Dating astrology

Part of the appeal of astrology is that you can find yourself in it; you can categorise yourself and reinforce your sense of identity. If that appeals to you, and you or someone you know is on the dating scene, then a new study will be right up your alley. What the new study did was come up with four categories of couple and the category you fall into predicts your likelihood of getting married. If that piques your interest…read on MacDuff.

The study comes from the University of Illinois and involved tracking 376 dating couples over a nine month period. Over the course of the study the researchers tracked how committed individuals were to marrying their partners and why. They also studied the ways that the individuals in each couple related to each other.

Arising out of this they identified four types of relating and these types predicted how likely marriage would be for each couple.

The first type is the “dramatic couple”. These couples have lots of ups and downs, their commitment swings wildly, and they tend to make decisions on the relationship based on negative things that might be happening. Dramatic couples attribute changes on their level of commitment to time spent with their own friends or by doing things separately. The researchers say that in these couples the members are hanging on to their own individuality and the bad news is, they are more than twice as likely as all other couples to break up.

Then there are “partner-focused” couples who are very involved with and dependent upon each other. These couples have the highest scores for conscientiousness suggesting that they are careful and thoughtful about how they approach their relationship. Although partner-focused may share a social network they don’t use the network to propel their relationship forward. Not surprisingly, these partner-focused couples have the highest chance of staying together and being happy.

“Conflict-ridden” couples exist in a tension between conflict that pushes them apart and passionate attraction that pulls them back together. This kind of partnership is not sustainable in the long term.

“Socially involved” couples share a social network and rely on that network to make decisions about their commitment. Having mutual friends makes people in these couples feel closer and more committed, they report high levels of satisfaction in their relationship and are quite stable, although not as successful as the “partner-focussed” couples.

Sometimes, and this is one of them, rigorous scientific research feels as though it was made for the patter of dinner party conversation.