement and didn’t think of it.)
@beowabbit: *chuckles* I only posted to Dblog about it twice last week, but the LJ feed is "diffblog".
I'll probably post about both touchytranny and diffblog feeds one more time. Now if I could only convince people to stop commenting on the feeds!
As a married man, I second everything put forth by Astrogeek above..
Hey Dan, you write that they were less successful, but for what it's worth, is that the right phrasing? It showed that they were happier and more positive in their interactions. I think the findings are of significance, but can you really call that more successful?
@Jill:
Your writing style sounds a lot like Nadia's. Who are you?
I suppose you could define marital success in other terms than the satisfaction of the partners, but that's a whole path I'd be hesitant to go down. Would you define it by longevity? By number of children? By combined income? What makes a successful marriage, if not satisfaction and mutual support?
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