Couples Who Drink Together, Stay Together (Says Study)
Boozers love other boozers and they live happily ever after.
Jimmy Conover on Unsplash Interesting news has come to us via The State University of New York at Buffalo (aka SUNY Buffalo).
Evidently, couples that booze together cruise together for life.
According to a report released by the university, Dr. Gregory Homish, assistant professor of health behavior, and his team have found that couples who share similar levels of engagement in certain vices — specifically, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes — are more likely to be content in their relationships than couples whose drinking and smoking habits are dissimilar.
Essentially, heavy drinkers married to heavy drinkers and teetotalers married to teetotalers are more likely to feel satisfied with their marriage than are heavy drinkers married to teetotalers and vice versa.
The study followed more than 600 couples over a period of seven years.
Those who participated were asked to fill out questionnaires before their wedding, and then again at their first, second, fourth and seventh anniversaries.
Both spouses were asked to submit responses, with 79.7% of the wives and 68.1% of husbands completing their questionnaires.
Not surprisingly, the honeymoon ends pretty quickly, as marital satisfaction went down for all couples across the board over the first few years.
That downward trend then leveled out, and when it did, couples with different drinking and smoking habits were significantly more likely to feel dissatisfied with their relationship than were those whose habits were similar.
Somewhat predicatably, the study's authors note that marriages "deteriorated even more when one spouse, but not the other, indulged excessively in both."
"There are important clinical implications related to these findings," Dr. Homish says. "For example, if one partner of a heavy drinking couple enters treatment for his/her alcohol use, the break-up of the 'drinking partnership' could have unintended negative outcomes for the couple.
"Therefore, approaches such as behavior couples therapy that assess and treat both partners could have a more beneficial outcome at both the individual and family level."
Though it's not expressly stated, you'd guess that in a Homer Simpson – Maude Flanders match (i.e., a booze-bag/teetotaler pairing if ever there was one), both parties would be feel equally aggrieved.
Homer says to Maude, "You used to be cool," to which Maude replies, "You're still drunk," to which he them retorts, "I'll be sober in the morning and you'll still be a dork" — at which point a door slams in one or the other's face.*
"Here's to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems." - Homer Simpson
Since alcohol is a depressant, especially when one wakes up drunk only to become progressively more hungover until they go to bed that evening, you might guess that double-fisting couples would generally be less satisfied, but this study's participants would prove you wrong if you did.
So maybe drinking together can take the edge off of some relationships.
Or maybe these couples are too drunk to care. Either way, cheers to them!
*Note: This is, of course, a paraphrase of a famous (and possibly rumored) exchange between Winston Churchill and an unidentified woman.
Woman to Churchill: "Sir, you are disgustingly drunk."
Churchill replies: "My dear, you are ugly, and what's more, you're disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly."
Tom Miller is a writer and performer based in New York, who also happens to be the General Manager and Coordinating Video Producer for YourTango.
Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on April 26, 2018 and was updated with the latest information.