What causes the most strain on a relationship? Money worries? Working long hours? Infidelity? Sex life? Household chores?
The Government’s Happiness Index indicates that the Top 10 Problems that place a strain on a Relationship are:
- Money Worries 62%
- Working long hours / lack of work-life balance 40%
- Extramarital affair(s) 36%
- Not understanding each other 34%
- Family rows 24%
- Disagreement over the future of the relationship 17%
- Different interests 16%
- Sex life 11%
- Alcohol 10%
- Household chores 8%
Source: ONS 2015
Barely a third of British people now think an extra-marital affair would put their relationship under strain, with anxieties about paying bills and tensions over long working hours outranking adultery on the list of possible threats to stable family life.
Meanwhile only one in 10 Britons believe that an unsatisfactory sex life would be a significant problem – only marginally ahead of tensions over household chores.
However, when asked to choose options from a list of problems which could put a relationship under strain, more than six out of 10 singled out financial problems as a possible danger and four in 10 selected long-working hours or a lack of work-life balance.
Is Marriage the key to happiness?
The study also confirmed marriage as the secret of happiness in modern Britain – with married people by far the most content overall.
When people were asked to rank their satisfaction with life on a scale of nought to 10, 84 per cent of married people – or those in a civil partnership – ranked their life satisfaction highly or very highly and only three per cent gave a score at the lower end of the scale.
Married people were 23 per cent more likely to opt for a score of nine or 10 than those cohabiting with partner, and 75 per cent more likely than divorced people.
Source The Daily Telegraph