Category: Relationships

How being an extravert or introvert affects your marital happiness.

Women who are introverted are satisfied with their marriages for longer, a study finds.

Introverts typically prefer their own company and may be seen by others as reserved — although it is not the same as shyness.

Similarly, women who are conscientious are also more satisfied with their lives after marrying.

People who are conscientious are more careful, efficient and self-disciplined — and they aim for achievement.

The study’s authors write:

“Such a result might be explained by the tendency for conscientious individuals to place more value on relationship goals and therefore conscientious individuals may strive harder to ensure success.

This result is consistent with conscientious individuals being more satisfied with their relationships.”

In contrast, extraverted men gain the most from being married in terms of life satisfaction, while introverted men gain the least.

Indeed, introverted men were less satisfied with life after getting married than those who never married.

The conclusions come from a study of 2,015 Germans who were followed over eight years.

During this time, 468 got married and their happiness was tracked.

The results showed that, on average, people’s happiness peaked near their marriage, then faded away after a year or two.

However, happiness changed over time in different ways depending on their personality.

Introverted women and extraverted men fared the best in the long-term.

Others felt the come-down within a year or two.

The drop in happiness was sharper for men, particularly for introverted men, the authors write:

“Whilst all men experience a pre-marital increase in their life satisfaction, men that are extraverted seem to experience longer-term benefits to their life satisfaction during marriage.

Introverted men, however, experience significant drops in their life satisfaction that result in them being approximately 0.20 SD [standard deviations] lower in life satisfaction than those who never marry.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Boyce et al., 2016).

Watch the eyes for this sign that a partner is 50 percent more likely to cheat on you.

Partners who spend a fraction of a second longer looking at other people they find attractive are 50 percent more likely to cheat, psychological research finds.

The marriages of those who can’t keep their eyes in their heads are also more likely to fail.

Other signs of infidelity were hidden in couple’s appearance and dating history.

Less attractive women were more likely to be unfaithful, it emerged.

Among men, those that reported more short-term sexual partners before marriage were more likely to have an affair.

The opposite was true for women: the more sex partners before marriage, the more faithful women were during marriage.

The conclusions come from a study in which newlyweds were shown pictures of both average-looking and very attractive men and women.

Those that had trouble looking away from the very attractive pictures were 50% more likely to cheat.

Professor Jim McNulty, the study’s first author, said:

“People are not necessarily aware of what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.

These processes are largely spontaneous and effortless, and they may be somewhat shaped by biology and/or early childhood experiences.”

Faithful newlyweds were more likely to downgrade or discount the very attractive faces they saw.

This helped them put these other options out of their mind.

The study followed 233 newlyweds for up to the first 3.5 years of their marriage.

Professor McNulty said that social media has a role to play in the US divorce rate, which is approaching 50 percent:

“With the advent of social media, and thus the increased availability of and access to alternative partners, understanding how people avoid the temptation posed by alternative partners may be more relevant than ever to understanding relationships.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (McNulty et al., 2018).

Language use changes three months before a relationship break up.

Signs that a couple are going to break up are evident in their use of language months before the event happens, research finds.

The types of words both people use changes three months before breaking up.

Their language shifts more towards a self-focus with greater use of the pronoun ‘”I”.

There is also a higher use of words that indicate cognitive processing.

This suggests that they are thinking about something intensely.

Examples of cognitive processing words include ‘want’, ‘think’, ‘need’, ‘realise’, ‘decide’, ‘reason’, ‘depend’ and ‘wonder’.

This is true whether they are the person about to end the relationship or the one on the receiving end.

Ms Sarah Seraj, the study’s first author, said:

“It seems that even before people are aware that a breakup is going to happen, it starts to affect their lives.

We don’t really notice how many times we are using prepositions, articles or pronouns, but these function words get altered in a way when you’re going through a personal upheaval that can tell us a lot about our emotional and psychological state.”

The study analysed over 1 million posts by 6,800 people on Reddit, an online forum for discussing a wide range of subjects.

One of these forums, called r/BreakUps, is dedicated to relationship issues.

The results of the analysis revealed that language use became more personal and informal around three months before the couples broke up.

This pattern continued for a further six months afterwards.

Similar shifts in language use were seen in forums discussing divorce and other upheavals.

Ms Seraj said:

“These are signs that someone is carrying a heavy cognitive load.

They’re thinking or working through something and are becoming more self-focused.

Sometimes the use of the word ‘I’ is correlated with depression and sadness.

When people are depressed, they tend to focus on themselves and are not able to relate to others as much.”

A minority of people’s language did not revert and they returned to the r/BreakUps forum to retell the story of the end of their relationship again and again.

This suggests that some people find it particularly hard to adjust to their new circumstances.

Dr Kate Blackburn, study co-author, said:

“What makes this project so fascinating is that for the first time, through technology, we can see the way people experience a breakup in real time.

Implications for this research are far reaching.

At the most basic level, it gives you, me, and everyday people insight into how loved ones may respond over time to the end of a romantic relationship.”

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Seraj et al., 2021).