Happy, cheerful senior couple enjoying life and spending time together (Adobe Stock)
(WWTI) – Valentine's Day is over, and you're probably asking yourself what makes a healthy relationship successful?
There are new age ideas like the five love languages and old wives' tales like “Happy Wife, Happy Life,” and popular culture is full of ideas about how sex and relationships work. However, does science support these ideas? According to College of Health Assistant Professor and Research Chair in Relationships and Sexuality Amy Moise, the answer is no.
The Five Love Languages were invented by Gary Chapman, a former Baptist minister who provided marriage counseling to couples at his church and wrote a book based on his experiences. The theory is that everyone has a primary love language and problems can arise in relationships when partners speak different languages. The concept has been deeply ingrained in the popular imagination with online dating sites encouraging people to share their love language, 50 million people have taken the test online and videos with the hashtag have amassed half a billion views on TikTok.
However, the theory does not hold up, according to the latest review paper by Moyes in collaboration with researchers from the University of Toronto and published in Current Directions in Psychological Science.
“His scale pits love languages against each other, but in research studies when they asked people to rate each of these expressions of love independently, people tended to rate them all highly.says Moyes. However, she sees why the concept took off.It's something that people can really latch on to in a direct way and communicate something about themselves to their partners. But we suggest that love is not a language you need to learn how to speak but more like a nutritionally balanced diet, that partners need multiple expressions of love simultaneously, and that these needs can change over time as life and relationships develop.“.
Muise and a group of international collaborators have also investigated the idea of “happy wife, happy life,” which argues that women's perceptions are the barometer of relationships, and have greater weight than men's perceptions. In two studies looking at mixed couples, one examining daily diaries and the other looking at annual reports over five years, they found instead that it was less “happy wife, happy life,” and more “happy husband, happy home.”
In research conducted last year with a graduate student at York University, Moyes found that while many people like idealized spontaneous sex, researchers did not find evidence that people's actual experience of sex was more enjoyable when it was not planned.
She also conducted research on whether too much closeness is harmful to sexual relationships, and according to her “In research, we find that couples who are closer have a greater desire for each other, but we see that what is also required to fulfill desire is difference or uniqueness.“.
Moyes says that bringing new things into a relationship is important and that new experiences can increase desire for long-term relationships.
