Who says that butterflies in the stomach are only for the young?
A study – “Relationship transitions and well-being in middle-aged and older adults: The role of gender and emotional support” by Iris V. Wahring, Urmimala Ghose, Denis Gerstorf, et al – hat was published in the International Journal of Behavioural Development showed that when people over 50 enter into a new relationship and seal it by moving in together, their life satisfaction increases significantly.
The study also challenged a common assumption: for couples who already live together, getting married later in life is not associated with a further increase in well-being on average.
How do relationship events affect older people?
Until now, research on ageing has mostly focused on loss events: How do people cope with the death of a partner or a painful break up? This time around, the researchers specifically examined ‘gain events’ – i.e. those moments when a new love enters their lives in old age.
To do this, the team evaluated long-term data from 2,840 participants in the US Health and Retirement Study aged between 50 and 95. The researchers compared how depressive symptoms and life satisfaction change when people move in with or marry a new partner.
Living together as a decisive turning point
The key findings showed that moving in together is more decisive than legal status. “The transition to living together with a new partner was accompanied by a significant increase in life satisfaction,” explained Wahring. This positive correlation was evident regardless of whether the couple married at the same time or not.
The surprise: couples who were already living together and only decided to marry later did not experience a further boost to their well-being by saying ‘I do’. “Our results show that the bonus for well-being is already achieved by sharing a life together in a partnership,” said the researcher. “The marriage itself does not offer any measurable additional gain in life happiness for couples who already share a table and a bed.”
Resilience in the face of separation
Separation also revealed an unexpected picture: contrary to common expectations, relationship breakdowns in this age group did not lead to a measurable decline in well-being. “This suggests that older adults have remarkable emotional resilience or use other social resources to cushion such transitions,” said Wahring.
No gender differences in late-life happiness
Another important finding concerns the role of gender: Contrary to the researchers’ assumption that men benefit more from a stable relationship than women, the study found no differences. Although men reported less emotional support from their social circle (friends and family), the positive effect of a new cohabitation was very similar for both genders and across all age groups studied.
Important when interpreting the results: “These are statistical averages,” emphasises Wahring. “While the group of people who move in together benefits overall, individual experiences can of course vary in each case – every relationship and every life path remains unique.”
Cultural context plays a role
Furthermore, relationship events also depend heavily on the social context: “Our findings reflect the situation in North America, but since relationship norms in the USA and Austria have developed similarly, the findings are easily transferable. Historically, there was a clear ‘marriage bonus’ in Europe and North America, but this is no longer evident in current studies such as this one. The reason for this could be the declining stigmatisation of unmarried couples. In countries with stronger prejudices against unmarried people, however, a significant marriage bonus could still exist today,” Wahring summarised.
