20 ms·

How relationship satisfaction changes across your lifetime

307 points by terrycody 5y ago

chrisdbanks 5y ago
Seems to be correlated with when you have young kids. Not surprising really as having young kids is like having a grenade set off in your relationship.
- digbybk 5y ago
  This might just be an assumption. We'd need to compare with childless couples. As a datapoint of one, I'm getting close to 40, just over 10 years of marriage without children, and this article describes my experience eerily well and has given me real pause.
- Arubis 5y ago
  That lines up with other studies I’ve seen elsewhere; for better or for worse, this entire proposed curve does (dip when the kids arrive, then slow but steady rise in happiness till self-reported values exceed childless couples). That makes the choice to have children a necessary variable to control for; otherwise this meta-analysis is about as diagnostic as a mid-2000’s Internet personality test. Anecdotally, very young kids in and of themselves are in fact pretty great! It’s the logistics around child-rearing that are soul-crushing. Or, glibly: having kids good, early parenting bad.
  - Axsuul 5y ago
    What would make the logistics part better? Would it be hiring dedicated help?
    - ativzzz 5y ago
      It would be having community that helps ease the burden of child rearing. Grandparents, neighbor friends with kids, etc
      - watwut 5y ago
        The trouble is, such community requires payback. You need ot just take, you need to give. And often in ways you don't like giving or more then you like. It requires a lot more negotiation with more people, compromise about what we are used to be autonomous in and conformity. The strong individualism is not really compatible with that. On HN when these structures are talked about, it is always only in terms of essentially free labor from extended family.
    - Arubis 5y ago
      I had many moments of thinking “is there a product here?” Most things that help aren’t products. We nibble around the logistic edges with buying our time back: a front-door laundry service, a lot of delivery meals when we had a newborn during peak Covid, Amazon Prime for virtually everything. “Acquiring consumer stuff” is fairly solved. We had a nanny for a while, and that had a lot of upsides, but having a family-like relationship that’s actually transactional is extra overhead to manage. Nice while it was working well, though. My local pizza joint’s app has a “repeat last delivery order” that comes in handy. Ultimately, though, the hard parts remain hard. When a kid is sick or doesn’t sleep through the night, who’s skipping work tomorrow? How do we tag-team our way to survive till bedtime? Do I not bill out a client today so my wife can get enough of a break from the kids to stay sane—and vice-versa? It’s very isolating. This feels like a fabric-of-society issue to which the product-and-services-to-solve-it mentality, however well-intentioned in the moment, is kinda how we ended up here in the first place. There isn’t an app or a service that’ll make living in the states (or, I gather, much of the west, albeit to a lesser degree) less individualized and more communal.
      - ericd 5y ago
        To your point about becoming more communal, we found this the other day: https://www.cohousing.org/directory/wpbdp_category/comm/ https://www.cohousing.org/directory/wpbdp_category/comm/ We haven’t tried it, but this looks like it could be great if you find a group you’re compatible with.
        Arubis 5y ago
        That looks like a cool resource; thank you! We’re pondering making a move at some point in the next year or so, and this is gross for that particular mill.
- leokennis 5y ago
  Having kids is weird. I love them a lot, but I also severely miss my life and relationship with my wife from before I had them.
  - beardyw 5y ago
    Wait till they grow up and leave home. Then you will miss them, and they don't call.
    - watwut 5y ago
      You dont get life before kids back when kids grow. Too many years passed in the meantime. The world is not the same. You are older and a lot of activities you have done before are harder. The former friends moved on and you have to build new ones.
      - ip26 5y ago
        Yeah, but you might also realize many of those activities were (unbeknownst to you) essentially performative displays to attract a partner, with little inherent worth.
        watwut 5y ago
        Might. But very likely won't. And even if they were, it does not matter. You are still need to find the replacement, still need to fill the void. Otherwise you will just sit on sofa depressed and feel pointless.
  - Arubis 5y ago
    I can relate; that said, a confounding factor I’ve been unable to disambiguate is raising young kids _during a pandemic_. How much of the challenge was typical parenting? How much was doing it in a world on fire when it was unsafe for the kids’ grandparents to travel and help out, and mothers’ groups weren’t a thing, etc.? My wife and I just recently had our first no-kids date night since last Father’s Day (just short of a year ago). It was pretty great! The connection is still there. But it was also _surreal_, and I can totally see how couples just lose themselves in the chaos. It worries me sometimes.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > Not surprising really as having young kids is like having a grenade set off in your relationship I heard this a lot before I had kids. Then we had kids and it was not only fine, but actually enjoyable. Yes, there was a short-term increase in stress and reduction in personal time, but the key factor missing from online discussions on the topic is that the stressful low-sleep, diaper-changing period isn't all that long. A couple percent of your lifetime, really. The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids and spending time with them. There's so much media that portrays children as some sort of endless chore and drain on your time, but it turns out that it's actually a ton of fun to play with your kids and help them grow.
  - jethro_tell 5y ago
    Heh, we were about the same. Add in that sweet tech oncall lifestyle for me and sleep deprivation was either not an issue or didn't change my personality basis so the stress was quite limited. The under one years were at a time in my career when I was working at 2am most nights anyway. A few minutes to hang out and take care of someone no love was a nice break. Mom slept pretty much through the night after the first couple of weeks. Decade and 1/2 in and I can't see things getting worse, but we'll see.
  - balfirevic 5y ago
    > The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids and spending time with them. Well, that's the core of the issue, isn't it? I know people who were really looking forward to having children, wanted them, and anticipated that they would enjoy it - so expected personal sacrifice was not that big of an issue. It's just what you had to do to enjoy having kids. Media that portrays children as a chore, on the other hand, matches the thought process of someone who looks at having children (potentially including their own childhood) and thinks "why would someone want that?". It was a welcome balance, speaking as someone who barely came across portrayal of children as anything other than the source of joy and something that everyone - surely - wants. It was a different media landscape 10-15 years ago, and I like the current one better even if not maximally nuanced.
  - 5y ago
Cenk 5y ago
This is the paper they‘re talking about: https://oa.mg/work/10.1037/bul0000342 https://oa.mg/work/10.1037/bul0000342 Fulltext here: https://doi.apa.org/fulltext/2022-16081-001.pdf https://doi.apa.org/fulltext/2022-16081-001.pdf
circlefavshape 5y ago
FWIW my early 40s were a golden age in my marriage - basically once the kids got old enough to reliably sleep through the night.
- agent008t 5y ago
  Why did it get worse after? Was it really not better in the first few years, before children?
  - circlefavshape 5y ago
    Menopause, and no edit: Actually "menopause" is being a bit glib. Things change in relationships, and often it's very difficult to understand why.
xorfish 5y ago
What can be done if are on your 20s or early 30s to reduce or even avoid the dip in satisfaction at age 40 or ~10 years into a relationship? My personal belief is that freeing up some time for your future self may help with that. For me that means I want a career where you can reduce to a 24 hour or less work per week. Now I work more to save and invest money to give my future self more options in how to balance children, work, friendships, sleep and hobbies without having to worry much about finances.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  Be wealthy. Don’t have kids. One of the biggest quality of life hits based on other research I have read is having kids and not having enough money. Or just choose your partner well. Relationship satisfaction is relative anyhow. So even if it dips you can still be objectively happy.
  - reboog711 5y ago
    Also, I'd add "Be Healthy"... While there are some things you can do in your 20s to help you be healthy in your 40s; genetics can be a factor and cause serious issues.
  - gmadsen 5y ago
    I really think studies like that should be taken with a grain of salt. Polling people's current rate of life satisfaction while they are sleep deprived and changing diapers is very different than being 90 years old in a nursing home with no children or grandchildren
    - bitexploder 5y ago
      Sure, I tend to agree. Overall life satisfaction (e: in the long term) is higher for people with kids according to other studies, heh. So I think other studies confirm that notion. Social science studies probably don’t replicate well anyhow. But some do and it often reflects general wisdom as you pointed out. There is rarely a simple answer. Just live life and be present as a habit is my motto.
MarcScott 5y ago
There's also a financial aspect that I think is important, and this is purely anecdotal, based on my experience. When my partner and I were younger we had more dependent children, were not yet established in our careers, and were living month to month, with little to show for it. Money was a frequent cause of arguments and resentment. Now we are down to one dependent child, we are both earning good money, can afford to splash out on each other a little, take an occasional holiday, and don't feel bad about the odd selfish purchase. We don't argue about money anymore. Nothing much else has changed, our love life has remained consistent, time together, shared activities. The one major change is that we're not fretting at the end of the month, as we wait for payday.
- watwut 5y ago
  I think this is going to be common experience.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    One thing I find interesting is that my wife and I explicitly discussed before marriage that we would not have kids until and if we had enough to ensure the kids would have a nice, stable home with decent healthcare and education.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      Probably someone already told you this could be a trap. You might never arrive to the point when you feel everything is really perfect to have kids. In my case, I expressed is as the amount of cash I need to have in order to feel secure enough - a concrete amount is much more reachable as an aim.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        I model our cash flow for the rest of our lives to determine when and if we have enough for our goals, and if we need to modify goals. I would say the house/mortgage payment is the big one, and then the roughly $15k to $20k per year per kid for daycare, and then a few thousand per year for doctors. And then a few years of expenses saved up in case we lost our incomes. I think it was in the $200k range (excluding house) or so. Both my wife and I grew up children of poor immigrants. Neither of us had our own home, much less a room, and we moved around quite a bit, and we did not see a dentist until we both had gotten jobs in our 20s that afforded us dental benefits. I had been in 8 different schools in 7 states by the time I was in 9th grade, and I think we both agreed that financial insecurity was our biggest problem growing up. If we did not have that for our kids, then we were simply happy to go without kids.
qgin 5y ago
I’m having a hard time squaring these high (70+) satisfaction rates with what I’ve seen in the long-term relationships of people I’ve known well enough to know if they were happy or not. It’s always seemed to me that the happy ones were a fortunate minority. Maybe I’m wrong and I’ve just lived in a bubble of unhappy people? Maybe a study measuring “satisfaction” is actually capturing something other than happiness?
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  I see a mix of elderly people who are very happy and people who are bitter and actively do not want to hear any good news about the world because they would rather be mad. And America right now really has a lot of sophisticated people working hard to take advantage of the latter, amplifying it and making it worse. It makes me really sad and angry, and I think about strategies to avoid it happening to me as I get older. Anyone got good ideas?
  - draw_down 5y ago
- francisofascii 5y ago
  I think those couples who are always in a satisfied state are a minority. As the article mentions, most relationships have ups and downs between satisfied and unsatisfied. So many with the people you know, you only are hearing about the unsatisfied times. So when I see those rates, I think is is those couples are in a "satisfied" zone 70% of the time.
  - qgin 5y ago
    That could be it. Also I think maybe "satisfied" is way of saying "I think this is worth it". People continue on in bad situations all the time because they think -- all things considered -- it's worth it compared to the alternatives they imagine.
- toyg 5y ago
  Some people might appear unhappy when actually they are just comfortably set in an adversarial dynamic. Two of my grandparents would often seem to be arguing with raised voices when in public, being serious all the time, with all the classic corollary of old-school wife/husband remarks, but behind the scenes they were an absolute unit - they never had any affairs (unlike their own parents...), and after he passed away she immediately fell into a long depression, barely a year later she was gone too. They would rarely admit to others that they were happy, but in an anonymized "only God can see you" survey, they would have probably been honest enough to tick the very-happy boxes.
Damogran6 5y ago
Another factor might be differences in libido...something that's not as big a factor with the relationship is new, as both are more willing to meet in the middle. I'm in the middle of the LAST difference in Libido in our marriage (she's hit menopause, my Testosterone is waning, but not as fast as hers)...and it's literally the only friction point in an otherwise wonderful marriage. Money is better, kids are moving on, and I can see that eventually our libidos will again be in alignment. I also see why the old guy divorces his longtime wife for the younger, fresher, gal...and by the time SHE'S hitting menopause, he's there too. I don't see that happening in my case, but if there were other issues in a marriage, I could see how it might be a stronger lever to getting out of that marriage.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  It's also a reason to be poly. It's unreasonable to believe that two people are going to be able to satisfy all of each other's needs for 30+ years. Serial monogamy is accepted in our culture but it's an immoral solution that doesn't take commitment seriously and assumes you can just throw people away. I've seen people get that "new relationship energy", jump into a new "monogamous" relationship and then a year or two later they are breaking up with that person. Passionate love is really its own thing that is all the better when you don't confuse it with raising children, growing old with someone, etc.
  - Damogran6 5y ago
    See, I'd like the idea of getting that scratch itched, I just don't want to risk -everything-else-we've-built-together on it.
    - PaulHoule 5y ago
      Different people have different experiences. It is very possible your spouse will be 100% cool with it and even experience "compersion" which is taking pleasure in you being happy. (Mine does) She might see this as better than getting nagged about it, dutifully trying to do something and leaving everybody disappointed, or just finding you hard to live with because you're not satisfied. If you look at forums where people talk about poly life though you see there are big variations in the quality of consent. For instance sometimes one partner cheats and then tries to get their spouse to consent with it after the fact. Sometimes one partner asks permission and has a hard time getting it. Sometimes you can get permission in the abstract but when somebody specific comes into focus there is a jealousy problem. I can pass for a "cheating monogamist" because my expectations for a metamour are somewhat like that for having an affair. That is, there is no expectation of a "threesome" and my wife doesn't have to approve anybody, although one of the best experiences I can offer somebody is coming out to my farm where they will probably meet my wife (who teaches people to ride horses) and ideally they get along. Other people have elaborate situations where there is a triad or a pair of couples, a rule you can only sleep over one night a week or other structures that help people feel secure. (Then there are those "unicorn hunters" who are looking for a young hot bi babe and all I can say is I hope that you realize that is not what poly means to me or most poly people.)
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goethes_kind 5y ago
Of course this does not take into account all the many of us who never had a fun time dating in our 20s. Are we such a tiny minority? I can say with mathematical certainty that no decade will be worst than my 20s.
- jsqu99 5y ago
  I'm with you. In my 20's, I was crippled with anxiety when trying to talk to any female I was interested in. After two marriages (very happy in my second), I feel like I could go out do pretty well if I were single. I wish I had my present personality/confidence w/ my better-looking younger self (i'm almost 52 now).
  - pier25 5y ago
    I'm 42 now and I wish I could go back to my 20s with my current wisdom, confidence, etc. I was such an idiot and made so many mistakes in pretty much all areas of my life.
    - hhsbdbdbdbdb 5y ago
      Please share your wisdom. I am 25 with horrible anxiety. I have been working a job I don't like for over a year because I can't get an offer. I either look way too anxious in the interviews or don't even show up due to fear.
      - pier25 5y ago
        I suffered from anxiety too in my 20s. Between 14 to 29 years were the worst years of my life (so far). Since then, life has been getting better. Something that caused me a lot of suffering was a feeling that I was running out of time. I see that now, but back then I couldn't even describe this anxiety. I couldn't even realize the anxiety in me. It's like there was no life after 30. This made me make a lot of mistakes and waste a lot of time because I was obsessed with achieving results instead of focusing on the process. I've been thinking a lot about 20 year old me lately. To the point that I'm even considering writing a book, a newsletter, or something.
dpweb 5y ago
The relationship has to come first. It precedes the marriage and family, and I think societal norms are to put the children and the piece of paper first. It's a living thing that needs to be fed, and when times get tough what do people often do. Stop being kind to each other, stop having sex, building resentment and accelerating the decline. The goal is not to keep it together at all costs. The goal is to live an authentic life, and if that is going to be with a partner, don't lose sight of that fact it's the two of you that's important, not all the other stuff that comes along.
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  Once kids enter the picture, they they are the priority. Not giving up the "authentic life" to give your children the "best life" is pure selfishness. Once you have kids, your life is no longer your own...it's theirs. It's been proven myriad ways that kids are better off with both parents for many developmental reasons. I'm not against divorce, but it should be an insurmountable rift that leads there.
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    I think the idea is that if you DO nurture and feed your relationship, you're more likely to have the kind of environment where there is love and compassion, and that is an infinitely better situation for the kids than one where the parents hate each other and are resentful. > It's been proven myriad ways that kids are better off with both parents for many developmental reasons. Is that true? I know that it's been shown that kids in 2 parent households do better than single parent ones, but I don't know that research has separated out the "correlation vs. causation" aspect of that. I.e. would it be better for the kids 2 parents that hate each other to stick together rather than separate.
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      > “ correlation vs. causation" Such a study would not have any importance to me. One family that is stricken with physically abusive or alcoholic parents combined with another family that does not have those issues. How can you say the kids in the first family are better off without divorce compared to then second family?
nkotov 5y ago
I'm approaching my fifth year of marriage and we have two kids under 3. My wife is a stay-at-home mom for the time being. I am pretty satisfied in my marriage even though right now, it feels it's one of the most hardest because the kids demand so much attention and a huge portion of our life is surrounded around them. To me, it seems like my wife just found another gear and is now hustling at another level with the kids. I stand in awe in how much she handles them while also putting up with me and my work (running a startup and all the emotional baggage that comes with it). One thing that worked for us is establishing clear communication and guidelines. For example when I'm in my home-office and door is closed - it's do not disturb mode. Once I'm done with work, I take over and watch the kids while my wife rests for a bit and then it's bedtime for the kids - each of us takes a kid and put them to sleep. By 8:00 PM, both kids are asleep and its time for ourselves. We either spend it together (watching TV, etc) or apart (I play CoD, she relaxes by reading or watching her shows). We also have a mandatory at least one date a month away from the kids. This lets us to continue dating each other and enjoy each other's company. For me, marriage is really about serving one-another every day. It's not about my happiness, desires, wants, it's about making sure my wife is satisfied and happy. My wife does the same for me. The moment you start being selfish and only try to get what you want and not work with your spouse/partner to help them achieve their dreams/wants, that's when things start to crumble.
artur_makly 5y ago
i found these radical concepts proposed in 80/80 Marriage to be very innovative. Here's a 1hr talk the authors ( a couple ) gave at Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9i3LFEZRns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9i3LFEZRns
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PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
It's a potted summary and so in some ways hardly worth thinking about or responding to, but ... given that the divorce is roughly in the range of 50%, this sort of presentation appears to completely ignore the implications of that. My first marriage took place when I was 25 and lasted a bit more than 10 years. I met my second wife when I was 38, and have been in a relationship with her for more than 20 years now. As a result, my 40s were a high point for me, not a low point. Even though we had children and all the challenges that brings, 40-48 was probably 8 of the best years of my life (and I think my wife feels broadly the same). Had my first marriage survived, maybe the pattern would have been similar to what is outlined in article (although maybe it wouldn't). Either way, an article that fails to note that many Americans actually start new relationships in their 40s seems to be missing something rather important.
rubicon33 5y ago
Wow, I needed this article. Wife and I have been together for almost 10 years. The last 2-3 have been the hardest. The last 1, the hardest of the last 3. Why? I’ve asked myself that many times. Love fades, that’s definitely part of it. Hormones drop, and that “natural” urge to be with your partner wanes. At the same time, careers are shifting into overdrive. Promotions and responsibilities pile up. Work becomes the MAIN focus in life (if you don’t have kids). At some point the stress of life can change people, slowly but over years someone can end up bitter, jaded, and difficult to be with. I think that’s part of what we are dealing with. After a decade of hard work, we haven’t done enough to ensure we are happy living with each other. In other words, we’ve taken each other for granted for too long.
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- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  > Work becomes the MAIN focus in life (if you don’t have kids). // That seems like it's probably your own choice, or you've followed societal norms. You don't have to.
  - rubicon33 5y ago
    Not my choice, my wife’s.
gexla 5y ago
The trouble with a study like this is that there are loads of in the trench details which don't go into it. I don't write studies, but I see a generalization which buries a lot of important details. This is a complex subject. If you want an eye-opening account of how relationships go bad, take a stroll over to /r/deadbedrooms in Reddit. It doesn't matter if you're 20 or 50, you may see the same patterns in your own relationship. As I get older, I feel that I have become much more self-aware of problems which appear in my life. While before, they may have been a black-box I push aside, now they are a curiosity I feel compelled to explore.
rcpt 5y ago
Reminder that over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248 https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2016/03/03/more-on-replication-crisis/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2016/03/03/more-on-re... I'm not an expert in psychology but something about that research just feels off. Seems like a real hard thing to quantify and detailed year over year results like they're presenting should be hard to get.
- magicroot75 5y ago
  This is a metastudy of 95 studies. Its also a study of longitudinal measures, which I believe would give more robust data than a lab setting psychological experiment.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
It's an interesting article, but it seems they're extrapolating a lot from very little signal. Look at the y-axis on the graphs. The average value for "relationship satisfaction" looks to be around 79%, but the variation over time only appears to go from a low of around 77% to a high of 83% (eyeballing it). Basically +/- 3%. There's barely any signal there. A variation of a couple percent up or down might indicate something small on a large enough sample size, but it's basically nothing in the big picture.
- e4e78a06 5y ago
  If you've ever done a social sciences study as a participant in your undergrad years you know these stats are complete BS. People just try to get it over with as soon as possible and click fast through surveys. Ratings are incredibly subjective and there basically is no objective measurement. The authors of the studies go in with preconceived notions of what the results should look like based on the existing literature. It reminds me of a famous racial bias study taught in "Leadership" courses in which the authors found that people had slower reaction times to pictures of black people and came to the conclusion that this meant we must have some innate bias against black people. Zero attempt to control for the image brightness, contrast, or any other potential explanatory factors.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    > It reminds me of a famous racial bias study taught in "Leadership" courses in which the authors found that people had slower reaction times to pictures of black people and came to the conclusion that this meant we must have some innate bias against black people. Zero attempt to control for the image brightness, contrast, or any other potential explanatory factors. Look, the IAT (implicit association test), which you are presumably talking about, has a lot of problems, but that ain't one of them. Pretty much all of the things you have talked about have been examined in multiple, independent studies. It doesn't seem to replicate massively well in terms of behavioural impacts, but to suggest that social scientists don't control for obvious things is just false. That being said, the US approach for getting social science participants is insane, and should be destroyed.
thedudeabides5 5y ago
Would be nice to see this broken down monthly instead of in ten year increments.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  What is the point and why in months instead of years or days? What is the special meaning of the month when looking at tens of years of data?
gwbas1c 5y ago
Thanks for posting this. I'm 40, and I met my wife 10 years ago. I suspect the valley in the graph has to do with lack of sleep from getting children to school.
ChuckMcM 5y ago
My anecdotal experience is that happiness dips most when the realization that there is no "win" button in life sets in. Call it a mid-life crisis, or whatever, but for me, when I hit 36 which was the first age I had reached as an adult that I had clear memories of my father reaching as a child, it hit me that this was "it" in terms of life experiences[1]. You worked, you aged, you had holidays with family and friends, and then you died. That realization led me to focus more on quality of life now over aspirations of a "future" quality of life. [1] At 36 I had "experienced" my Dad's life for the last 26 years or so and saw it to be relatively unchanged over that period. As a result, I felt I could expect little change in terms of social position or relative wealth etc, in the next 25 years of my life. I needed to spend time enjoying my life not planning on enjoying it at some future date.
- giantg2 5y ago
  I'd go a step further and say the cards are stacked against most individuals. It seems problems increase in frequency and seriousness for most people as they age. At least that's how I see it around age 30.
  - ChuckMcM 5y ago
    I am going to lightly disagree with you :-). I think it is absolutely true that our future lives are the product of our past decisions, but "problems" (or challenges) can sometimes lead to better forward thinking. As an engineer I know so many people who were the first in their family to have "lots" of money and they chose to spend it as if it would always be there, until it wasn't. Their challenges in adapting or supporting a burn rate that was unsustainable, could be directly traced back to their choice to live "beyond their means" as we say, which is to say spending all the money they were making and saving none in case of an issue later. I was lucky (and there is tremendous randomness to life) to marry someone while I was young who was much more fiscally conservative than I was. As a result of that, I was able to experience times when she had insisted on saving and it turned a "bad situation" into a "manageable" one. People I knew and worked with had less pleasant outcomes. Today, it feels like (although I don't know if it actually is true) that the whole "getting married" thing is out of favor. And yet being married and having two people who could work so at least one of us was providing employee provided medical benefits etc, kept "calamitous downturns" (which happen regularly in Silicon Valley) from feeling like the end of the world. So I look back and see the choice I made to get married early as a choice that provided a mitigation of the negative impacts of events that happened after I got married. In terms of bad choices, when the dot com boom was in full swing I had stocks that I could have sold and paid off my house mortgage. I chose not to, yes explicitly thought about it and said to myself, "nope." I only saw the down side of that choice of incurring a bunch of taxes, and hey I was making the payments easily on my current salary and so I deferred. Then when the crash came and the company where I was working was evaporating around me as its customers were filing chapter 7 bankruptcies, I was looking at finding a new job and still having a mortgage that my now GREATLY devalued tech stocks would pay down but certainly wouldn't retire that debt. Ageism is definitely real in the valley and I was concerned I wouldn't be able to find a new job, would have this mortgage and a family to support, and would end up taking any job I could find just to survive, or selling the house and relocating to somewhere where the cost of living was once again within my means. The hardest thing for me is being honest with myself and really looking at how and why I chose the way I do. I find I can convince myself that the decision I want to make is the right one, even when there is clear evidence that it is not the better choice in terms of mitigating future risk. Being burned a few times has helped train me to listen to those warning signs.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
Unfortunately, this reminds me of things that track economic cycles and try to claim there is something meaningful to typical historical lengths of time between economic booms and busts. They often focus on the detail of "x years" without successfully tying it to something meaningful and then come up with mathematical models based on that and then you see books or articles predicting the next recession because "we are due/ it's that time" and those are somewhat often wrong. It is somewhat unusual for me to see meaningful analysis of underlying causes of such things. I'm mostly not a big believer in "well, x amount of time passed" as an explanation for much of anything. (Like with anything, there are exceptions.) I also dislike the use of your in the title, which contradicts the statement in the article that these are averages and your experience may be different.

307 points by terrycody 5y ago

Seems to be correlated with when you have young kids. Not surprising really as having young kids is like having a grenade set off in your relationship.

digbybk 5y ago
This might just be an assumption. We'd need to compare with childless couples. As a datapoint of one, I'm getting close to 40, just over 10 years of marriage without children, and this article describes my experience eerily well and has given me real pause.
Arubis 5y ago
That lines up with other studies I’ve seen elsewhere; for better or for worse, this entire proposed curve does (dip when the kids arrive, then slow but steady rise in happiness till self-reported values exceed childless couples). That makes the choice to have children a necessary variable to control for; otherwise this meta-analysis is about as diagnostic as a mid-2000’s Internet personality test. Anecdotally, very young kids in and of themselves are in fact pretty great! It’s the logistics around child-rearing that are soul-crushing. Or, glibly: having kids good, early parenting bad.
- Axsuul 5y ago
  What would make the logistics part better? Would it be hiring dedicated help?
  - ativzzz 5y ago
    It would be having community that helps ease the burden of child rearing. Grandparents, neighbor friends with kids, etc
    - watwut 5y ago
      The trouble is, such community requires payback. You need ot just take, you need to give. And often in ways you don't like giving or more then you like. It requires a lot more negotiation with more people, compromise about what we are used to be autonomous in and conformity. The strong individualism is not really compatible with that. On HN when these structures are talked about, it is always only in terms of essentially free labor from extended family.
  - Arubis 5y ago
    I had many moments of thinking “is there a product here?” Most things that help aren’t products. We nibble around the logistic edges with buying our time back: a front-door laundry service, a lot of delivery meals when we had a newborn during peak Covid, Amazon Prime for virtually everything. “Acquiring consumer stuff” is fairly solved. We had a nanny for a while, and that had a lot of upsides, but having a family-like relationship that’s actually transactional is extra overhead to manage. Nice while it was working well, though. My local pizza joint’s app has a “repeat last delivery order” that comes in handy. Ultimately, though, the hard parts remain hard. When a kid is sick or doesn’t sleep through the night, who’s skipping work tomorrow? How do we tag-team our way to survive till bedtime? Do I not bill out a client today so my wife can get enough of a break from the kids to stay sane—and vice-versa? It’s very isolating. This feels like a fabric-of-society issue to which the product-and-services-to-solve-it mentality, however well-intentioned in the moment, is kinda how we ended up here in the first place. There isn’t an app or a service that’ll make living in the states (or, I gather, much of the west, albeit to a lesser degree) less individualized and more communal.
    - ericd 5y ago
      To your point about becoming more communal, we found this the other day: https://www.cohousing.org/directory/wpbdp_category/comm/ https://www.cohousing.org/directory/wpbdp_category/comm/ We haven’t tried it, but this looks like it could be great if you find a group you’re compatible with.
      - Arubis 5y ago
        That looks like a cool resource; thank you! We’re pondering making a move at some point in the next year or so, and this is gross for that particular mill.
leokennis 5y ago
Having kids is weird. I love them a lot, but I also severely miss my life and relationship with my wife from before I had them.
- beardyw 5y ago
  Wait till they grow up and leave home. Then you will miss them, and they don't call.
  - watwut 5y ago
    You dont get life before kids back when kids grow. Too many years passed in the meantime. The world is not the same. You are older and a lot of activities you have done before are harder. The former friends moved on and you have to build new ones.
    - ip26 5y ago
      Yeah, but you might also realize many of those activities were (unbeknownst to you) essentially performative displays to attract a partner, with little inherent worth.
      - watwut 5y ago
        Might. But very likely won't. And even if they were, it does not matter. You are still need to find the replacement, still need to fill the void. Otherwise you will just sit on sofa depressed and feel pointless.
- Arubis 5y ago
  I can relate; that said, a confounding factor I’ve been unable to disambiguate is raising young kids _during a pandemic_. How much of the challenge was typical parenting? How much was doing it in a world on fire when it was unsafe for the kids’ grandparents to travel and help out, and mothers’ groups weren’t a thing, etc.? My wife and I just recently had our first no-kids date night since last Father’s Day (just short of a year ago). It was pretty great! The connection is still there. But it was also _surreal_, and I can totally see how couples just lose themselves in the chaos. It worries me sometimes.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Not surprising really as having young kids is like having a grenade set off in your relationship I heard this a lot before I had kids. Then we had kids and it was not only fine, but actually enjoyable. Yes, there was a short-term increase in stress and reduction in personal time, but the key factor missing from online discussions on the topic is that the stressful low-sleep, diaper-changing period isn't all that long. A couple percent of your lifetime, really. The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids and spending time with them. There's so much media that portrays children as some sort of endless chore and drain on your time, but it turns out that it's actually a ton of fun to play with your kids and help them grow.
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  Heh, we were about the same. Add in that sweet tech oncall lifestyle for me and sleep deprivation was either not an issue or didn't change my personality basis so the stress was quite limited. The under one years were at a time in my career when I was working at 2am most nights anyway. A few minutes to hang out and take care of someone no love was a nice break. Mom slept pretty much through the night after the first couple of weeks. Decade and 1/2 in and I can't see things getting worse, but we'll see.
- balfirevic 5y ago
  > The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids and spending time with them. Well, that's the core of the issue, isn't it? I know people who were really looking forward to having children, wanted them, and anticipated that they would enjoy it - so expected personal sacrifice was not that big of an issue. It's just what you had to do to enjoy having kids. Media that portrays children as a chore, on the other hand, matches the thought process of someone who looks at having children (potentially including their own childhood) and thinks "why would someone want that?". It was a welcome balance, speaking as someone who barely came across portrayal of children as anything other than the source of joy and something that everyone - surely - wants. It was a different media landscape 10-15 years ago, and I like the current one better even if not maximally nuanced.
- 5y ago

Cenk 5y ago

This is the paper they‘re talking about: https://oa.mg/work/10.1037/bul0000342 https://oa.mg/work/10.1037/bul0000342 Fulltext here: https://doi.apa.org/fulltext/2022-16081-001.pdf https://doi.apa.org/fulltext/2022-16081-001.pdf

circlefavshape 5y ago

FWIW my early 40s were a golden age in my marriage - basically once the kids got old enough to reliably sleep through the night.

agent008t 5y ago
Why did it get worse after? Was it really not better in the first few years, before children?
- circlefavshape 5y ago
  Menopause, and no edit: Actually "menopause" is being a bit glib. Things change in relationships, and often it's very difficult to understand why.

xorfish 5y ago

What can be done if are on your 20s or early 30s to reduce or even avoid the dip in satisfaction at age 40 or ~10 years into a relationship? My personal belief is that freeing up some time for your future self may help with that. For me that means I want a career where you can reduce to a 24 hour or less work per week. Now I work more to save and invest money to give my future self more options in how to balance children, work, friendships, sleep and hobbies without having to worry much about finances.

bitexploder 5y ago
Be wealthy. Don’t have kids. One of the biggest quality of life hits based on other research I have read is having kids and not having enough money. Or just choose your partner well. Relationship satisfaction is relative anyhow. So even if it dips you can still be objectively happy.
- reboog711 5y ago
  Also, I'd add "Be Healthy"... While there are some things you can do in your 20s to help you be healthy in your 40s; genetics can be a factor and cause serious issues.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  I really think studies like that should be taken with a grain of salt. Polling people's current rate of life satisfaction while they are sleep deprived and changing diapers is very different than being 90 years old in a nursing home with no children or grandchildren
  - bitexploder 5y ago
    Sure, I tend to agree. Overall life satisfaction (e: in the long term) is higher for people with kids according to other studies, heh. So I think other studies confirm that notion. Social science studies probably don’t replicate well anyhow. But some do and it often reflects general wisdom as you pointed out. There is rarely a simple answer. Just live life and be present as a habit is my motto.

MarcScott 5y ago

There's also a financial aspect that I think is important, and this is purely anecdotal, based on my experience. When my partner and I were younger we had more dependent children, were not yet established in our careers, and were living month to month, with little to show for it. Money was a frequent cause of arguments and resentment. Now we are down to one dependent child, we are both earning good money, can afford to splash out on each other a little, take an occasional holiday, and don't feel bad about the odd selfish purchase. We don't argue about money anymore. Nothing much else has changed, our love life has remained consistent, time together, shared activities. The one major change is that we're not fretting at the end of the month, as we wait for payday.

watwut 5y ago
I think this is going to be common experience.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  One thing I find interesting is that my wife and I explicitly discussed before marriage that we would not have kids until and if we had enough to ensure the kids would have a nice, stable home with decent healthcare and education.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    Probably someone already told you this could be a trap. You might never arrive to the point when you feel everything is really perfect to have kids. In my case, I expressed is as the amount of cash I need to have in order to feel secure enough - a concrete amount is much more reachable as an aim.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I model our cash flow for the rest of our lives to determine when and if we have enough for our goals, and if we need to modify goals. I would say the house/mortgage payment is the big one, and then the roughly $15k to $20k per year per kid for daycare, and then a few thousand per year for doctors. And then a few years of expenses saved up in case we lost our incomes. I think it was in the $200k range (excluding house) or so. Both my wife and I grew up children of poor immigrants. Neither of us had our own home, much less a room, and we moved around quite a bit, and we did not see a dentist until we both had gotten jobs in our 20s that afforded us dental benefits. I had been in 8 different schools in 7 states by the time I was in 9th grade, and I think we both agreed that financial insecurity was our biggest problem growing up. If we did not have that for our kids, then we were simply happy to go without kids.

qgin 5y ago

I’m having a hard time squaring these high (70+) satisfaction rates with what I’ve seen in the long-term relationships of people I’ve known well enough to know if they were happy or not. It’s always seemed to me that the happy ones were a fortunate minority. Maybe I’m wrong and I’ve just lived in a bubble of unhappy people? Maybe a study measuring “satisfaction” is actually capturing something other than happiness?

gameswithgo 5y ago
I see a mix of elderly people who are very happy and people who are bitter and actively do not want to hear any good news about the world because they would rather be mad. And America right now really has a lot of sophisticated people working hard to take advantage of the latter, amplifying it and making it worse. It makes me really sad and angry, and I think about strategies to avoid it happening to me as I get older. Anyone got good ideas?
- draw_down 5y ago
francisofascii 5y ago
I think those couples who are always in a satisfied state are a minority. As the article mentions, most relationships have ups and downs between satisfied and unsatisfied. So many with the people you know, you only are hearing about the unsatisfied times. So when I see those rates, I think is is those couples are in a "satisfied" zone 70% of the time.
- qgin 5y ago
  That could be it. Also I think maybe "satisfied" is way of saying "I think this is worth it". People continue on in bad situations all the time because they think -- all things considered -- it's worth it compared to the alternatives they imagine.
toyg 5y ago
Some people might appear unhappy when actually they are just comfortably set in an adversarial dynamic. Two of my grandparents would often seem to be arguing with raised voices when in public, being serious all the time, with all the classic corollary of old-school wife/husband remarks, but behind the scenes they were an absolute unit - they never had any affairs (unlike their own parents...), and after he passed away she immediately fell into a long depression, barely a year later she was gone too. They would rarely admit to others that they were happy, but in an anonymized "only God can see you" survey, they would have probably been honest enough to tick the very-happy boxes.

Damogran6 5y ago

Another factor might be differences in libido...something that's not as big a factor with the relationship is new, as both are more willing to meet in the middle. I'm in the middle of the LAST difference in Libido in our marriage (she's hit menopause, my Testosterone is waning, but not as fast as hers)...and it's literally the only friction point in an otherwise wonderful marriage. Money is better, kids are moving on, and I can see that eventually our libidos will again be in alignment. I also see why the old guy divorces his longtime wife for the younger, fresher, gal...and by the time SHE'S hitting menopause, he's there too. I don't see that happening in my case, but if there were other issues in a marriage, I could see how it might be a stronger lever to getting out of that marriage.

PaulHoule 5y ago
It's also a reason to be poly. It's unreasonable to believe that two people are going to be able to satisfy all of each other's needs for 30+ years. Serial monogamy is accepted in our culture but it's an immoral solution that doesn't take commitment seriously and assumes you can just throw people away. I've seen people get that "new relationship energy", jump into a new "monogamous" relationship and then a year or two later they are breaking up with that person. Passionate love is really its own thing that is all the better when you don't confuse it with raising children, growing old with someone, etc.
- Damogran6 5y ago
  See, I'd like the idea of getting that scratch itched, I just don't want to risk -everything-else-we've-built-together on it.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    Different people have different experiences. It is very possible your spouse will be 100% cool with it and even experience "compersion" which is taking pleasure in you being happy. (Mine does) She might see this as better than getting nagged about it, dutifully trying to do something and leaving everybody disappointed, or just finding you hard to live with because you're not satisfied. If you look at forums where people talk about poly life though you see there are big variations in the quality of consent. For instance sometimes one partner cheats and then tries to get their spouse to consent with it after the fact. Sometimes one partner asks permission and has a hard time getting it. Sometimes you can get permission in the abstract but when somebody specific comes into focus there is a jealousy problem. I can pass for a "cheating monogamist" because my expectations for a metamour are somewhat like that for having an affair. That is, there is no expectation of a "threesome" and my wife doesn't have to approve anybody, although one of the best experiences I can offer somebody is coming out to my farm where they will probably meet my wife (who teaches people to ride horses) and ideally they get along. Other people have elaborate situations where there is a triad or a pair of couples, a rule you can only sleep over one night a week or other structures that help people feel secure. (Then there are those "unicorn hunters" who are looking for a young hot bi babe and all I can say is I hope that you realize that is not what poly means to me or most poly people.)

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goethes_kind 5y ago

Of course this does not take into account all the many of us who never had a fun time dating in our 20s. Are we such a tiny minority? I can say with mathematical certainty that no decade will be worst than my 20s.

jsqu99 5y ago
I'm with you. In my 20's, I was crippled with anxiety when trying to talk to any female I was interested in. After two marriages (very happy in my second), I feel like I could go out do pretty well if I were single. I wish I had my present personality/confidence w/ my better-looking younger self (i'm almost 52 now).
- pier25 5y ago
  I'm 42 now and I wish I could go back to my 20s with my current wisdom, confidence, etc. I was such an idiot and made so many mistakes in pretty much all areas of my life.
  - hhsbdbdbdbdb 5y ago
    Please share your wisdom. I am 25 with horrible anxiety. I have been working a job I don't like for over a year because I can't get an offer. I either look way too anxious in the interviews or don't even show up due to fear.
    - pier25 5y ago
      I suffered from anxiety too in my 20s. Between 14 to 29 years were the worst years of my life (so far). Since then, life has been getting better. Something that caused me a lot of suffering was a feeling that I was running out of time. I see that now, but back then I couldn't even describe this anxiety. I couldn't even realize the anxiety in me. It's like there was no life after 30. This made me make a lot of mistakes and waste a lot of time because I was obsessed with achieving results instead of focusing on the process. I've been thinking a lot about 20 year old me lately. To the point that I'm even considering writing a book, a newsletter, or something.

dpweb 5y ago

The relationship has to come first. It precedes the marriage and family, and I think societal norms are to put the children and the piece of paper first. It's a living thing that needs to be fed, and when times get tough what do people often do. Stop being kind to each other, stop having sex, building resentment and accelerating the decline. The goal is not to keep it together at all costs. The goal is to live an authentic life, and if that is going to be with a partner, don't lose sight of that fact it's the two of you that's important, not all the other stuff that comes along.

stronglikedan 5y ago
Once kids enter the picture, they they are the priority. Not giving up the "authentic life" to give your children the "best life" is pure selfishness. Once you have kids, your life is no longer your own...it's theirs. It's been proven myriad ways that kids are better off with both parents for many developmental reasons. I'm not against divorce, but it should be an insurmountable rift that leads there.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I think the idea is that if you DO nurture and feed your relationship, you're more likely to have the kind of environment where there is love and compassion, and that is an infinitely better situation for the kids than one where the parents hate each other and are resentful. > It's been proven myriad ways that kids are better off with both parents for many developmental reasons. Is that true? I know that it's been shown that kids in 2 parent households do better than single parent ones, but I don't know that research has separated out the "correlation vs. causation" aspect of that. I.e. would it be better for the kids 2 parents that hate each other to stick together rather than separate.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    > “ correlation vs. causation" Such a study would not have any importance to me. One family that is stricken with physically abusive or alcoholic parents combined with another family that does not have those issues. How can you say the kids in the first family are better off without divorce compared to then second family?

nkotov 5y ago

I'm approaching my fifth year of marriage and we have two kids under 3. My wife is a stay-at-home mom for the time being. I am pretty satisfied in my marriage even though right now, it feels it's one of the most hardest because the kids demand so much attention and a huge portion of our life is surrounded around them. To me, it seems like my wife just found another gear and is now hustling at another level with the kids. I stand in awe in how much she handles them while also putting up with me and my work (running a startup and all the emotional baggage that comes with it). One thing that worked for us is establishing clear communication and guidelines. For example when I'm in my home-office and door is closed - it's do not disturb mode. Once I'm done with work, I take over and watch the kids while my wife rests for a bit and then it's bedtime for the kids - each of us takes a kid and put them to sleep. By 8:00 PM, both kids are asleep and its time for ourselves. We either spend it together (watching TV, etc) or apart (I play CoD, she relaxes by reading or watching her shows). We also have a mandatory at least one date a month away from the kids. This lets us to continue dating each other and enjoy each other's company. For me, marriage is really about serving one-another every day. It's not about my happiness, desires, wants, it's about making sure my wife is satisfied and happy. My wife does the same for me. The moment you start being selfish and only try to get what you want and not work with your spouse/partner to help them achieve their dreams/wants, that's when things start to crumble.

artur_makly 5y ago

i found these radical concepts proposed in 80/80 Marriage to be very innovative. Here's a 1hr talk the authors ( a couple ) gave at Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9i3LFEZRns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9i3LFEZRns

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PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

It's a potted summary and so in some ways hardly worth thinking about or responding to, but ... given that the divorce is roughly in the range of 50%, this sort of presentation appears to completely ignore the implications of that. My first marriage took place when I was 25 and lasted a bit more than 10 years. I met my second wife when I was 38, and have been in a relationship with her for more than 20 years now. As a result, my 40s were a high point for me, not a low point. Even though we had children and all the challenges that brings, 40-48 was probably 8 of the best years of my life (and I think my wife feels broadly the same). Had my first marriage survived, maybe the pattern would have been similar to what is outlined in article (although maybe it wouldn't). Either way, an article that fails to note that many Americans actually start new relationships in their 40s seems to be missing something rather important.

rubicon33 5y ago

Wow, I needed this article. Wife and I have been together for almost 10 years. The last 2-3 have been the hardest. The last 1, the hardest of the last 3. Why? I’ve asked myself that many times. Love fades, that’s definitely part of it. Hormones drop, and that “natural” urge to be with your partner wanes. At the same time, careers are shifting into overdrive. Promotions and responsibilities pile up. Work becomes the MAIN focus in life (if you don’t have kids). At some point the stress of life can change people, slowly but over years someone can end up bitter, jaded, and difficult to be with. I think that’s part of what we are dealing with. After a decade of hard work, we haven’t done enough to ensure we are happy living with each other. In other words, we’ve taken each other for granted for too long.

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pbhjpbhj 5y ago
> Work becomes the MAIN focus in life (if you don’t have kids). // That seems like it's probably your own choice, or you've followed societal norms. You don't have to.
- rubicon33 5y ago
  Not my choice, my wife’s.

gexla 5y ago

The trouble with a study like this is that there are loads of in the trench details which don't go into it. I don't write studies, but I see a generalization which buries a lot of important details. This is a complex subject. If you want an eye-opening account of how relationships go bad, take a stroll over to /r/deadbedrooms in Reddit. It doesn't matter if you're 20 or 50, you may see the same patterns in your own relationship. As I get older, I feel that I have become much more self-aware of problems which appear in my life. While before, they may have been a black-box I push aside, now they are a curiosity I feel compelled to explore.

rcpt 5y ago

Reminder that over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248 https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2016/03/03/more-on-replication-crisis/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2016/03/03/more-on-re... I'm not an expert in psychology but something about that research just feels off. Seems like a real hard thing to quantify and detailed year over year results like they're presenting should be hard to get.

magicroot75 5y ago
This is a metastudy of 95 studies. Its also a study of longitudinal measures, which I believe would give more robust data than a lab setting psychological experiment.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

It's an interesting article, but it seems they're extrapolating a lot from very little signal. Look at the y-axis on the graphs. The average value for "relationship satisfaction" looks to be around 79%, but the variation over time only appears to go from a low of around 77% to a high of 83% (eyeballing it). Basically +/- 3%. There's barely any signal there. A variation of a couple percent up or down might indicate something small on a large enough sample size, but it's basically nothing in the big picture.

e4e78a06 5y ago
If you've ever done a social sciences study as a participant in your undergrad years you know these stats are complete BS. People just try to get it over with as soon as possible and click fast through surveys. Ratings are incredibly subjective and there basically is no objective measurement. The authors of the studies go in with preconceived notions of what the results should look like based on the existing literature. It reminds me of a famous racial bias study taught in "Leadership" courses in which the authors found that people had slower reaction times to pictures of black people and came to the conclusion that this meant we must have some innate bias against black people. Zero attempt to control for the image brightness, contrast, or any other potential explanatory factors.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  > It reminds me of a famous racial bias study taught in "Leadership" courses in which the authors found that people had slower reaction times to pictures of black people and came to the conclusion that this meant we must have some innate bias against black people. Zero attempt to control for the image brightness, contrast, or any other potential explanatory factors. Look, the IAT (implicit association test), which you are presumably talking about, has a lot of problems, but that ain't one of them. Pretty much all of the things you have talked about have been examined in multiple, independent studies. It doesn't seem to replicate massively well in terms of behavioural impacts, but to suggest that social scientists don't control for obvious things is just false. That being said, the US approach for getting social science participants is insane, and should be destroyed.

thedudeabides5 5y ago

Would be nice to see this broken down monthly instead of in ten year increments.

AdrianB1 5y ago
What is the point and why in months instead of years or days? What is the special meaning of the month when looking at tens of years of data?

gwbas1c 5y ago

Thanks for posting this. I'm 40, and I met my wife 10 years ago. I suspect the valley in the graph has to do with lack of sleep from getting children to school.

ChuckMcM 5y ago

My anecdotal experience is that happiness dips most when the realization that there is no "win" button in life sets in. Call it a mid-life crisis, or whatever, but for me, when I hit 36 which was the first age I had reached as an adult that I had clear memories of my father reaching as a child, it hit me that this was "it" in terms of life experiences[1]. You worked, you aged, you had holidays with family and friends, and then you died. That realization led me to focus more on quality of life now over aspirations of a "future" quality of life. [1] At 36 I had "experienced" my Dad's life for the last 26 years or so and saw it to be relatively unchanged over that period. As a result, I felt I could expect little change in terms of social position or relative wealth etc, in the next 25 years of my life. I needed to spend time enjoying my life not planning on enjoying it at some future date.

giantg2 5y ago
I'd go a step further and say the cards are stacked against most individuals. It seems problems increase in frequency and seriousness for most people as they age. At least that's how I see it around age 30.
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  I am going to lightly disagree with you :-). I think it is absolutely true that our future lives are the product of our past decisions, but "problems" (or challenges) can sometimes lead to better forward thinking. As an engineer I know so many people who were the first in their family to have "lots" of money and they chose to spend it as if it would always be there, until it wasn't. Their challenges in adapting or supporting a burn rate that was unsustainable, could be directly traced back to their choice to live "beyond their means" as we say, which is to say spending all the money they were making and saving none in case of an issue later. I was lucky (and there is tremendous randomness to life) to marry someone while I was young who was much more fiscally conservative than I was. As a result of that, I was able to experience times when she had insisted on saving and it turned a "bad situation" into a "manageable" one. People I knew and worked with had less pleasant outcomes. Today, it feels like (although I don't know if it actually is true) that the whole "getting married" thing is out of favor. And yet being married and having two people who could work so at least one of us was providing employee provided medical benefits etc, kept "calamitous downturns" (which happen regularly in Silicon Valley) from feeling like the end of the world. So I look back and see the choice I made to get married early as a choice that provided a mitigation of the negative impacts of events that happened after I got married. In terms of bad choices, when the dot com boom was in full swing I had stocks that I could have sold and paid off my house mortgage. I chose not to, yes explicitly thought about it and said to myself, "nope." I only saw the down side of that choice of incurring a bunch of taxes, and hey I was making the payments easily on my current salary and so I deferred. Then when the crash came and the company where I was working was evaporating around me as its customers were filing chapter 7 bankruptcies, I was looking at finding a new job and still having a mortgage that my now GREATLY devalued tech stocks would pay down but certainly wouldn't retire that debt. Ageism is definitely real in the valley and I was concerned I wouldn't be able to find a new job, would have this mortgage and a family to support, and would end up taking any job I could find just to survive, or selling the house and relocating to somewhere where the cost of living was once again within my means. The hardest thing for me is being honest with myself and really looking at how and why I chose the way I do. I find I can convince myself that the decision I want to make is the right one, even when there is clear evidence that it is not the better choice in terms of mitigating future risk. Being burned a few times has helped train me to listen to those warning signs.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

Unfortunately, this reminds me of things that track economic cycles and try to claim there is something meaningful to typical historical lengths of time between economic booms and busts. They often focus on the detail of "x years" without successfully tying it to something meaningful and then come up with mathematical models based on that and then you see books or articles predicting the next recession because "we are due/ it's that time" and those are somewhat often wrong. It is somewhat unusual for me to see meaningful analysis of underlying causes of such things. I'm mostly not a big believer in "well, x amount of time passed" as an explanation for much of anything. (Like with anything, there are exceptions.) I also dislike the use of your in the title, which contradicts the statement in the article that these are averages and your experience may be different.