Is Marrying a Friend a Good Idea?

It is believed that married people lead a healthier as well as happier life as compared to those who haven’t tied the knot as of yet. This notion was just a hypothesis, but recently a group of researchers found evidences to support this theory. The researchers also tried to find out, why married people have a better social life and are much happier, in general. Is it because of the fact that marriage turns you into a more responsible person and you start taking your life more seriously? Or maybe it’s because of the fact that a happy person has more odds of becoming somebody’s potential life partner as compared to someone who is miserably unhappy with his/her life.
What this study found is rather, poetic! The research concluded that key to a blissful marriage is having a partner who is not just your partner, but also your best friend. If you are in a relationship with a person who understands you like a close friend, your marriage will automatically become a delightful affair. According to this study conducted by National Bureau of Economic Research, if you are a great lover but do not really share the bond of friendship with your partner; you won’t be able to extract all the satisfaction you could have, out of your married life.
Those, who do share this wonderful bond, extract twice the amount of happiness and contentment from their marriage. The research also revealed that if you are single and living a difficult life at the moment – financial problems, health issues, a setback in your career graph or lack of social relationships, marriage can bring a wave of happiness in your life. The same implies for living with a romantic partner. When two people live together happily, they have a tendency to provide each other with emotional support which helps them in overcoming even the most difficult challenges of their lives.
Despite all these benefits of getting married, more and more people are opting for single-hood. The researchers compared the ratio, between the total population (USA) to the number of people who got married, since the year 1970 till 2005. The results are absolutely shocking! Compared to the percentage of marriages that occurred in 1970, 2005 saw a decline of almost 90 precent.
There are several reasons behind this decline – rise in the global life expectancy, women being more financially and socially independent than ever and rise in the number of people who do not believe in the idea of marriage are the three main reasons.