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As Married Couples Age, Humor Replaces Bickering

posted by martyb on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the selection-bias? dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

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.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:47PM (#770087)

    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.