How Marriage Changes Your Personality

The Big Five and marital satisfaction after the honeymoon is over.

Posted March 15, 2018 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

It’s often said that married couples grow more alike over the years. But can marriage really change your personality ? New research by University of Georgia psychologist Justin Lavner and his colleagues shows that people’s personalities do change, in predictable ways, within the first year and a half after tying the knot.

Psychologists are divided on the question of whether personality is innately determined by your genes or shaped by experiences in early childhood , with many believing it’s probably a combination of both nature and nurture. By adulthood, however, personality is usually established and doesn’t change greatly after that. Still, some research has shown that major life events can nudge personality in particular directions: For example, a strong introvert with a desire to teach can learn to be more extroverted in the classroom.

Marriage, of course, is one of the most important events in a person’s life. Since married couples have to find ways to get along on a daily basis, it’s perhaps not surprising that they’d experience changes in their personality as they adapt to partnered life. This is the hypothesis that Lavner and his colleagues tested.

For the study, 169 heterosexual couples were recruited to respond to questionnaires at three points in their marriage—at 6, 12, and 18 months. This way, the researchers could detect trends in personality change . At each point, the couples (working individually) responded to two questionnaires, one assessing marital satisfaction and the other measuring personality.

The most widely accepted theory of personality is known as the Big Five . This theory proposes that there are five basic personality dimensions. The Big Five are usually remembered with the acronym OCEAN:

Openness . How open you are to new experiences. If you’re high in openness, you like trying new things. If you’re low in openness, you’re more comfortable with what’s familiar.
Conscientiousness . How dependable and orderly you are. If you’re high in conscientiousness, you like to be punctual and keep your living and working spaces tidy. If you’re low in conscientiousness, you don’t get uptight about deadlines, and you’re comfortable in your cluttered environment.
Extraversion . How outgoing you are. If you’re high in extraversion, you like socializing with lots of other people. If you’re low in extraversion (that is, introverted), you like having time to yourself.
Agreeableness . How well you get along with others. If you’re high in agreeableness, you’re easygoing and happy doing what everyone else is doing. If you’re low in agreeableness, you’ve got to have things your way, no matter what the rest of us want.
Neuroticism. How emotionally stable you are. If you’re high in neuroticism, you experience big mood swings and can be quite temperamental. If you’re low in neuroticism, your mood is relatively stable, and you live your life on an even keel.

When the researchers analyzed the data after 18 months of marriage, they found the following trends in personality change among the husbands and wives:

It probably comes as no surprise that marital satisfaction went downhill for both husbands and wives over the course of the study. By 18 months, the honeymoon was clearly over. However, the researchers did find that certain personality traits in husbands or wives predicted how much their marital satisfaction decreased.

With correlational data like this, it’s impossible to say that getting married caused these changes in personality. Most of the couples in this study were in their 20s, a time when other major life changes were occurring as well—you mature, start a career , and have children, all of which could affect your personality. So the researchers also tested whether the following variables could predict the personality changes they observed.

Since none of these variables account for the data, the researchers maintain it’s likely that getting married is the cause of the personality changes they observed. These changes probably involve responses to the repetitive demands of a committed relationship. While they may not keep the flames of passion ablaze, they probably do reflect adjustments husbands and wives make as they negotiate patterns of behavior that will make their marriages sustainable.

If you’re thinking of getting married, you can expect your partner to change, but maybe not in ways you were expecting. Still, the best predictor of whether a marriage will thrive is the personalities of the two partners as they enter into the relationship. Happy, emotionally stable couples make for happy, emotionally satisfying marriages. But when partners bring emotional baggage into the relationship, the journey is likely to be bumpy.

Lavner, J. A., Weiss, B., Miller, J. D., & Karney, B. R. (2017, December 18). Personality Change Among Newlyweds: Patterns, Predictors, and Associations With Marital Satisfaction Over Time. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000491

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David Ludden, Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.