Marital Happiness - An Essential Factor for Global Happiness?

Happiness is the ultimate pleasure without which the others would be incomplete. Marital happiness is the most important factor in determining global happiness.

Renowned therapist Milton Erickson states that "The key premise is that there are successful marriages. But what is a successful marriage for you may be a failure for me, and successful marriage for me would be a failure for you. In other words, a happy marriage is possible for each of us. "

Marital happiness, which is also called marital satisfaction, could be defined by the absence of conflicts in the relationship and the "impression of happiness" present in both spouses.

Marital happiness can be understood as the frequent exchange of positive behaviors (eg, compliments, food preparation, extra income) and the occasional exchange of negative behaviors (eg, critical remarks, physical abuse, infidelity) by the respective spouses. Happy husbands often do positive things to each other.

Marital unhappiness can be understood as the frequent exchange of negative behaviors and the occasional exchange of positive behaviors. Unhappy husbands often hurt each other and seldom balance this with positive behavior.

In general, married people are happier than singles, newly separated, divorced, or widowed people. Most happy marriages are stable and lasting. Marital happiness gradually decreases in the first years of marriage, after the appearance of children, then begins to increase when children reach preschool age and until school age, then happiness decreases again until children reach adolescence.

After this stage, marital happiness increases a lot, especially after all the children are "launched" in life. At this stage also called the "empty nest stage" (when husbands are left alone and children have their own lives) marital happiness reaches its highest level.

Researchers who have studied family life have found that spouses' employment status has a positive and significant impact on marital happiness for both spouses and husbands.

Women with paid service increase self-confidence, self-esteem, and personal independence. Wives who have a job also increase the financial resources of their family, so marital happiness is higher in couples where both spouses have income. Other research has shown that marital happiness increases when husbands are satisfied with the sharing of household chores and decreases when there is a conflict between spouses. It has also been found that men have a higher level of marital happiness than women.

When asked what are the factors that determine a happy marriage, people gave the following answers: fidelity (93%), understanding (86%), a satisfying sex life (75%), children (59%), common interests (52%), money (41%), socio-cultural similarity (25%).

Factors that determine marital happiness:

1. Provenance, previous experiences, and living conditions

The more similar the two partners (age, education, race, ethnicity, religion), the closer they can feel, the more capable of mutual understanding and empathy, but also the extremely different people can form a strong functional couple.

The happy marriage of the parents directly contributes to shaping a positive attitude of the children regarding marriage. In other words, children whose parents have had a happy marriage will also have a happy marriage because they will take on the model of their parents. Positive relationships with parents will also contribute to the marital happiness of adult children.

People who are satisfied with their lifestyle, income level, degree of professional and social achievement tend to have more successful marriages than people who are dissatisfied with their status and living conditions.

2. The role of personality factors:

Spouses who trust each other and who respect each other have a happier marriage. Also, spouses who are characterized by emotional/affective maturity will have a more satisfying marriage. Affective maturity involves emotional stability, altruism, the ability to offer, to create satisfaction and pleasure, sociability, acceptance of a certain degree of emotional dependence, etc.

3. Sexual harmony and pleasant joint activities:

If sexual harmony is one of the most important factors in marital happiness, husbands should be concerned about maintaining and improving their sexual relationship, and for this, they should follow the following rules: maintain a certain frequency of sexual intercourse, the variety (mating positions, types of sensual interaction, underwear, etc.) must be constantly monitored to maintain intense sexual desire, spontaneity (if sexual needs sometimes arise unexpectedly, the couple should take advantage of the spontaneity of sexual desire), open communication of sexual needs, gestures and attitudes expected from the partner in moments of intimacy.

A woman's sexual satisfaction is directly proportional to her marital happiness: a sexually satisfied woman is happier, her marriage is more lasting, and a happy woman achieves sexual satisfaction more easily in her marital relationship.

4. The role of cognitive factors

One factor of marital happiness is the attribution, that is, the ability to understand or intuit the real meaning of the marital partner's behavior. Misunderstanding the other person or the feeling of not being understood produces discouragement, depression, anger, or reproach, which causes marital happiness to decrease. Also, spouses who are dissatisfied with their marriage will be tempted to attribute the responsibility and guilt to their partner.

A major condition of marital happiness is that each husband can understand and meet the expectations of the other.

5. Marital communication:

• To have a happy marriage, the spouses must be satisfied with the way they communicate with each other. The main variables of relational satisfaction are the quality of interpersonal communication (partners to communicate effectively, to listen to their partner), sexual communication (partners to express their sexual desires), and emotional communication (the exchange of positive emotions between partners should be high and negative emotions to below).

• Marital happiness is based on quality marital communication. To make such a communication, the spouses must perform the following behaviors: self-disclosure in front of the partner (it means allowing him to look at us as we are, as we see ourselves), confirmatory answers (eg "you're right"), the ability spouses to control their interactions and not to be led by them, the ability to establish functional rules of interaction, and situational adaptability, ie the ability to react appropriately to the situation in which they communicate.