New Study Links Marital Bliss and DNA

 Posted on October 15, 2013 in Divorce

The happiness of any marriage is dependent on both spouses becoming a team against all obstacles and supporting each other through difficult times. But it also might be deeper than that. Marital satisfaction might be set in your DNA based upon a new study published on October seventh of this year.

Divorceis very likely; the CDC has said that half of all marriages end in divorce. One of authors of the study offered their reason for initiating the study about why divorce is so common. UC Berkeley psychologist Robert W. Levenson stated in a press release that "an enduring mystery is, what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate of the marriage, and another so oblivious." The hope is that this study will start to uncover the reasons.

This new examination was based on a joint effort between researchers at Northwestern University and the University of California at Berkeley. They reviewed the structure of DNA and focused on the regulation of serotonin, which is the primary controller of mood, appetite, sleep as well as more cognitive functions like memory and learning.

For nearly fourteen years, the researchers at the Berkeley campus interviewed 156 couples who are now middle aged or older. These couples were asked to talk about their relationships in front of analysts who coded their behavior, facial expressions and body language. They were also subjected to DNA testing by the research team.

They discovered from their research a link between marital satisfaction and a gene variant, or allele, known as 5-HTTLPR. It seems that the length of these alleles is proportionate to the likelihood of marital satisfaction. The shorter the alleles mean that person is more likely to have an unhappy marriage if there are negative emotions like contempt and anger. But it is also the case that the people are the happiest with their marriage when nice emotions like humor were present. The people with longer alleles were less likely to draw satisfaction from the emotional state of the marriage regardless if it was good or bad.

If you are unhappy with your marriage and need to break away from your spouse, then divorce is an option. Please reach out to an experienced family law attorney in Arlington Heights today.