An Experiment about the Happiness of Marriage

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in DuPage County divorce lawyer

There is an old maxim about marriage that it is better to be happy than it is to be right. Rather than take that on authority, three doctors in New Zealand decided to run a study to see how true it was.  It turns out that the opposite might be truer.

The general practitioners said that the cause of the study was that they often see patients “who lead unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather than happy.”  They contacted a couple to act as a trial.  That particular couple was asked to participate due to the power dynamic of their marriage.  The woman in the relationship preferred to be right all the time whereas the man wanted to be happy.

Each day of the study, both spouses were asked to rate their individual quality of life.  The doctors instructed the husband to always agree with whatever his spouse said, be that a request or an opinion.  It did not matter if she was wrong or right.  The wife was unaware of this aspect of the study.

By the twelfth day of the study, the man had enough of the research.  He sat his wife down and told her of the ruse.  The man’s quality of life scores fell from a seven out of ten all the way down to three.  He said that his wife became overly critical of him.  The wife’s quality of life rose slightly during the study, from eight to eight and a half.

"It seems that being right, however, is a cause of happiness, and agreeing with what one disagrees with is a cause of unhappiness," the doctors wrote in the British Medical Journal. If you have found yourself dissatisfied with your marriage, consider if you are right any of the time.  If you are not and cannot see a change to your relationship, then it might be time to consider a divorce.  Contact an experienced divorce attorney in Kane County today.