The Secret to a Long, Strong Marriage

Marriage. One of life’s greatest milestones. For many of us, our wedding day is something magical that we’ve spent much of our life envisioning. The wedding day itself, even with all its stresses is not the biggest challenge of married life, however. Keeping a marriage happy and healthy is the real challenge. Recently, a scientific study, which examined brain-images of long-time-married women, revealed the secret to a happy marriage.

The study, published in Human Brain Mapping demonstrated that relationship satisfaction of married couples was related to a certain pattern of neural activity in wives. This pattern was directly related to their husband’s displays of positive emotion, rather than negative emotion.

According to CNN, “Psychologist Raluca Petrican at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and her colleagues at the University of Toronto recruited 14 women with an average age of 72 who'd been married for an average of 40 years.” The women watched a series of videos during which their brain waves were analyzed. In the videos, the women’s husbands or a complete stranger were presented displaying an emotional reaction. It was seen that the women reacted more positively to their husband than to strangers. Yet, surprisingly, when the husbands demonstrated inappropriate negative reactions, the women viewed their husbands as complete strangers, according to the brain scans. Not only that, but simply watching their husbands express happiness made the women happy as a result. “This jibes with the past research that's shown it's our response to our partners' positive news that is all-important for relationship satisfaction” according to CNN.

Science is able to concretely demonstrate a factor, which may be the secret to a successful marriage, as these women had all been married for over 40 years. Support and positivity are known to strengthen relationships and friendships alike. It is no surprise then that these factors play into marital success as well.

So the secret for a good marriage? Be there for each other, be happy for each other, and practice gratitude. Positivity can change the world!