Heed Colin Firth’s marriage tip

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Sunday, 10th April 2011

Heed Colin Firth’s marriage tip

Kristina Chetcuti

A study shows that people who smile in photographs when they are young are less likely to

get divorced than those who frowned in childhood snaps.

Now that you’ve proposed, the next step is to ensure you stay married.

It’s all well and good for everybody to bleat out the importance of hard work and sacrifice,

but surely there is a more pleasant, cheerful way to ensure marriage longevity?

Well, mathematicians are now telling us marital success is dependent on something

altogether more calculating – a maths formula.

According to a team of psychologists and mathematicians at the University of Washington in

Seattle, one plus one equals a couple. The research, based on spending hours watching

couples communicate, allows them to predict, with 94 per cent accuracy, whether a couple

will remain happily united or head inexorably for the divorce courts.

Another study suggests that people who smile in photographs when they are young are less

likely to get divorced than those who frowned in childhood snaps.



The study, published in the journal Motivation and Emotion, found that only 10 per cent of

people who smiled in early photos had gone through a divorce in later life compared to 31 per

cent of those who wore straight faces.

I had to stop writing this to check out my childhood album photos: toothy grins from year

one. Clearly, I’m one of those hapless 10 per cent, or perhaps the study referred to poshsmiles, you know the ones, all curved lips, no teeth showing.

But I needn’t worry for, after all, the probabilities of marital success could simply be based

on a spouse’s career. Psychologists at Radford University reached the following conclusions:

if you’re a dancer, you face a 43 per cent likelihood of divorce compared with, say, animal

trainers, who face a 22 per cent likelihood. Old, boring teachers, postmen or journalists were

conspicuously absent in these statistics.

Not to be outdone, the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology reported that chances of

marriage breakdown are at 38 per cent for massage therapists and only eight per cent for

dentists. If you’re a farmer, you face only a seven per cent likelihood of divorce andoptometrists face a mere four per cent likelihood.

Who would have thought it of optometrists, eh? They’re the blokes that test your vision and

prescribe corrective glasses. Should all prospective brides and grooms change career? Will

optometric clinics replace nail salons? Nah, it’s easier to simply follow some advice in girlymagazines.

The latest trend to ensure marital success according to Cosmo is to give your spouse ‘four

hugs a day’. I got one of my married girlfriends to try and test this. She phoned me on the

second day: “I just tried to give the husband his third hug today and he’s going ‘Oy! What’s

wrong?”

It clearly wasn’t working, so I suggested she adopt the ‘whisper therapy’ and read out the

detailed instructions in Grazia: “Whisper words at regular intervals to remind him what you

like about him – ‘handsome’, ‘clever’, that sort of thing.”

“Jesus. That’s bloody irritating. That’s it, find someone else to test your article ideas,” she

said.

So I do. I phone the husband of another girlfriend and convince him, in the name of love, to

try it out. Apparently he caught his wife way too unawares when he moved in close andwhispered “You are special.” The effect was a tad too dramatic: she shrieked and hit him on

the head with the shampoo bottle she was holding.

I’m now worried that unless my friends swiftly change careers, they’re heading for martial

breakdown. But then, I finally come across the solution, given to us by none other than the

man of the moment himself: actor Colin Firth.

In a recent interview he revealed that, despite hoards of admirers, he doesn’t find it difficult

to stay faithful to Livia, his wife of 15 years, for one reason:

“It does help to actually realise that however stunning the person is who is fluttering theireyelashes at you, she doesn’t do anything to match up to your wife,” he said.



“Maybe it’s shallow of me to have a wife that’s so beautiful, but it makes things easier; to me

she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.”

In what is probably the best (non-kingly) speech of his life, he added: “We are crazy about

each other. But the real secret is time – we have to make sure we spend enough time together.

“Every relationship in life, you’re going to have to take care of, there’s a marathon factor to

it.”

So, it’s simple really. Forget the math, the careers, the photo grins, the quota hugs and the

whispers: if you want to stay married, make sure that when you look at your future spouse,

you go: “Phowar!”

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Heed Colin Firth’s marriage tip