Curating an Intimate Relationship

"We found women are barometers. Their perceptions of how happy they are do predict their own experience in future, and also their partner's. But we found the exact same pattern for men, and just as strongly."

"We think this obviously challenges this accepted lore that women's experience takes primacy or is intrinsically more diagnostic. We find men's experiences matter just as much, for their predictive value at least."

"Nobody really knows how far out women should have this more predictive ability."

"All of us could do a little better, being reflective and aware of those fluctuations in how things are going, and knowing that if things are abnormal for you, either good or bad, chances are that's an indication things continuing either short- or long-term in going the same way."

Matthew D. Johnson, professor of family science, University of Alberta

“Happy wife, happy life” has a strong theoretical context, which may explain some of its durability in both science and culture. Photo by Getty Images

A generally accepted metric of couple satisfaction has been reduced to the catchy phrase: "Happy wife, happy life", as though this sums up the reason behind successful marriages. Unspoken but related is the injunction to men that it is their responsibility to ensure their wives are content and pleased with the relationship, making this his focus to derive his own satisfaction through his selfless attention to his wife's. As though if a man in an intimate relationship has the good sense to ensure his wife is happy, the relationship will be stable. A comforting, male-directed, male-onus formula. That just happens to be wrong.

The health of any intimate relationship is dependent on both actors' attention toward the other to derive fulfillment in maintaining the union and enjoying it. A new, detailed statistical analysis of a large data set of daily diary entries people in opposite sex relationships kept along with surveys of opposite-sex couples over time where relationship highs and lows of thousands of people were tracked, resulted in the conclusion that it is incumbent on both man and woman to be aware of each other's state of comfort in the relationship.

It is, after all is said and done, common sense. In fact, it's a peculiar turn of sensibilities, given the fact that traditionally in earlier eras, it was always impressed upon women that their duty as a wife was to ensure the husband was always satisfied with her performance as housewife, mother, and any other metric of service to the marriage from a woman's perspective. Long outdated as well, and for good reasons.

The paper was co-authored alongside researchers from Europe and North America. Professor of psychology at University of Toronto, Emily Impett, gathered much of the data the study was focused on. Theory had it that women's experience should be predictive of the long-term health of an intimate relationship. Social psychology engages with the roles expected by society of women, while evolutionary psychology focuses on their destiny as child bearers.

Study researchers looked at daily diary studies from 901 North American couples and a longer-term survey of 5,400 German couples; two parallel studies. A key finding was fluctuations in relationship satisfaction does not reverse minute to minute, but lingers; both good times and bad. The paper identifies them as 'emotional residue'.

If all is going well, suggests Dr.Johnson, be aware, contemplate why this is, and "harness that". Pay close attention to the negative, manage it and contain it "so that less than typical happiness does not continue to follow you into the future". Also common sense advice.

"Testing the barometer idea across two time scales -- day-to-day and year-to-year -- is an important feature of this investigation, as there has yet to be any specification of the period over which the barometer phenomenon should be evident. If we extend the barometer metaphor [i.e., something that registers and predicts short-term changes], we might expect more consistent evidence on the daily level, such that fluctuations in women's relationship satisfaction should more robustly predict their own and/or their partner's satisfaction. Alternatively, prior studies invoked the barometer metaphor to explain findings based on the analysis of long-term panel data, indicating many scholars view this as a longer-term process."

"Counter to expectations from long-held views in relationship science, our analysis of over 50,000 reports of relationship satisfaction from more than four thousand mixed-gender couples found no evidence that women's satisfaction was a stronger predictor of couples' relationship satisfaction than men's satisfaction at the daily or yearly level."

New Study Paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences