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UK Wedding News

22/11/2013

'Looks Are Key To A Happy Marriage' - Study

A new study has suggested that, for men, the key to a long and happy marriage is about how attractive their wife is.

Research by psychologist Andrea Meltzer, from the Southern Methodist University Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, is said to have found that men with attractive wives have happier marriages, while their marital satisfaction continues to stay over time.

The study, which has been reported by the Daily Mail, also revealed that the same cannot be said for women, as the attractiveness of their husband played no role in how happy or satisfied a wife was said to be.

For the research, Meltzer looked at 450 newlywed couples over a four-year period.

The four different studies involved four different groups of newlyweds.

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Firstly, each participant was rated for attractiveness by an objective and independent team of researchers. Then, over the four years, each husband and wife were separately asked on up to eight occasions to rate how satisfied they were in their respective marriages.

Husbands across all four studies were found to be more satisfied than their wives at the beginning of each marriage, and over time, husbands with wives that had been rated as attractive remained more satisfied than their spouses.

The attractive wives in these marriages were also, on average, said to be more satisfied and the researchers attributed this to the fact that having a happier husband led to a happier marriage overall.

When it came to the women however, the attractiveness of a husband had no impact on the marriage as they were no more or less satisfied at the start of the marriage, or over the course of the four years, whether they had an attractive husband or not.

Meltzer explained: "These findings strengthen support for the idea that sex differences in self-reported preferences for physical attractiveness do have implications for long-term relationship outcomes.

"The significant effect of wives' attractiveness on husbands' satisfaction was significantly stronger than the non-significant effect of husbands' attractiveness on wives' satisfaction."

The findings support a similar study which was carried out by Professor Benjamin Karney in 2008.

(JP/IT)

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"A new study has suggested that, for men, the key to a long and happy marriage is about how attractive their wife is."