I went down a research rabbit hole on whether marriage actually makes people happier

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Scientists have actually studied whether marriages can make you happy in the longer term and they've quantified it.

[00:00:05]The results are detailed, nuanced, and so specific. Let's get into it. Also, this reel is dedicated to all my friends, family, well-wishers, cousins who keep asking me when I'm getting married. I have an answer for you today.

[00:00:16]So, let's imagine number of years is this axis and the Y axis is your happiness level. There's a psychological concept called happiness baseline and that baseline is different for each one of us. It's partly genetic, partly personality and the wild thing is no matter what happens in your life, around that baseline is where you'll come back to. In this graph, he found that you're starting from your baseline, right? Your happiness starts increasing leading up to the wedding day. But your wedding day is your peak. After that, your happiness starts slowly coming back downward sloping till it returns to your baseline which roughly takes 2 to 3 years after marriage. Which if you think about it is hilarious cuz we spend so much time and so much money planning for that one day that science is saying is the peak. We literally celebrating the moment after which is going to come right back to what we were before this whole marriage thing started. But here's where it gets interesting. There are exceptions.

[00:01:07]Helliwell found that people who married their best friends or consider their spouses their best friends actually had double the happiness boost from the marriage. Was Kuch Kuch Hota Hai right all along? Is Karan Johar a scientist?

[00:01:17]And the second exception to this graph is a divorce. So, another psychologist, Richard Lucas, followed 24,000 people for 15 years. On average, divorced people do not return to the baseline that they started with pre-marriage.

[00:01:29]They usually go lower and they stay there for years after that. So, when you put both of these together, here's what I learned. The cost of a bad marriage is greater than the benefit of a good marriage. The data isn't pro-marriage or anti-marriage. It is pro being very, very careful before you take that decision.