In their quest to putting a name and a number to everything, including love, scientists have come up with a formula that might actually help couples have a perfect marriage. The only thing they should keep in mind is that the woman must be younger by 5 years and smarter than her partner in order for their marriage to work, because that is the recipe the Geneva School of Business has come up with, as the
Telegraph informs.
Though this theory is
not new, a study conducted on over 1,000 subjects comes to prove that, indeed, in order for marriage to work there has to be an age and IQ gap between wife and husband, with the scales tipped in her favor on both counts. Another prerequisite is that both partners should come from the same background, otherwise differences will only exacerbate in time and lead to the dissolution of the marriage, researchers believe.
“The academic study, published in the European Journal of Operational Research looked at 1,074 couples aged between 19 and 75 years, to find which social factors were most important to a long and happy relationship. Besides the man being five years older than his bride, and that his bride should share the same heritage, they concluded that a wife should be at least 27 per cent more intelligent than her husband. She should also hold a degree, while he should not. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the academics found that marrying a divorcee reduced the chance of wedded bliss,” the Telegraph says of the findings of the study.
Relationship experts say there might be something to the study. “Aren’t most women the more intelligent in a relationship anyway? That’s my first reaction. It’s the only finding that rings true, from what I’ve found. Because it’s women who tend to determine the emotional landscape of a relationship. So I don’t find it surprising that women should be more intelligent,” Kate Figes, author of “Couples,” says for the aforementioned publication.
Of course, there are also those who say that, while factors like age, IQ and background inevitably take their toll on the relationship and the institution of marriage, it’s hard to predict the chances of a relationship based on them alone, especially when it can fail even if they are met.
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