ask dr. read      Idaho Statesman columns      new articles      biography      formal resume      philosophy      services offered      contact dr. read      psychology links      other links      forms      pictures		Marital Satisfaction a U-Curve? by James M. Read, Ph.D. Don't ask "old" married couples what it was like to be married for 20 or 30 or more years. What they say might discourage you -- if you're a young couple planning on getting married. It's because retrospectively both men and women who have been married that long tend to say the beginning was good, things went downhill, and then it got better again. A "U-shaped curve." But if you ask people the same questions every year or so, as they are actually living their marriages, the results look quite different. No "U-curve." It disappears completely. These are the findings from a 40 year long study of men recruited between 1938 and 1942 at Harvard and followed all this time by researchers from Dartmouth Medical School. Husbands and wives were asked to rate the quality of their marriage at regular intervals throughout the study. At the end of the study they were asked to assess their entire relationship through the years, retrospectively. That's when the interesting results appeared. Ask people retrospectively to rate their experience and you get one answer. Do the same thing prospectively, and the pattern changes. When it comes to marriage anyway, it appears we later remember things somewhat differently than we felt at the time. Other studies have shown the same "U-curve" effect. And another interesting little item: the long-term prospective ratings showed only a steady but very slight decrease in satisfaction over the years. Considering current divorce rates I think that's pretty good. Is there a lesson in all of this? Maybe. At least these results point up the fact that how you feel about something depends to some extent on your reference point in time. Looking back gives a different perspective. When you're right in the middle of something you may see it and experience it differently than you will later. Considering that we often forget how bad something was, I think the fact that the prospective ratings were better in the middle period of the marriage (no U-curve) is some kind of positive sign. I think it says something good about the quality of a marriage as experienced at the time in the middle years. The fact that later we look back and see it differently I can't explain. I guess we'll need more research to elucidate in that area! In any case, those planning marriage ought perhaps not to ask those "older" folks about how it was in the middle years -- they might be biased (by the "U-curve effect")! James M. Read, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist  Originally published in The Idaho Stateman newspaper (Boise, Idaho) February 17, 1994 For more information, or to contact the author (that's me!), write to James M. Read, Ph.D., jread@jread.com