Marriage makes people happier in the long run, says study

Marriage may not be a guarantee for a blissful life, but it may provide a long-lasting protection against your unhappiness, says a new study.

Marriage may not be a guarantee for a blissful life, but it may provide a long-lasting protection against your unhappiness, says a new study.

Happy-Couple

Researchers from the Michigan State University in the US found that getting hitched does not make one any happier as it may be rough, but it seems to be better than the alternative.

However, being married makes a person stable and happier in the long run compared to their unmarried peers who show a gradual decline in happiness as the years passed, they found.

"Our study suggests that people on an average are happier than they would have been if they didn’t get married," lead study author Stevie Yap was quoted as saying by Daily Mail.

For their study, Yap and colleagues studied the data of thousands of participants of a national British survey. They set out to find whether personality helps people adapt to major life events.

The answer, essentially, was no: personality traits such as conscientiousness do not help people deal with losing a job or having a baby.

In general, same-age participants who were not married showed a decline in happiness as the years passed. Those who were married, however, largely bucked this trend. It's not that marriage caused their satisfaction level to spike but instead kept it, at least, stable.