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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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  • This Study had a mean satisfaction of 68.2% (converted from a 1-6 scale). It was higher with "Beginning Families" and lower with "Families with Teenagers".

  • This post says 58% of people have "achieved marital satisfaction".

  • This PhD blog post says "As time went on, relationship satisfaction continued to decrease at about the same rate as overall life satisfaction."

The numbers all appear to be different across the studies, but that's expected. Any way you look at it, it's a substantial fraction of unhappily married people (presumably including some men, because the other studies don't separate by gender.)

These things are super sensitive to the exact question wording so it's pretty hard to draw strong conclusions

But are we talking about "happy sex life" or "all life issues in general" when talking about "marital/relationship satisfaction"? A couple could be having sex every day of the week but be unhappy because she is a spendthrift or he never wants to get involved in organising a birthday party for his mother.