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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: 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.