I am conventionally monogamous and married, and have been in a stable and affectionate relationship for almost 40 years. So I suppose I should be smug about this report that married people are the happiest people.
“We have found in Canadian, British and American data, when you include demographic variables like ‘married,’ marriage typically turns out to have a significant positive effect,” he told me over the phone. Among other benefits, “marriage is good for people because it is a vehicle and a place where good friends are made and cherished.”
But does marriage really make you happier in the long run? Or are happier people simply more likely to get married in the first place? Prof. Helliwell thinks he’s found the answer. In a new research paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, he and colleague Shawn Grover conclude not only that marriage does make people happier, but that being married to your best friend makes you extra happy. The same goes for people who live together. “Those who are best friends with their partners have the largest well-being benefits from marriage and cohabitation, even when controlling for premarital well-being levels,” they write.
Except…I don’t think marriage has anything to do with it. The cited study reports a correlation, but I don’t think they’ve teased apart the symptom, marriage, from the cause for happiness, which is almost certainly an issue of having deep friendships. The study used a Gallup World Poll to look at the effect of “marriage” across many cultures (and found a positive effect in most of them), but it seems to me that “marriage” can describe a lot of very different kinds of relationships, and that there are relationships that provide the same benefits as “marriage” without being called that. But there’s something that helps people live happier lives, and they point out the strong effect of deep friendship.
Subjective well-being research has often found that marriage is positively correlated with well-being. Some have argued that this correlation may be result of happier people being more likely to marry. Others have presented evidence suggesting that the well-being benefits of marriage are short-lasting. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, we control individual pre-marital well-being levels and find that the married are still more satisfied, suggesting a causal effect, even after full allowance is made for selection effects. Using new data from the United Kingdom’s Annual Population Survey, we find that the married have a less deep U-shape in life satisfaction across age groups than do the unmarried, indicating that marriage may help ease the causes of the mid-life dip in life satisfaction and that the benefits of marriage are unlikely to be short-lived. We explore friendship as a mechanism which could help explain a causal relationship between marriage and life satisfaction, and find that well-being effects of marriage are about twice as large for those whose spouse is also their best friend. Finally, we use the Gallup World Poll to show that although the overall well-being effects of marriage appear to vary across cultural contexts, marriage eases the middle-age dip in life evaluations for all regions except Sub-Saharan Africa.
Despite having a happy marriage myself, I’m reluctant to endorse marriage for everyone: I’ve known some miserable marriages. My grandparents, I think, would have had far happier lives if they were acculturated to accept the reasonableness of divorce — they were the two unhappiest people I’ve ever known, and they made each other miserable. We also live in a bizarre culture in which media both takes marriage for granted and paints it as an antagonistic relationship. Try watching I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners, those classics of American television, and you’ll see marriage portrayed as an exercise in sado-masochism (there are exceptions: the Dick Van Dyke Show actually did seem to show a happy and mutually supportive relationship).
Or if you want to see a real abomination, take a look at any conservative Christian guide to marriage. It’s all about rules and roles, rather than two equals who actually like each other and lift each other up.
I guess I wouldn’t advise anyone to get married. I’d say you should form close friendships with people, and if they lead to marriage, then that’s lovely. I’d also say that if you’re trying to impose laws that forbid the natural expression of intimacy and refuse to recognize the importance of it all, then you’re actively working to make people unhappy and are not supporting justice.
re OP:
Thanks for turning my stomach on Sunday. Quite appropriate for Sunday, The Lord’s Day.
Not usually recommended on links to such nonsense, but go ahead and read the comments.
Even most of the Christians are giving this moron the raspberry.
On the first page . . .
“DJ says:
January 18, 2015 at 3:19 am
And this is why religion is being left en masse. Is this satire?”
“Rebecca says:
January 18, 2015 at 3:52 am
Is this for real? I feel like it has to be a joke. It is the most sexist thing I’ve read in awhile…”
You forgot to mention the awesomeness of the marriage portrayed in the Adams Family.
And what about Gomez and Morticia Addams?
They freely express affection in a way that suits them.
They’re passionate about each other.
They communicate openly.
They participate in activities together.
They agree on parenting techniques.
They’re really passionate about each other
They know how to resolve conflicts without screaming and recrimination
Sounds like a solid marriage to me.
It’s “Addams”. And yes, I have spent my life trying to live up to that ideal. I have my exotic, romantic Morticia, little Wednesday, and two boys who have far exceeded Pugsley, but alas, I still struggle to come even close to a good Gomez, and it’s been impossible to find good help with all the qualities of Lurch. J’en peux plus.
A good Lurch would indeed be hard to find; I’d be more than happy just to be able to employ the services of a Thing (communication doesn’t seem to be the issue it would at first appear – I quite like charades. Besides, Thing can always write. Though I’ve never been sure how xe could see or hear … )
The Addams are an excellent relationship model.
Is there any record of the Addams’s marriage vows? I can’t believe they would go with “until death do us part”.
re Moggie @7:
I can’t believe they would go with “until death do us part”.
Clearly, N.A. Maybe the vows just omit that phrase. Maybe we need to ask Gomez what he said. Orrrrr, maybe they just pretend to be married, to “live in sin”, their natural state.
Contact Igors-R-Us. Won’t exactly be a Gomez, and you may find yourself wiping up a little more sthpray, bur I have heard they are quite reliable. Very good with electricity and body parts.
Moggie @7
No luck finding the Addams’ vows. Best I could manage was a quote from the 1991 movie that other couples have worked into their vows.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101272/quotes?item=qt0474573
Gomez: To live without you, only that would be torture.
Morticia: A day alone, only that would be death.
Also, many people backing InitHello’s suggestion @4 of the Addamses.
http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2014/10/couples-can-learn-gomez-morticia-addams/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/sbkasulke/gomez-and-morticia-addams-have-the-best-marriage-ever#.tpKdY8XGP
Crap. Misread PZ at #5. I conflated it with the Lurch comment by opposablethumbs at #6. Someday I’ll do something right.
Maybe.
I seem to recall the Thin Man having a pretty good marriage; however it’s been a while since I watched those movies.
The perennial popularity of research into the (universally assumed to exist as a non-debatable baseline) “benefits of marriage” often strikes me as just another tired example of conventional people workin’ hard to show why their conventional lives are bestest ever because science.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being conventionally and happily married. It’s the assumption that there’s something intrinsically wrong with you if you’re not.
Bob Newhart had a good marriage.
or two
or only one
@12 Joe Buddha
Yes! Thin Man! An authentic intellectual partnership between wife and husband.
My first instinct is to think that married people tend to be happier because it provides more ways to fit into the majority. If one is conventionally married and monogamous, that eliminates sexual identity as an excuse for people to discriminate against them. It also quells assumptions about someone choosing to remain single being a “crazy cat lady” or “creepy old man” or some other negative portrayal.
Marriage is the expectation from the majority. We all know that those who don’t fit in are ostracized. That’s one more way to join the majority and all the benefits that come with being a “normal” person.
I’m sure friends help, as well. It’s something people speak very highly of.
My basic attitude is that if you’re happily married, great! I’m happy for you!
Feel free to offer tips to people based on what you and your spouse did that worked for you.
But I’m suspicious of the “being married is objectively better for you” stuff.
Incidentally, I suspect the “married people are happier than single people” stuff is hiding something: I’ve seen studies that show that (in heterosexual pairings), a man’s happiness skyrockets after he marries – while a woman’s drops (on average, statistically speaking). Heterosexually married men are happier than single men, but single women are happier than heterosexually married women.
In the USA, we all know it has been traditional in the past that life partners have an official marriage, in part because so many laws only give benefits that way. The research in Scandinavia shows that this trend is not a necessity. Perhaps the farthest along is Iceland, where the tradition has been that marriage is no reason for a woman to change her name. So there’s no polite reason for anyone to ever know which couples that are their friends are officially married, and which are not.
So maybe we need more research from Iceland to distinguish the benefits of being a happy couple (or not) from any benefits of legal documentation.
Rise Kujikawa
This
—-
Esteleth, RN’s job is to save your ass, not kiss it
Ditto.
…if people ask for it and without the holier than thou attitude please, especially since every person and relationship is different. There’s far too much pressure to conform and generic “do this for a happy marriage” usually falls in there as well.
(Just a general thing that irritates me that pops up a lot, especially in media aimed at women)
*snort* That fucking figures though I didn’t realize someone actually bothered to study it. That’s something to look into more. Thanks.
It kind of stands to reason that people who are suited to long-term relationships are happy in long-term relationships with (a) loving partner(s).
Because unhappy relationships tend to dissolve sooner or later, usually leaving people a tad unhappy for a while after, too.
So you’re taking those people for whom a particular system works and therefore proclaim that the system is really the best. That’s like polling the people who just bought a particular brand of pizza and then conclude that this is the best brand of pizza ever.
Important cultural difference:
In Canada, common-law relationships (not married but living together) get grouped as “marrieds” not “singles”. I’m told that common-law relationships in the US are classified as “singles” if there isn’t a marriage certificate.
It says right in the article that you don’t actually have to be married to get the benefits, common-law couples have the same outcomes.
Well, stories do need conflict. Every. Single. One.
That said, the conflict doesn’t need to be with the spouses. Look at the Addams Family, possibly the happiest marriage on TV or in movies.
PZ:
Surely the Horde makes up for your lack of a Lurch. Oh, and we can Pharyngulate a poll better than him.
Considering the acceptance bestowed upon those who are in a recognized romantic relationship, is it any wonder that thus socially accepted people would be happier? Companionship is really good and important, but it doesn’t seem like the cultural side of things can be completely dismissed. It’s not like anyone looks down on the married, but try being a middle aged single woman.
Such studies smell of a pre-determined conclusion and selective data collection. How do they define “happiness”? Probably not the same as other people define the word. The UN’s “World Happiness Report” suggests that happiness is a local definition, it doesn’t coincide with any particular level of wealth, education, type of government and freedom or other factors.
“Friendship marriages are most successful”? Probably, though I suspect it’s more about common interests, about wanting to do things together and having things to do. Some of the longest lasting marriages I’ve seen were arranged marriages among people of Indian descent. The claim that one needs marriage to be happy is as ludicrous as the claim of needing religion to be ethical. It’s a coincidence, not a redundancy, and can as easily be a contradiction.