http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050322134016.htm - Research Says Your Happiness Makes Your Partner Happy But Only If You Are Married

<quote>
New research by University of Warwick researcher Nick Powdthavee reveals that a married man or woman is significantly more satisfied with their life when their partner is satisfied with life. But he has also found almost no evidence of the same affect among couples that prefer cohabitation to marriage.
</quote>

Any thoughts on why?

Brad Pitt seems happy and they aren't married.  Oh that is right, he is married to Angelina Jolie.  Maybe that has something to do with it.

svn commit -m 'no way to unbreak glass' public/*

Cohabitation as opposed to marriage tends to imply less of a commitment.  Obviously it's not always true, but statistically there seems to be some evidence (at least per discussions with my minister, although his position is obviously biased).  Possibly that level of commitment between the partners is a factor in transferring happiness.

I strongly suspect that his results are instead revealing that a married person will be significantly more UNHAPPY with their life if their partner is unhappy with their life.

There are few places two people will be strongly encouraged to stay together, even if life is an almost complete hell, than in a marriage.

Two people 'merely' cohabitating won't have nearly the pressure to put up with the bullshit -- thus, no correlating linkage with THEIR unhappiness.

Also, I suspect the age of the people involved may make a difference.  I believe there's WAY more older people married than co-habitating.  And to become really dissatisfied and trapped in your life, it helps to be over 50.

Note all of this was from March, 2005, if that makes any difference for people.

look carefully at what was actually done and observed, and how it was interpreted, before assuming anything. It's the kind of result that is highly likely to have been skewed by personal prejudice.

Wait, was it a Catholic study? Maybe they're thinking "no marriage, no sex = no happy"

for instance, did they look to see if the the age of the relationship and the perceived level of commitment are similar?

the study might only be saying that if you take a random selection of married and unmarried relationships, you tend to get more short-lived, semi-committed ones in the unmarried.

I went to the Warwick site for more information:
http://search.warwick.ac.uk/website?q=Powdthavee&urlPrefix=http%3A%2F%2Fwww2.warwick.ac.uk%2F&indexSection=sitebuilder

The 'summations' are written VERY badly -- look like babel-fish translations from something, Welsh perhaps?

In any event, it looked like long-term co-habiting partners also had ALMOST as much effect on each other -- the article seems to contradict the study there.

it's amazing how people will believe stuff without even a cursory look at the facts ...

"I strongly suspect that his results are instead revealing that a married person will be significantly more UNHAPPY with their life if their partner is unhappy with their life."

That's what I was thinking. How often is someone happy?

Depends.  Are they married?