Should I Stay or Should I Go? Five Predictors (and Five Not So Good Predictors) of Relationship Success

A recent Science of Realtionships post by Dr. Benjamin Le includes a great summary of his research. He looks at predictors of relationship success over time; in other words, what factors influence whether a couple breaks up or stays togeather. His results are somewhat surprising. As it turns out, personality and attachment style are not predictors. Although knowing these things may not help individual couples to strengthen or protect their relationships from meeting an untimely end, this research will likely eventually help therapists to better assess and treat couples with troubled relationships.

Read the entire post on the Science of Relationships site:

Last week ago we posted a quiz to see how much our readers knew about predicting relationship stability or success. Overall, it looks like we’ve got some work to do; the average score on the quiz was 48% (remember, random guessing should average 50% right). The questions in the quiz were inspired by some of my work on understanding relationship outcomes. One of my main research areas is the role of commitment in predicting the “success” of dating relationships (using the term loosely; i.e., staying together vs. breaking-up).

Read the rest of the post at the original site, and be sure to visit Science of Relationships!