Married Life & Happiness

The Science Behind The Influence Of Love On Happiness

People are always surprised when I tell them I want to marry again. Considering how badly marriage ended for me, I agree it is surprising, but the truth is I believe in love, and I believe in marriage. I can not imagine living the rest of my life without a deep commitment to another person.

Over the past seven years, I had fatherless daughters, so it was important for me as the sole parent to give not just 100% but 200% to make up for their missing parent. I dropped everything to be there for my children anytime they called. I would drive ten hours on a dime if one of my daughters were sick at school. I would pick up the phone at 3:30 a.m. and go and get my daughter if she was at a friend's house and couldn’t sleep. If they called me crying, I would bolt out in the front door in my P.J.’s.

Since my husband's death seven years ago, I have dedicated myself almost exclusively to my daughters. The relationships I did have while raising my daughters were a distraction and didn’t last. Jackie Kennedy made a famous quote shortly before the election: When Caroline was three, and Jackie was pregnant with JFK Jr., she said in a TV interview that,

“If you bungle raising your children,” she said, “I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”

The well-being of my children always came first, but now that they both have Bachelor's Degrees, jobs, and wonderful partners, I can turn my attention to my own life and create my next chapter.

As an adjunct Professor, I love researching and looking at the data regardless of the subject. Therefore, I enjoyed the study by University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman, who found that marriage was “the most important differentiator” between happy and unhappy people. In the study, he found that married people are 30 points happier than unmarried people. Income contributes to happiness, too, but not as much as marriage.

In the book, “Get Married,” the author states, "Marital quality is, far and away, the top predictor of life satisfaction in America. Specifically, that men and women say they are ‘very happy’ with their lives are a staggering 545 percent higher for those who are very happily married compared with peers who are not married or less than very happy in their marriages.”

When predicting happiness, a good marriage is far more important than how much education you have, how much money you make, or how satisfied you are with your work.

The economists Shawn Grover and John F. Helliwell studied two groups of adults over time: those who married and those who did not. They found that marriage resulted in higher levels of life satisfaction, especially in middle-aged adults whose average satisfaction tends to be at its lowest. It wasn’t only the traits people brought into the marriage, but marriage itself, that positively affected life's happiness.

If you are looking for love, it’s time to get on it.

Love and blessings to all.