Better be Right Than be Happy for Successful Married Life: Study

Want a secret to successful married life? Stop agreeing with your partner every time.

University of Auckland, New Zealand recently conducted a research on married couples to find out the key to happy married life.

For the study, researchers collected data from a couple. The authors assumed the female participant would prefer to be right and the male participant would prefer to be happy. Even if he believed the female participant was wrong, the male was to indulge her. The male was informed of the intervention while the female participant was not.

The researchers had to stop the study after the husband said his wife became critical of everything. They also measure the quality of life of both the participants. The husband's score fell drastically. He rated his quality of life 7 out 10 before the research and after the study it came down to 3 out of 10. But the quality of life for wife increased slightly from 8 to 8.5 in just six days.

"It seems that being right is a cause of happiness, and agreeing with what one disagrees with is a cause of unhappiness," said authors of the study published in British Medical Journal. "The results of this trial show that the availability of unbridled power adversely affects the quality of life of those on the receiving end. Many people in the world live as couples, and we believe that it could be harmful for one partner to always have to agree with the other. However, more research is needed to see whether our results hold if it is the male who is always right," they concluded.