A new research by New York’s Stony Brook University and Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, has found that even after ten years of marriage, the level of love can be as intense as it was at the beginning of the relationship.
The study polled 274 married individuals.
40% of subjects who had been married for over ten years told researchers that they were still “very intensely in love”.
Another 13.4% said they were “intensely in love”, and 26.2% agreed with the statement that they were “very in love”.
The feeling was defined by a combination of behaviors such as thinking positively about the partner, being affectionate with one another, sexual intercourse and general life happiness.
The study authors say their results counter the commonly-held belief that feelings of love decline over time.
This is even true for couples married well over a decade, it seems. While the findings showed a drop in very intense feelings of love for those married over 20 years, it rose back up to 40% for couples married over 30 years.
There were some differences between the sexes when it came to behavior that represented intense feelings of love, however.
For men, thinking about their partner at all times was a key marker of a deep love, but the same was not true of women.
Female participants, in contrast, linked those strong feelings to passion for “non-relationship factors”, the study authors revealed.
This idea of women needing space to be happy is echoed in a book by Huffington Post writer Iris Krasnow, “The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes To Stay Married”.
Iris Krasnow writes: “In order to keep the promise <<till death do us part>> without killing someone first, a woman must have work and hobbies she loves.”
