Do you believe that marriages are happier when wives are thinner than their husbands? They are, according to a new study reported on by Discovery News, whereby researchers at the University of Tennessee studied the BMI (body mass index) of nearly 170 newlywed couples and their marital happiness over the couse of time.
The lead author, doctoral candidate at UT, Andrea Meltzer, said that they found “this effect initially on husbands’ satisfaction at the beginning of marriage…husbands were more satisfied at the time of marriage to the extent that their wives had a lower BMI than themselves.”
They also found that women who had a lower BMI than their husbands were quite a bit happier with their marriage over time–thinner wives make for happier husbands and wives.
“Wives are happier to the extent that their husbands are happy,” Meltzer explained. “If we were looking at another quality that was more important to women than men — say, economic resources — we might see opposite effects. Women might be more satisfied to the extent that their partners are making more money than they are.”
“This study is important because it demonstrates that women of any size can be happy in their relationships with the right partner. It’s not necessarily striving for thinness per se, but striving to be thinner than their partner,” Meltzer said.
“Couples are more satisfied to the extent that their partner is healthy,” Meltzer noted–and thinness is, on average, more correlates with better health than being overweight or obese.
The study was published in the July issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science.
What do you think? Do you agree with any of this? Leave a comment…
