Stuck in a rut: Is boredom the silent relationship killer?

Stuck in a rut?

What does it mean for your relationship when you find yourself stuck in a rut? A group of researchers decided to answer this question by examining how being bored now affects relationship satisfaction down the road.

Tsapelas and colleagues (2009) asked 123 married couples who had been married for seven years how often during the past month they had felt that their relationship was (or was getting into) a rut. They also asked them how satisfied they were with their relationships. Nine years later they came back and asked them again how satisfied they were. What do you think they found? 

Results: Spouses who felt bored at year 7 were less satisfied at year 16. What is important is that boredom predicted being less satisfied down the road even when taking into account how satisfied people were at year 7. In other words, its not just that people who were bored were less satisfied to begin with, boredom actually led to further declines in satisfaction over the nine years. Okay, so boredom is bad. These findings aren’t gonna knock your socks off. But there were a few extra analyses they did that I thought were interesting.

Read More->