The key to a long-lasting relationship? Research reveals that 1 indicator is the most accurate and can predict whether you will break up after 4 years
A well-known baseball anchor said, “This ball is like a girlfriend who has changed her heart and cannot come back.” It has become a catchy saying for many Taiwanese baseball fans. Now, a study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships believes that women’s willingness to maintain a relationship dominates and even determines the direction of the relationship; if the woman makes up her mind to break up, the relationship may be like a powerful home run that “cannot come back.” “.
Are women the key to lasting relationships? Study: Predicts breakup 4 years later
A research team from Canada and the United States used the Relationship Development Study (RDS) sample to recruit 1,294 subjects aged 18-34 who had been in heterosexual partnerships for at least 2 months. All partners were single at the start of the study, more than 40% were living together, nearly 30% had children, and 14% had children together. Most of the subjects took their current partnership quite seriously but had not yet institutionalized the relationship through marriage.
The research team finally screened 314 couples and adopted a longitudinal research design, collecting data 11 times at intervals of 4-6 months over 4 years (2008-2012), and adding control variables, such as children, to the research model. number, cohabitation status, relationship duration, education, age, income and race to exclude the impact of other factors on the end of the partnership.
The results of the study showed that women’s willingness to maintain a relationship was better than men’s in predicting the end of the relationship in the next two, three and four years. In other words, if a woman is less motivated to maintain a relationship, the couple is more likely to break up in the future. Judging from the standardized logistic regression coefficient (β value, the higher the value, the greater the impact on breakup), the impact of men and women on the four major relationship indicators is shown in the figure below.
The positive value of the above data represents a positive correlation, and the negative value represents a negative correlation. For example, women are more likely to predict a breakup than men; regardless of gender, the better the relationship satisfaction, commitment, and love, the lower the likelihood of relationship breakdown. Judging from the research results, although women’s willingness to maintain a relationship is better than men’s in predicting the direction of the relationship, there is no significant difference in the predicted direction between men and women in terms of relationship persistence, satisfaction or love level.
Is your girlfriend who has changed her heart really unable to come back? Expert: It may be difficult to recover if you make up your mind to break up
Study author Dr. Matthew D. Johnson said that the research results provide partial support for existing theories of gender differences. For example, women’s willingness to maintain a partnership is more predictive of future partnership breakup, which is consistent with the perspectives of social psychology and evolutionary psychology. consistent.
“The social psychology perspective believes that women are given the responsibility to maintain relationships in society; the evolutionary psychology perspective believes that women’s investment in childbearing is much higher than that of men, so women will pay more attention to the quality of their partner relationships to ensure that Potential partners remain committed while pregnant.”
Dr. Johnson also stated that the sample in this study was unmarried heterosexual couples in long-term relationships, many of whom lived together or had children. The relationship between the subject’s partner has entered a very serious stage. In this case, it better reflects whether the woman is really willing to get married or have children with her partner. On the contrary, women who are determined to break up are often difficult to recover. .
After marriage, women no longer dominate! Married men and women will jointly decide the life span of marriage
However, the findings do not assert that male commitment is unimportant for relationship maintenance. For example, research has found that in the first year of a relationship, the importance men and women attach to maintaining the relationship can effectively predict whether the relationship will last; past studies on married couples have found that the level of commitment between men and women is not significant in predicting divorce. Differences, which also show that the importance of male commitment may be different at different relationship stages.
Finally, Dr. Johnson reminded that this study still has its limitations. For example, the study sample is from the United States, and the process of the relationship ending may be related to the partner’s cross-cultural background; and the sample data is more than 10 years old and cannot be fully applicable to today’s partners. relation. In addition, the study only focused on unmarried heterosexual couples and did not include same-sex, married, or middle-aged and elderly couples as samples, which may lead to concerns about insufficient diversity.
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