Here’s an inter­est­ing arti­cle from Chate­laine:

 Ah, love… It’s a mag­i­cal thing. Well, sort of. Turns out long-term romance may not be the stuff of fate, soul­mates or the stars after all. Rela­tion­ship researchers say mar­riage is a sci­ence, and argue that they can pre­dict – with a sur­pris­ing degree of accu­racy – whose love affairs will keep burn­ing and whose will fiz­zle out.

We’ve iden­ti­fied some fun­da­men­tals for mas­ter­ing the sci­ence of love.

Young love is for the birds

You mar­ried your high-school sweet­heart: beware. Accord­ing to Anne-Marie Ambert, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­ogy at York Uni­ver­sity in Toronto, many young peo­ple get mar­ried for the wrong rea­sons – such as preg­nancy or over-the-top lust. “What’s the hurry? You change so much from ages 17 to 30, you might end up quite different.”

Women are from Venus, men are into Hockey

You like to knit, he hates sweaters. He loves Don Cherry, you’d rather watch a movie on cable. “If peo­ple choose some­one dif­fer­ent from them in terms of edu­ca­tion, reli­gion, occu­pa­tion or atti­tudes about chil­dren, they’re in trou­ble right away,” says Alan Booth, a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­ogy at Penn State Uni­ver­sity in Uni­ver­sity Park, Pa.

Brawl­ing for love

“Con­flict is just as impor­tant as love in an inti­mate rela­tion­ship,” says John Wright, a cou­ples ther­a­pist and psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Mon­treal. “The chal­lenge is to have fights that are as con­struc­tive as possible.”

Pos­i­tives attract

Neg­a­tive emo­tions such as anger and hos­til­ity that get much worse over time can send a cou­ple toward divorce in just five years, says a study of 600 cou­ples by rela­tion­ship expert John Gottman at the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton in Seat­tle. Being irri­ta­ble and say­ing mean things can set up a grim atmos­phere in a mar­riage – one nobody wants to stay in.

Divorce? Never heard of it

Mar­ried peo­ple who think about divorce are nine times more likely to actu­ally do it, Penn State’s Booth dis­cov­ered in one of his mar­riage stud­ies. “We’ve grad­u­ally moved away from an atti­tude of ‘What can I do for my mar­riage?’ to ‘What can my mar­riage do for me?’” he says. “It’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Chil­dren of divorced par­ents are also more likely to get divorced themselves.

Talk to me baby

Cou­ples who don’t talk or lis­ten to each other today are at risk for divorce down the road. Accord­ing to Rebecca Cobb, a clin­i­cal psychologist

Let’s not live together

Accord­ing to the 1995 Cana­dian Gen­eral Social Sur­vey, 63 per cent of cou­ples who lived together before mar­riage split up.

You can’t always get what you want

Inter­ested in hav­ing the per­fect mar­riage with the per­fect mate (gor­geous, atten­tive, fabulous-smelling, rich and tal­ented)? Mar­riage experts say rigid expec­ta­tions are a major risk fac­tor for divorce. “We’re so used to the Hol­ly­wood thing, the idea that mar­riage should be heaven,” says Ambert.