Are the beginnings of your relationship conflicting enough? Rest assured, the friction should subside over the years. This is in any case what emerges from a study by the University of Berkeley in California (United States). The authors explain in Emotion magazine that the tensions and negative criticisms of the first years of a couple’s life tend to calm down over the years for the benefit of more positive relationships. In aging couples, humor, tenderness and mutual acceptance take precedence over negative behaviors like defensiveness and criticism.
These findings challenge long-held theories that emotions deteriorate within couples as they age. Conversely, they rather suggest “an emotionally positive trajectory for long-married couples”, specifies the University of Berkeley website.
For their study, psychologists observed for 25 years more than 150 long marriages. Most of the study participants are now between 70 and 80 years old. Along the experiment were analyzed interactions of 15 minutes between the spouses in a laboratory. During this time, the partners exchanged on their shared experiences and their possible conflicts and disagreements within the couple. So during all these years, the experiment was repeated in order to assess the emotional changes within the couple.
As a result, the researchers found that middle-aged and older couples, regardless of their satisfaction with their relationship, exhibited more positive behaviors with age, while negative behaviors decreased.
The positive impact of marriage on mental health
“These results provide behavioral evidence […] that as we get older we focus more on the positive aspects of our lives, ”Verstaen sums up.
Another finding was that wives were more emotionally expressive than their husbands and with age tended to adopt more domineering and less affectionate behavior. But generally, across all age and sex cohorts in the study, negative behaviors decreased with age.
For researchers, findings suggest the positive impact of marriageon the elderly.
“Our results shed light on one of the great paradoxes of the end of life,” points out Robert Levenson, professor of psychology at the University of Berkeley, lead author of the study published in Emotion. “Despite the loss of friends and family, the elderly [qui vivent] stable marriages are relatively happy and experience low marriage rates. depression and D’anxiety. Marriage was good for their sanity. “
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