Marriage is Good For You
The only mildly surprising thing here is that an unhappy marriage can be better, happiness-wise, than no marriage at all.
The bottom line, say the Cornell researchers, is that having a romantic relationship makes both men and women happier - and the stronger the relationship’s commitment, the greater the happiness and sense of well-being of the partners.
“Some commitment appears to be good, but more commitment appears to be even better,” said Claire Kamp Dush, a postdoctoral fellow with the Evolving Family Theme Project of the Institute for Social Sciences at Cornell and first author of one of the few studies to examine well-being across the relationship continuum. The study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (22:5, 2005).
Interestingly, even those in relatively unhappy marriages appear to benefit from being married, Kamp Dush said, perhaps because they benefit from marriage’s stability, commitment and social status.
“Even when controlling for relationship happiness, being married is associated with higher self-esteem, greater life satisfaction, greater happiness and less distress, whereas people who are not in stable romantic relationships tend to report lower self-esteem, less life satisfaction, less happiness and more distress,” she explained.
I think this data supports the contention that refusal to recognize same-sex marriage constitutes a real harm to those people who would like to get legally married, but cannot.
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What about the claim that the causality here is likely reversed? That is, happier people are more likely to marry because happiness is an attractive quality and generally necessary to sustain a relationship in the first place?
Is a Bad Marriage Better than None at All?
Will Willkinson reports that it is. But this conclusion doesn’t check out in the General Social Survey. In this data…
Butter, From the cited paper:
Make of that what you will.
“I think this data supports the contention that refusal to recognize same-sex marriage constitutes a real harm to those people who would like to get legally married, but cannot.”
This would only be the case if living common-law was less satisfying than legal marriage. Common sense suggests that it’s the intrinsic properties of relationship that induce the happiness, not the legal status … no?
The Flybottle no longer allows me to post comments on entries. In particular, I receive no offer to “Post a Comment” on Amar and Kozinski’s interesting responses to Buchanen’s suggestions. The original post on Buchanen’s piece no longer allows comments (at least mine).
I suspect that Will has taken measures to exclude the cell ringer ads and so forth. But I just wanted to let you know that at least some real readers (I at least) are now unable to post comments.
Is this like the old chestnut about married men living longer ? ( Or does it just SEEM that way )
Married men are more likely to die first than are their wives. ( They got first choice )
Phil has the right idea here - most of the gay and lesbian couples I know could not have cared less about the legal status of their relationships up until a few years ago. It was only after they started doing the same-sex marriages in San Francisco that it became such a big issue.
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I can’t be bothered with anything these days, but shrug. I just don’t have anything to say recently.
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