Is Weight Ratio Between Men and Women a Key to Marital Bliss?
Julia DuBois
| 2 min read
No matter what people may want you to believe, we do pick our future spouse based to some degree on their looks. So it makes sense that the weight of your significant other would play some role in your happiness.
A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Tennessee suggests that weight ratio — your body’s weight in relation to your partner’s — continues to play a role well into the relationship. The study followed 169 married couples over the age of 35 for four years to examine what role weight ratio really played in a relationship.
According to a Fox News article, the study found that men were more satisfied in relationships when their Body Mass Index, the measure of body fat based on height and weight, was higher than that of their wife. On that same note, wives who had a lower BMI than their husbands were also happier in their relationships.
So could weight ratio really hold the key to a happy marriage? Well, sort of. There are certainly many other facets to a relationship, but this study suggests that weight ratio is an important one.
The researchers did, however, want to make it clear to people that it is all relative. Andrea Melzer, one of the researchers who worked on the study, was quoted as saying, “The great take-home message from our study is that women of any size can be happy in their relationships with the right partner. It’s relative weight that matters, not absolute weight. It’s not that they have to be small.”
In other words, the couples’ happiness came from the ratios of weight in relation to each other — how heavy or light they are in general is irrelevant.
What do you think of this new finding? Have you heard any other surprising correlations with a happy marriage?
Photo credit: Joe Wilcox
