When the honeymoon is a fading memory and nasty nitpicking is on the uptick — don’t put the divorce attorneys on speed dial.
The bickering of youth might be a rite of passage, but it’s possible the best is yet to come. As married couples age, they actually let go of resentments and show more humor and, well, love toward each other, according to a new study out of the University of California, Berkeley.
Researchers analyzed videotaped conversations between 87 middle-aged and older husbands and wives, who’d been married for 15 to 35 years, and tracked their emotional interactions over the course of 13 years.
The study, just published in the journal Emotion, charts an increase in positive behaviors, such as joking around and cuddling — and a decrease in defensiveness and criticism.
The results challenge long-held theories that emotions flatten or deteriorate as we age — and point instead to an emotionally positive trajectory for long-term married couples. As bodies sag and soften, it’s possible for bonds to strengthen.
“Our findings shed light on one of the great paradoxes of late life,” says lead study author Robert Levenson, a UC Berkeley psychology professor. “Despite experiencing the loss of friends and family, older people in stable marriages are relatively happy and experience low rates of depression and anxiety. Marriage has been good for their mental health.”
The results are the latest to emerge from a sprawling 25-year UC Berkeley study of more than 150 marriages. The subjects, many now in their 70s, 80s and 90s, are hetero couples from the San Francisco Bay Area that researchers began tracking in 1989.
Every five years or so, researchers viewed 15-minute interactions between spouses in a lab setting as they discussed shared experiences and areas of conflict.
Listening and speaking behaviors were coded by facial expressions, body language, verbal content and tone of voice. Emotions were split into 14 categories: anger, contempt, disgust, domineering behavior, defensiveness, fear, tension, sadness, whining, interest, affection, humor, enthusiasm and validation.
Researchers found that both middle-aged and older couples, regardless of their satisfaction with their relationship, experienced increases in positive emotional behaviors with age, while experiencing a decrease in overall negative emotional behaviors.
“Given the links between positive emotion and health, these findings underscore the importance of intimate relationships as people age, and the potential health benefits associated with marriage,” says co-lead author Alice Verstaen, who conducted the study as a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System.