Love touches all of us, yet there is so much uncertainty around the
evolution of relationships.
A 2017 national survey by Stanford, "How Couples Meet and Stay
Together," shows some surprising trends about couples in America.
Let's analyze these relationship
trends through the visualizations below. Our data comes from 3,510 respondents.
Divorced Couples Tend to Have Larger Age Differences than Married Ones
Below, each point represents a couple, with age of each survey
respondent plotted against their partner's age. To view detailed
information about the age and marital status of each respondent and
the partner, hover over the circles on the visualization.
Here, we see that there is indeed a significant difference between
couples who are many years apart in age and those that are closer in
age in terms of marital status. Couples with similar ages lie more
closely along the diagonal.
High Relationship Quality Despite Frequency of Sex
However, those who find their relationships excellent tend to have sex
3-6 times a week, with once a month or less coming second. Select a scale basis from the drop-down:
the default "overall data" selection will scale the chart over all responses. When you select the scale based on the frequency
categories, you will find that the respondents tend to rate their relationships as excellent. Then, when you
select the scale based on the quality categories, you'll see that there is a high amount of respondents
who have sex once a month or less.
We see that the respondents tended to rate their relationships
excellent regardless of sex frequency, and there is not a clear
trend. The data also suggest that very few couples will have a
frequency of more than twice a week.
Time Spent Dating Before Marriage
How to Read:
Here, we plot the first 500 couples based on the year they met for the first time.
Each circle represents the start of one of four stages in a relationship.
Interactivity: Hover over circles, scroll or double click to zoom, and click and drag the visualization.
Use the brushing component on the area chart below it.
One couple dated for thirty some years before finally getting married,
but most other couples did not take nearly as long. Another couple
went through meeting each other and getting married within a year. On
average we see that most respondents dated for less than 6 years
before getting married.
From these visualizations, we can conclude that age differences,
frequency of sex, and time spent dating does have a noticeable effect of relationship outcomes.
Now, the only question left is:
Where does your relationship lie on each of these visualizations?
And where will your
relationship go?
Dataset citation:
Rosenfeld, Michael J., Reuben J. Thomas, and Sonia Hausen. 2019 How Couples Meet and Stay Together 2017 fresh sample.
[Computer files]. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Libraries.