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Hang in There. As Couples Age, Humor Replaces Bickering:
Honeymoon long over? Hang in there. A new University of California, Berkeley, study shows those prickly disagreements that can mark the early and middle years of marriage mellow with age as conflicts give way to humor and acceptance.
Researchers analyzed videotaped conversations between 87 middle-aged and older husbands and wives who had been married for 15 to 35 years, and tracked their emotional interactions over the course of 13 years. They found that as couples aged, they showed more humor and tenderness towards another.
Overall, the findings, just published in the journal Emotion, showed an increase in such positive behaviors as humor and affection and a decrease in negative behaviors such as defensiveness and criticism. The results challenge long-held theories that emotions flatten or deteriorate in old age and point instead to an emotionally positive trajectory for long-term married couples.
Journal Reference:
Alice Verstaen, Claudia M. Haase, Sandy J. Lwi, Robert W. Levenson. Age-related changes in emotional behavior: Evidence from a 13-year longitudinal study of long-term married couples.. Emotion, 2018; DOI: 10.1037/emo0000551
A sense of humor is key.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:48PM (9 children)
And yet, I hear of couples who stayed together for 20 to 40 years, then divorced. As to why, some stay together, live with a shaky truce, only until the kids are adults, then split. If not for their children, they would have divorced much sooner. In other cases, one of the partners worsens as they age, becoming more paranoid, crazy, and downright dangerous.
Perhaps those are exceptional cases, and this study highlights and explains the more usual trajectory?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:58PM (3 children)
Exceptions. The highest divorce rate is less than 10 years, and reduces as the marriage goes longer. Kids and financial dependence are obvious reasons for staying together when they'd otherwise split.
But, the easiest people to get in the sack are younger people that have been married about 2-3 years. They honeymoon is over, and they see all their friends partying hard and getting laid. They are desperate for a clandestine romp in the hay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:41PM (2 children)
Kids actually make the marriage/relationship more likely to break down, but not divorce. It's no surprise that adding a screaming ball of stress which saps your time, sleep, finances, and ability to have alone time with your partner would cause trouble in a relationship. So, the couple may stay together 'for the kids,' but the kid will definitely notice that their parents don't seem to get along at all, and neither will it be good for the parents' mental health.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:36PM (1 child)
I will point out that humans, indeed any living thing, have been raising babies since their existence as a species.
To say that children cause marriages to fail seems... statistically not the majority case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:00PM
I will add to my post (parent) that we would have to define the meaning of "marriage breakdown" first.
Maybe what you call "breakdown" I just call "stress".
We both agree that children are not the carefree bliss shown on a Hallmark card, but I would say that a relationship that has not been tested may not have been that strong to start with. You may say there's no point in beating something repeatedly just to see if it can survive it, and I confess I don't have a logical comeback for that argument except to say that people (collectively) are meant to have kids, so it's not something that you can't handle provided you are committed.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:28PM (1 child)
That's not so much unfitness for each other as unfitness as a human being in general. If you don't buy into tribalism on a family level at least, you're not going to be happy with anybody. If you do buy into tribalism on a family level, it's not an issue; you fight and you make up. Small scale tribalism is what allowed humanity to thrive at all, though the jury's still out on how far upwards scales with us.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @10:28PM
It scales all the way up to "they have a different skin color"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mr_bad_influence on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:47PM (2 children)
One cause of divorce after a long period of marriage seems to be retirement. When couples, who may not have a solid foundation for their marriage, find themselves together 24x7 all of the suppressed insecurities and annoyances can surface. I love my wife but I'm happy we have separate interests and friends as well as mutual ones. We both need our time alone, it helps us appreciate each other more. FWIW - married to the same woman for over 37 years, no children.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:01AM (1 child)
You don't need to wait until retirement -- there's the "empty nest" syndrome that can set in well before that.
Someone above said that people find each other's quirks amsuing for the first few years. Sounds about right. Traditional timeline would be to spend that time courting, then marry, and by the time the initial delusion and novelty wears off, you have kids... Which provide a great distraction from relationship problems for 20 years or more. Then kids leave, and suddenly there's nobody to pick up from activities and occupy your weekends attending games or recitals... And suddenly you have to live alone with your spouse again.
Retirement can be another hurdle, but if you're lucky, you've already come to peace by that time with each other's company. I bet if you look at stats, there's likely a lot more divorce at onset of "empty nest" (as well as mid-life crisis, which used to correspond to empty nest, but now with people having kids later more likely occurs as kids become teenagers and need less active care which also forces spouses to talk again rather than just get distracted with kids and related chores). By the time you hit retirement I assume most people are resigned to their fate. (Which isn't generally as dire as it sounds.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:47PM
I agree with many of your points but not the "traditional" timeline for having children.
Traditionally, pre-birth control, you started fucking and POP! out comes the first baby.
You were still in the ga-ga, how cute my woman or man is, when you had your kid. This all makes sense evolutionarily because this is how you ensure the species is propagated in greatest numbers. The haze of lust/love is the lure for reproduction.