I still remember reading in the book “Thinking Fast and Slow” and the research they presented on happiness. Apparently their data averaged out to: 1. baseline happiness when single, 2. big spike up in the first year of marriage, 3. Settles at a permanent level below the baseline (from when single).
The main problem is that making a happy marriage stay happy takes a lot of daily work. Thankfully my parents showed me how to do that, and more importantly my dad showed me how to make it fun.
Your dad sounds wise. Knowledge like that still isn’t widespread, and back then even less so. There are no role models teaching/showing/demonstrating this in real life or in media that I have come across.
I have not read the book, but from reading some summaries and commentaries, I got the impression that other people took the message as being different from “marriage makes your life measurably less happy” as the chart implied.
The figure takes on a different meaning, however, when we remember that “How satisfied are you with your life?” is not a simple question. When answering it, people think of significant events in the recent past or near future. People who are recently married or expecting to marry are likely to retrieve that fact, which affects their answer. But those who are not do not think of marriage when answering. The graph could be read as the likelihood that people will think of their marriage when asked about their lives.
This demonstrates once again how we are “blind to our blindness”—how we are unaware of the heuristic mistakes that we make. In evaluating this graph, people do not understand that respondents have substituted their answer to how satisfied they are with their life with how easily they can think of happy events in their lives.
Glad it’s worked well for the original OP.
I still remember reading in the book “Thinking Fast and Slow” and the research they presented on happiness. Apparently their data averaged out to: 1. baseline happiness when single, 2. big spike up in the first year of marriage, 3. Settles at a permanent level below the baseline (from when single).
The main problem is that making a happy marriage stay happy takes a lot of daily work. Thankfully my parents showed me how to do that, and more importantly my dad showed me how to make it fun.
A lot of couples stop dating after they get married, it seems they just want to go through a checklist
Your dad sounds wise. Knowledge like that still isn’t widespread, and back then even less so. There are no role models teaching/showing/demonstrating this in real life or in media that I have come across.
Does that book mention that married women die earlier?
Which is patently untrue, on average married women live about 2 years longer than unmarried women
Well, that depends of which study you look at
I have not read the book, but from reading some summaries and commentaries, I got the impression that other people took the message as being different from “marriage makes your life measurably less happy” as the chart implied.