VIDEO: 4 relationship facts you should know

A video explaing four misconceptions and facts about relationships has surfaced on the Internet and it presents some interesting points. Take a look at a breakdown of these four points and watch the video below:

1) Divorce statistics are very misleading

It turns out that the often quoted statistic about 50% of all marriages ending in divorce isn’t entirely true. The statistic itself is difficult to measure as Time wrote in 2010:

“Figuring out divorce rates is tricky. Not all states collect marital data, and the numbers change dramatically depending on the methods and sources that are used. In the end, the best that researchers can do is look for trends within a specific group or cohort (say, all people who married in the 1980s) and project what will happen.”

Turns out what really makes or breaks a marriage is the age at which couples get married. One study found that 81% couples that got married after the age of 26 were still married twenty years later, and that 65% of couples who got married before turning 26 were still married.

2) Oppsittes may attract, but they don’t last

Repeat after us, “People are not magnets. People are not magnets. Opposites do not attract. Opposites do not attract.”

You may have heard that opposites attract, your entire life, but it turns out this has little validity. Although you might be intrigued by someone’s quirks or traits that different from yours, in the long term you’ll find that these differences will take a toll on your relationship. There’s a whole study on it that you can read if you want (since you’re single and have a ton of free time).

Read more about this in a study here.

3) The Pill has relationship side-effects

Ladies, apparently that little pill can have an unexpected side effect: affecting the kind of partners you pick.

According to a study out of Finland, “Women who used [oral contraceptives] scored lower on measures of sexual satisfaction and partner attraction, experienced increasing sexual dissatisfaction during the relationship, and were more likely to be the one to initiate an eventual separation if it occurred.”

It should be noted though that the study also found that “the same women were more satisfied with their partner’s paternal provision, and thus had longer relationships and were less likely to separate.”

4) Keep your feelings to yourself

It turns out that when it comes to love it’s sometimes better to keep your feelings, or least why you feel them, to yourself. A study out of the University of Virginia found that when couples were asked to explain why they loved someone the couple were likely to separate:

“People who introspected about reasons brought to mind thoughts that were inconsistent with their initial feelings about their relationships and changed their attitudes in the direction of those reasons…. It is suggested that either thinking about reasons or answering detailed questions about a relationship can change the way people construe that relationship, leading to attitude change.”