Will Marriage Makes People Life Happy? Is it correct?
Many of the people say that marriage make their life
beautiful. But brilliant people understand what actually married do their
life..
“A man doesn’t
know what happiness is until he’s married. By then it’s too late.”?- Frank
Sinatra, from ‘The Joker Is Wild’.
Who are you more inclined to believe on this one, Sinatra
or Twain? Two famous names, two opposite opinions. But who’s right?
As it turns out, ol’ blue eyes was wrong on this one.
Some researchers decided to compare marital status with happiness, and found
that married people, on average, score significantly higher than people who are
single. They also found that cohabiters, on average, are happier than singles.
And lower on the happiness scale even than singles, are people who had once
been married but no longer are – for whatever reason.
There’s a lot of debate over why this is. One side of the
argument is that marriage causes happiness – you get married, you get happier.
This makes sense; marriage is a convenient way to meet many of our needs and
wants in one shot: companionship, sex, children, financial stability, and so
on. Not to mention love, the reason people are supposed to get married in the
first place!
Then there’s the other side of the argument; happier
people are more likely to get and stay married. If you’re temperamentally
happy, you’re more likely to attract a partner, less likely to argue, and
generally just an easier person to get along with. So maybe marriage doesn’t
create happy people, but happy people create marriages? This makes sense too.
What’s the answer? Well it’s basically a little of both.
Not only are happy people more likely to get married, but also married people
become happier. In studies where people’s happiness has been tracked over time,
there were noticeable increases after the tying of the knot.
What’s interesting, is that after that initial spike,
there’s a gradual decline. Marriage gives a boost in happiness, which slowly
starts to fall, reaching its lowest point when the kids reach the teen years.
Once the kids have flown the coup, happiness returns to its pre-marriage level.
Presumably, this period where happiness declines is where
the advice about ‘making marriage work’ comes into play. They say, you’re not
supposed to take from a marriage, but to put into it. They say it takes work,
and compromise, after the honeymoon period has worn off. Apparently people have
recently been listening to this advice, at least in the UK, where the divorce
rates in 2007 were the lowest for 26 years. However, some analysts suggest the
reason for this is not romance, but the higher cost of divorce and settlement,
which I suppose is the cynical interpretation. No one knows for sure, so I’ll
let you make up your own mind on that one.
Post a Comment