As a public service, “The Monkey Cage” momentarily transforms itself into a marriage counseling service.
Been married for a few years? Is the bloom starting to fade from the rose? Well, here’s some bad news: If you’re a bettor, don’t bet that it’s going to get better. But there’s a silver lining.
In the new issue of Psychological Science, Irene Tsapelas, Arthur Aron, and Terri Orbach report on a study (gated) in which Detroit-area couples were surveyed in the seventh and sixteenth years of their marriage. Those who were more bored with their marriage in Year 7 were, unsurprisingly, also less satisfied with the marriage. Strikingly, when the researchers controlled for the level of marital satisfaction at Year 7, they still found that being bored in Year 7 strongly predicted being dissatisfied in Year 16. (The sample for the study was confined to couples who were still together at Year 16. Those who had divorced by Year 16 had been more bored at Year 7, but not significantly so.)
Further analysis revealed that the impact of boredom on marital satisfaction nine years later was mediated by the closeness of the couple’s relationship. Based on that finding, the authors reach a hopeful conclusion:
bq. Not only conflicts, but also simple boredom, can shape relationships over the long term. …[C]ouples can reduce boredom with shared exciting activities …Thus, … increasing rewards may matter as much or more than reducing costs; or, in more contemporary terms, it may be important to focus not just on eliminating negatives, but also on enhancing positives.
In other words, don’t just sit around and stew about your individual or mutual loss of joy and sense of excitement. Break out of your rut and do something new and exciting together, seize on opportunities to do so as they arise, and don’t wait for them to arise by themselves. Maybe nine years later, you’ll not only still be together, but will be very glad that you are.