The critical point at which couples break up, according to a breakthrough study

There was a study published by Buehler and Orth recently in 2024 that looked at over 2,000 participants longitudinally across 20 years. And if you're not familiar with how research works, studies like this are incredibly rare and valuable. This study revealed some really interesting insights about the difference between couples who stay together and couples who don't, the critical point at which couples break up, and the outcomes of people who re-partner with So I'm going to break it all down and also share some real-life applications at the end of this video so that we can use these findings to inform our own romantic relationships. Before I tell you the findings, I want you to write down in the comments if you feel comfortable, how would you rate your relationship satisfaction out of 100? If you had to give it a number, jot down what that number would be, your relationship satisfaction. And we'll come back to that number in a moment because that number as it turns out is pretty important. Also before I get into it, just a reminder, my second novel, the gothic horror novel, A Song at Dead Man's Cove, is set to release this June. So make sure you're subscribed to my email newsletter so that you can be alerted once it's out. You can find that at dranayudin.com. With that out of the way, let's talk about this fascinating study. So previous research by Buehler from 2021 showed that generally speaking, relationship satisfaction tends to follow a specific pattern over the course of time. Relationship satisfaction decreases over time, reaching a low point at about age 40, and then increases slightly until about age 65, and then plateaus in late adulthood at a somewhat lower level than during young adulthood. If we look at it another way, based on relationship duration rather than the person's age, relationship satisfaction tends to dip in the first 10 years, then increase over the next 10, and then decrease again after 20 years, again reaching a plateau somewhere kind of in the middle. So that was the previous context, but the current study from 2024 wanted to know how does change in relationship satisfaction differ between those who stay together and those who break up? How does relationship satisfaction change across different relationships for the same person? And which moderators explain the variability in this change in relationship satisfaction, things like kids or gender? So the findings were as follows. Couples who break up tend to begin relationships already less satisfied than the couples who stay together. And couples who break up also experience a steeper decline in relationship satisfaction than those who stay together. So remember, over the course of time it's pretty normal to experience a slight decline in relationship satisfaction, but for those who end up breaking up, it's a much steeper drop. And there seems to be a critical threshold where couples tend to break up when the relationship satisfaction falls below a score of 65 percent. So you see here in this graph how for the couples that were together 10 years, those that were together 20 years, and those that were together 30 years, they all kind of broke up around the same spot. All those relationships tended to end when satisfaction dipped to a score of about 3.5 to 3.6, suggesting that when relationship satisfaction falls below 65 percent, that is when couples are at greatest risk of breaking up. Couples who had kids in the home also had lower relationship satisfaction, and their relationship satisfaction decreased more steeply, and the effect of having kids was more pronounced in relationships that ended. Younger couples were not unhappier than older ones, but they did experience a steeper drop in relationship satisfaction over the course of the relationship. Women tended to experience a stronger decrease in relationship satisfaction over the course of their relationship compared to men, and the effect of gender was more pronounced in relationships that ended. In general, people who repartnered, who got together with someone else after a breakup, were initially more satisfied in their new relationship than in their previous relationship, but in both of them they were less satisfied the longer they stayed together. And of those people who quickly jumped from one relationship to another, they were less satisfied in their new relationship. They also tended to have been relatively pretty satisfied at the end of their previous relationship, and the authors offer a few explanations for this. One possibility is that those who had their relationship end on bad terms were kind of scared off of relationships for a while or needed some time to process it. Another possibility is that maybe they had better relationship skills that allowed them to quickly initiate a new relationship, or they might not have been the ones to initiate the breakup. Now I'm going to go into exactly what we can learn from the study, but before I do, I want to tell you about the sponsor of today's video, ZocDoc. So the other day I was talking with some guests who came to visit me about the difference in And my husband was reminiscing about how far in advance he needed to schedule doctor's appointments when we were living in America, which, to be fair, is also a big problem in some European countries as well. But when I heard that, I reminded him not through ZocDoc, because when we were living in the US, ZocDoc was the main way that I would get really quick appointments, often within like 24 to 72 hours. 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Thank you so much to ZocDoc, and now back to what we can learn from the critical point at which couples break up. So taking all these findings, how can we apply them to real life? Firstly, I'm always wary when somebody's telling me that they have huge concerns in their relationship or deep unsatisfactions and the relationship has just started. Statistically speaking, this is probably the happiest time they're ever going to be in this relationship. So if a relationship feels unsatisfying from the very beginning, you might want to consider whether you want to stay in it for the long run because you're one of the couples at greatest risk of breaking up and more at risk of becoming even more unsatisfied with each other. Things are probably never going to be as satisfying as they are now actually, and this is evidence for something called the accumulating stress model, which says that relationships that end tend to experience an accumulation of distress over the course of relationship and a degradation in relationship satisfaction. So starting off happy in a relationship can give you a really protective insulation against life stressors that are going to get thrown at you. Another takeaway is that if you were to give your relationship satisfaction a what would it be? The reason I asked you to do that at the beginning of this video is because if you're veering too close to 65, you might be at risk of the critical point where a breakup is imminent. Like I said, it's normal for relationship satisfaction to decrease a bit with time or to fluctuate so long as it doesn't get below 65 percent. Another takeaway is if you think having kids is going to fix your relationship, think again. I mean, I don't think we need to brainstorm very hard about all the different stressors that having kids brings up in life, and so this idea that you need to have a baby to save the relationship is deeply misguided. Also, those who are partnered with women should be particularly attentive to drops in relationship satisfaction because women tend to experience a steeper decrease in satisfaction than men as a whole, particularly in relationships that end up dissolving. So that's something you want to be mindful of. If you feel your lady friend is starting to be less happy with you, don't ignore that. And if you're jumping from one relationship to another, remember that you take yourself with you. In other words, yes, this might be a new person in your relationship, but you are the same person unless you've actively tried to change something about yourself. So it's really important to take responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors because those might get activated again in the new relationship, regardless of who your new partner is. Simply jumping into a new relationship isn't going to solve the problem. You have to look at what went wrong in the previous relationship and probably take your time with it before jumping into a new one. And in general, remember that people who jump too quickly into a new relationship are less likely to make that new relationship last, which also means, you know, be careful that you're not somebody else's rebound and be careful that you're not rebounding. I think people say that, like, the first person to move on after a breakup is the person who kind of lost the breakup, and this kind of provides evidence for that because it shows that they either have something to prove or they haven't really taken the time to learn lessons from their previous relationship yet. And putting a band-aid over the pain of a breakup is certainly not going to help you heal faster. And the last takeaway is that if you were still pretty happy when your relationship ended, you might be particularly likely to jump into the next relationship quickly. So just be mindful of that and try to make sure that you don't rush into things. What did you think about the findings of the study? And also, I'm just really curious, you know, if you've been in relationships, did you notice that 65% threshold when things finally came to a turn and you ended up ending the relationship? It's a pretty low number. It's still more than, like, 50-50. Clearly, people need to be pretty happy with each other to stay in a relationship because otherwise relationships are really hard. But let me know what your thoughts are. Hope you have a lovely rest of your day, and I'll see you soon.