What counts as a good life? Philosophers see this as a profound and complex question, but to much of the rest of the world, the answer is simple. Movies, TV shows, fairy tales, novels, songs, and the advice of generations of parents have all converged on a straightforward formula: Find “The One” and commit to The One. Get married, the story goes, and you will live happily ever after.  

For a long time, social scientists seemed to be peddling the same message. At first, though, their studies were not very sophisticated. That has changed lately. Now, the very best studies – and there are many of them – are showing something very different from what we have been led to believe.  

One of the key questions is, what happens to people’s happiness when they go from being single to getting married? As of 2012, there were already 18 studies that followed the same people for years, asking them repeatedly to report on their happiness. In a stereotype-shattering set of results, most of the studies showed that people were no happier after they married than they were before. In a few studies, people were asked how satisfied they were with their lives (rather than how happy), and in those studies, people who married reported a bit more satisfaction just after they married – what researchers call a “honeymoon effect” – but then their satisfaction steadily declined over time. Even that honeymoon effect was limited. Only the people who got married and stayed married enjoyed it. People who married and then divorced were already becoming less happy as their wedding day drew near. 

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"Westerners are obsessed with happiness and it is one of the favourite topics of researchers. Occasionally, though, they study something deeper, such as experiences of personal growth."

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Westerners are obsessed with happiness and it is one of the favourite topics of researchers. Occasionally, though, they study something deeper, such as experiences of personal growth. In one study, researchers followed for five years people who had settled into their lives – single people who had always been single and married people who were continuously married. Over that period, it was the lifelong single people who were more likely to agree with statements such as “For me, life has been a continuous process of learning, change, and growth.” Married people were more likely to identify with statements such as, “I gave up trying to make big improvements in my life a long time ago.”  

If the results of the studies had shown what we have been led to expect, that getting married makes people happier and healthier and better off in all sorts of other ways, too, they would have been easy to understand. Marriage, we are told, means that someone chose you. Someone loves you. Someone will be there for you, in sickness and in health, in good times and bad. You are protected. 

Those aren’t the only reasons why people who marry should do better than if they had stayed single. In many places around the world, people who marry are rewarded handsomely. In the U.S., for example, there are more than 1,000 federal laws that benefit and protect only those people who are legally married. The financial advantages alone can be staggering. 

People who marry also enjoy the esteem and accolades of other people. Their life scripts are the stuff of popular culture. They are celebrated with engagement parties and weddings. Their maturity and responsibility are assumed rather than questioned.