242. Marriage or partnership may not make you happier at all

A lot of us might take the stress and seriousness out of dating – and have a lot more fun – if we saw mature dating as part of living rather than loading it down with the goal of marriage or permanent partnership. If that goal isn’t met dating isn’t enjoyable to us. In short, it's no fun because it didn't work.

Yesterday I was talking to a 70-year-old woman whose husband died in 1990. She’s been single since then and desperately wants a partner. “I can’t imagine living the rest of my life without a romantic partner,” she said, implying there could be no more horrible fate. It’s not surprising that she’d think she’ll be happier with a partner. Most of us have seen studies showing that married people are happier and healthier than single people. That condition is widely borne out in nearly every country studied.

But further studies are showing that it isn’t marriage, at all, that’s behind the greater happiness of married people. It appears that happier people tend to marry and that’s why married people are happier than singles. In fact one large study, compiled from the records of 24,000 Germans over 15 years, shows that after the first blush of marriage people revert to the level of happiness they had before marriage. On a scale of 0 to 10 that figure turns out to be 7.28 for the married couples on average.

Other studies show that happier couples are those who don’t see their partners as perfect. High goals for happiness, if they’re not bucked up by solid communication skills, lead to disappointment in relationships, studies show.

What all this tells me, once again, is that there’s never been any proof that something outside of us will make us happy. Happiness is an inside job. The nice thing is that it doesn’t even take any effort. When you look deeply you see that happiness, joy, and love are our true nature and appear by themselves once we uncover them by realizing that Life is living itself just perfectly without our opinions and self-centered needs and wants. When we flow with life as it is there’s just happiness. Funny how that works isn’t it?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer