Fresh start won’t bring satisfaction, study shows

People who break up with their partners, on average, end up no more satisfied in their next relationship, according to a new study.

“I think that tendency to just move on and want to start fresh, for many people they don’t really reflect on that relationship,” says Matthew Johnson, the lead researcher on the article and an associate professor of family science at the University of Alberta, “so when they start a new partnership, well, they just end up falling into the same old patterns again.”

The study, titled “(Eventual) stability and change across partnerships,” used data from more than 500 German participants over eight years and measured such factors as the amount of conflict between partners, the level of satisfaction and the tendency to express thoughts and emotions to each other. New relationships temporarily improved on these measures, but within one year these levels stabilized on average to resemble previous conditions.

People fall into the same patterns partly because they fall for the same type of partners — similar in personality, attractiveness and socio-economic status, said Johnson, who formerly worked as a couple’s therapist.

The research participants were German because Johnson used data from the German Family Panel, a vast study of 12,000 people beginning in 2008. Canada has no comparable data — in 2008, Statistics Canada even stopped tracking divorce rates. Johnson did not exclude gay participants from his sample, but he said the vast majority of participants in the German Family Panel are heterosexual.

While measurements stabilized on average, the most common change was for the second relationship to actually be worse than the previous one, with more conflict, less expression and less satisfaction, according to the study, which is published in the Journal of Family Psychology.

This decline occurred especially among people who tend to have more negative emotions and pessimistic world views — “neuroticism,” as Johnson refers to it. For them, the breakup was particularly tough, reinforcing their neuroticism, and they never fully rebounded in their new relationships, Johnson said.

But second relationships turned out better for older people, many of whom had been married with children.

“In order for that type of relationship to end, things had to get pretty bad, to blow up your life, to separate, to figure out the joint custody of children and a new place to live,” says Johnson. “Potentially they had a higher threshold to start a new partnership because they were a bit more guarded. Things were especially good for them when they started a new relationship.”