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The first year of a relationship is wonderful. All you can think about is the other person and you show your love with flowers, chocolate, unforgettable dates and long texting sessions. You are very happy, in love with your partner and you can’t get enough of each other. But a year later… you two broke up. How can this happen?
Statistics show that most relationships fail in the first year. The feelings that people associate with falling in love, the butterflies in the stomach and the intense longing, disappear during this time. And at that point, as a couple, you start to wonder whether you should continue with the relationship.
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This is what research says
Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford University, began research in 2009. He posed a number of central questions. How often does a relationship end? And how do the chances of breaking up change over time? During his research he followed more than 3,000 people and discovered a number of clear patterns.
What he discovered, for example, is that marriage is a strong bond – it is the glue that connects people and keeps them together. Both straight and gay people who are married are much less likely to break up than their unmarried counterparts.
For same-sex married couples who have been together for 5 years, the breakup rate drops from about 8 percent to less than 1 percent if they have been together for at least 20 years. For heterosexual couples, the divorce rate drops from more than 3 percent to less than 1 percent in the same period.
In contrast, unmarried couples, both straight and gay, have a much higher breakup rate, even if they have been together for more than twenty years. This graph shows this clearly:
60 percent of unmarried relationships fail in the first year
According to the Stanford sociologist’s research, 60 percent of unmarried relationships end in the first year. Of the unmarried couples who were together for less than two months during the first wave of Rosenfeld’s study, 60 percent were no longer together when he checked them again the following year. But once a relationship has been around for more than a year, the chances of it ending suddenly start to decrease.
In the first five years, the break-up rate drops by about 10 percent per year, to about 20 percent for both hetero and gay couples. And the percentage continues to shrink until a relationship lasts about 15 years, when it settles to a stable level for both. That level is just over 10 percent for gay couples and about 5 percent for straight couples.
The results are not entirely surprising. After all, marriages are a binding agreement. There is much more to a divorce than a ‘normal’ break-up. These obstacles are a reason for many people to be less likely to give up. Or as Rosenfeld himself put it in 2014 : “The longer a couple stays together, the more obstacles they overcome together, the more time and effort they have invested together in the relationship, and the more connected they are.”
The longer the relationship, the smaller the chance of a breakup
The most common time for a couple to break up is soon after the relationship has started, according to research. But overall, the first years are actually still difficult. The first years of a relationship are crucial for the future of the relationship.
In the first phases of your relationship you see everything important about your partner. You know the best and worst sides of your partner, both physically and emotionally. You are used to each other’s presence and the daily grind can gradually fade the spark. Many couples then end their relationship because they feel that the feeling is gone.
What most couples who end their relationship don’t realize is that it’s just a phase. It’s part of the process and it happens to all couples. Those butterflies disappear at some point, but this does not mean that the love has disappeared. A relationship does not have to end because the feeling has become ‘less’ .
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Tips to break the bad phase
When you are sure that you love each other very much, it is important to break through the difficult periods. The feelings won’t stay the same forever. Feelings are unreliable because they vary over time and are subject to moods and external factors.
For example, think of a stressful period when your partner loses a job or a loved one. Or the arrival of a baby. At first all attention is focused on it, but over time you get used to it. Things will get better again, even though you might not have thought so. These are some tips to remember when your relationship is temporarily going less well:
- Recognize that it is normal and necessary to question your relationship sometimes . You can’t expect to stay in love forever.
- Give yourself time to assess whether your concerns are related to a loss of passion or whether you have legitimate concerns about your partner and the relationship.
- Talk about your concerns with the right person. It is important that you share this with close friends or family members. Sharing your concerns can help them be resolved more quickly.
- Also make sure you share your concerns with your partner. Let me know if you feel the passion disappearing. It will start a dialogue and help you both actively address your concerns.
- Once you’ve decided that the relationship is worth fighting for, it’s important to start working on it right away. Also read these relationship tips .
- Actively work on moving your relationship forward. Relationships simply take a lot of effort and work. You can’t expect your relationship to be great forever if you don’t put effort into it.
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Together through all the lows and highs
Life consists of lows and highs. In fact, that’s what makes life so interesting: it’s a long series of ups and downs, of highs and lows. For a successful relationship, it is important that you approach this as a team with your partner. A relationship is not all roses and moonshine. Every relationship is tested to overcome the difficult moments in life. And if that works, a relationship doesn’t have to end .
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