A couple of new UK studies out today have boiled down relationship success to a few simple stats. Totally fascinating, albeit overly generalised, stuff! (Anyone love relationship generalisations as much as me?)
The spurious figures:
* Women should be 27 per cent more intelligent: Of the 1,074 couples looked at aged between 19 and 75, the report concluded that the wife should be 27 per cent more intelligent than her husband, hold a degree while he should not.
Hello, the “I just want to marry a plumber” call of just about every smart woman I know has backing! I’m not sure what the evolutionary rationale is to this factoid. And I don’t know whether 40 years ago it was the same. I suspect not.
Perhaps it’s a new quirk in adaptive relating – succesful relationships these days require a lot of smart juggling and emotional awareness. It’s more complex than 40 years ago to run a relationship. Women tend to steer relationships more than men. So smart, emotionally aware women make better relationship partners.
Or it could be that as more women lead more complex, cerebral lives, we seek more grounded, non-intellectual men who don’t get caught up in our head-spinning. Perhaps.
* 5 years: If a couple are seeking a happy and long-lasting union the bride should be five years younger than her groom and from the same cultural background. Experts from the Geneva School of Business say sticking to this formula increased the chances of having a long and happy marriage by a fifth.
* Three years: It comes as another study revealed yesterday that married couples are their happiest two years, 11 months and eight days after walking down the aisle.
The study also found they enjoy their best sex, romantic meals and nights out with mates partying after two years and four months.
Wives are likely to receive a respectable number of flowers, chocolates and compliments two-and-a-half years into their marriage.
Men helping with household chores like hoovering and cooking peaks just before the their third anniversary, while big arguments will be a distant memory three months later.
