Top 10 predictors of Romantic Relationship Quality

A study of more than 11,000 couples found that there are ten signs that indicate whether a relationship is meant to last or not - five signs are based on individual characteristics, such as satisfaction with life, negative feelings, depression, attachment anxiety, and attachment avoidance. The other five factors are based on the relationship itself and include perceived partner commitment, appreciation, sexual satisfaction, how happy you think your partner is, and reduced conflict.

The research is a first-of-its-kind to use artificial intelligence (AI) to study romantic relationships based on a machine learning analysis of data. Artificial intelligence may not be programmed to love, but it can determine the top predictors for a happy relationship.

Researchers came to the conclusion that relationship-specific characteristics, such as personal evaluations of the relationship itself, were much more powerful predictors of relationship quality overall than variables based on a person’s individual characteristics. It was found that romantic success is achieved when partners believe the other person is fully committed.

The study has identified the top predictors that make partners feel positively about their relationship – and the results revealed that romantic happiness is about a lot more than simply who you are with. In other words, the type of relationship you build with your partner may be significantly more important to your happiness than either of your individual characteristic traits - in the study, the experts looked at traits such as how satisfied people were with their lives, how anxious they were, or whether their parents had a successful marriage.

“The dynamic that you build with someone — the shared norms, the in-jokes, the shared experiences — is so much more than the separate individuals who make up that relationship,” Samantha Joel, the study’s lead author and director of Western University’s Relationship Decisions Lab in Ontario, Canada. “It really seems that having a great relationship is less about finding the perfect partner or changing your current partner, and more about building that relationship itself — setting up the conditions that will allow the relationship to flourish.”

The scientists, however, made a clarification that “none of these variables could predict whose relationship quality would increase versus decrease over time.” So while partners may check all the right factor boxes at the start of their relationship, time is a much stronger indicator than any amount of initial compatibility predicted by artificial intelligence.