Illustrated by Ammiel Mendoza.
True love: real, or cultural invention? While many claim to be in it, we often wonder if they're just lying. After all, with the divorce rate between 40 and 50 percent, surely not every daisies-in-mason-jar barn wedding we're forced to sit through is based on pure true love. Right?
Luckily, there's a new study out that answers many of our love-related questions. As reported by The Telegraph, "One in seven adults is in a long term relationship with someone they do not class as 'the love of their life.'" We were surprised that this number is so low — a simple flip of the stat shows that six in seven adults do classify their partner as The One.
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Based on the aforementioned divorce rate, this also means that of the six of seven adults who think they are with The One, many of them are probably deluded. Which makes sense to us, since we don't know of very many divorced couples who thought they weren't marrying the love of their life. Perhaps the thing about love is that it changes over time.
A multitude of other data was collected as well, and it creates an interesting picture of the role of love in the life of a human. Claire Jarvis, director of communications of the organization that commissioned the study, said, "Both men and women fall in love on average two times in their life... Interestingly, more than half of those polled thought they have been in love on occasions but looking back don't believe it was the 'real thing.'" That sounds pretty accurate.
Check out the article for the rest of the findings and let us know if anything surprised you. Do you believe in love? Or... love after love? (The Telegraph)
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