A new study from the University of Michigan’s psychology department has found that attending a wedding will either inspire a woman to marry her current boyfriend or cut things off immediately, but never anything in between.
“We expected there to be a few gray area results in the middle of the two extremes,” said Lead Researcher Madison Murphy. “But no! There is simply no third option. When you attend a wedding, you will either take it as a sign that you and your current partner are soulmates or should cut off ties as soon as possible. No remorse. Buh-bye.”
The study found that you’re significantly more likely to want to break up with your boyfriend after a wedding than you are to marry him by a ratio of four to one, but you’re definitely going to do one or the other.
“There are two ways the wedding itself can go,” Madison continued. “Either it will be beautiful, moving, and reignite your belief in love, or it will be sad, pitiful, and existentially terrifying.”
At the former type of wedding, the study found that attendees will immediately start measuring their current relationship against the happy couple, either coming to the conclusion that their own relationship pales in comparison or that they, too, are deeply in love.
“When a wedding is super sad, though,” Madison continued. “It inspires a deep desire not to find oneself in the same position, which is often enough of a push to get people to break up with their deadbeat partners.”
A survey of 500 recent wedding attendees found that 430 of them took the ceremony as a sign to break up with their partners, 69 took it as a sign that they had, indeed found the one for them, and one person fell asleep and was therefore unaffected by the experience at all.
“There’s just something about a wedding that throws your own life into perspective,” said recent wedding attendee Riya Agarwal. “It’s not about you at all, of course, but in another sense, it’s entirely about you.”
As of press time, researchers were also trying to determine how seeing someone else get a divorce affected relationship satisfaction. It appeared to universally make people want to break up and take a trip to Miami.
Wow! This Woman Played a Game She Used to Play as a Kid and May Never Physically Recover