American Marriages: Happiness and Health Decline Over Time
If you want to know what happens to people after they marry, don’t just look at newlyweds
In one of the longest-running studies of the link between marrying and happiness, ongoing for more than 20 years, German adults are asked repeatedly, year after year, how happy they are. That way, researchers can see if people get any happier when they marry than they were when they were single. The German study found that when people marry, those who will stay married enjoy a “honeymoon effect.” They become a bit happier around the time of the marriage, but then that happiness dissipates over time. On the average, the Germans who married and stayed married returned to the same level of happiness they experienced when they were single, and that happened within a few years.
In my writings on marital status and happiness (in Singled Out and elsewhere), I’ve pointed out that happiness studies like that one don’t really tell us how happiness will change when you marry, because the honeymoon effect occurs only for those who stay married. Those who marry and then divorce actually become a bit less happy as their wedding day approaches and that decline continues until the year before the divorce becomes final.
