Happily Married or Married Happily?

Here's something I read recently that reinforces what I believe in, a constant theme of this blog - only you can make you happy.

Over the past three decades, psychologists have conducted research to find the factors that determine happiness. After tracking people over many years, they discovered that lots of happy people were in long-term relationships.

Therefore, they concluded, long-term relationships make you happy. Indeed, some of the researchers even went so far as to say that marriage makes you happy. However, as the years went by and they analysed more data, they discovered that this wasn’t quite correct.

It wasn’t being in a long-term relationship, or being married, that made you happy. In fact, people who were happy attracted long-term relationships into their life. So it was not relationships that were making them happy — it was that happy people were making long-­lasting relationships.

This finding was reinforced by a major study which ran over 16 years and showed that people who were happiest in their relationships were also happy before they’d even met their partners.

The consequence of all this research is very clear: being happy with yourself is the best preparation for a happy long-term relationship.

I'm so glad I decided to be happy a few years ago - a long term relationship followed pretty soon. Last month we completed four years of being married happily! :)