Love is... commitment. Love is... compromise. Love is... not giving a shit about what your partner likes. A new study indicates that people in long-lasting marriages know less about their partners than people in shorter relationships.

The study, conducted by University of Basel psychologists Benjamin Scheibehenne and Jutta Mata alongside Indiana University psychologist Peter Todd, asked participants to rate their and their partners' preferences in food, movies and kitchen designs. The young couples, aged 19 to 32 and in one-to-two-year committed relationships, were able to correctly guess their partners' preferences 47 percent of the time, whereas the older couples, aged 62 to 78, were only 40 percent accurate, proving that basically no one knows that much about their partners, but old people really don't know that much. According to researchers, the biggest gap came with food.

Why does this gap arise? It could be that older couples don't pay as much attention to their partners anymore now that they've "got that shit locked down," to use the scientific terminology. It could also be that your husband so goddamn boring, how on earth are you supposed to keep track of how he wants the kitchen to look?

The older couples also tended to attribute "their own food, movie and design preferences to partners who had different opinions." The most telling finding, though, is that more long-term couples said they were satisfied with their relationships than the younger couples. That's right: The secret to a lasting, satisfying marriage is just assuming your partner likes all the same things as you.

[Wired]