Love improves with age: study

As Valentine's Day arrives this year, it would seem there's no love like an old love.New Canadian research suggests that older couples may actually be more in love than younger couples. Researchers at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal have found older couples in their retirement years are much more likely to report higher levels of satisfaction with their love lives than younger couples.The study is being funded by the Canadian Institute for Health Research, the largest federal funding agency for health research.

The research team is headed up by psychologist Gilles Trudel. So far, the researchers have completed the first part of their study; the second part is ongoing.The researchers are using a recognized international model for measuring relationship satisfaction, known as the Spanier Dyadic Adjustment Scale.The study is looking at 511 older Quebec couples who are in their retirement years. Those couples scored between 119 and 120 on the Spanier scale, compared to the Canadian average of 114.That might not sound like much of a difference, but the difference of five to six points is very important; it is statistically very significant, Trudel said.

Although other studies in the world have hinted that older couples are happiest, Trudel said this study is the first in the world to involve such a large sampling of older people.What's surprising is that there hasn't been a lot of research in this area involving older couples, said Trudel.Trudel said divorce rates among older couples are generally very low and so it stands to reason that older couples as a whole are generally a happier cohort than younger couples as a whole.

At the same time, he said, older couples who still have good health and whose children have been raised generally have less stress in their lives than younger couples. They can travel more and spent more time having fun, said Trudel.But the main thing happy older couples say they have in abundance is a proven record of good communication with their spouses. It's critical to a happy long-term relationship, said Trudel.Most of the couples who are part of the study are from Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, and Trois-Rivieres.