Research: Wife should be smarter & younger than you

The Swiss study, romantically entitled Optimizing the marriage market: An application of the linear assignment model, offers solutions to life's biggest problem. The abstract begins by taking all thoughts of love and passion and tossing them down the chasm of objectivity: "Research shows that the success of marriages and other intimate partnerships depends on objective attributes such as differences in age, cultural background, and educational level."

The highlights are, indeed, a joy to behold, squeeze tightly, and never, ever let go. The perfect wife is five years younger than her husband. She is from the same cultural background. And, please stare at this very carefully: she is at least 27 percent smarter than her husband. Yes, 35 percent smarter seems to be tolerable. But 12 percent smarter seems unacceptable. In an ideal world--which is the goal of every scientist--your wife should have a college degree, and you should not. At least that's what these scientists believe.

I know your bit will already be chomped with your enthusiasm for learning these learned scientists' methodology. Well, they interviewed 1,074 married and cohabiting couples. And they declared, "To produce our optimization model, we use the assumption of a central 'agency' that would coordinate the matching of couples." Indeed.

This optimization led research leader Nguyen Vi Cao to speak with some certainty to the Telegraph: "If people follow these guidelines in choosing their partners, they can increase their chances of a happy, long marriage by up to 20 percent."

Up to? Couldn't they be a little more exact? That 27 percent thing seemed pretty exact.
Still, let me tell you about one of these guidelines: marrying a divorcee makes it far more unlikely that you will be happy. I know, I know. It doesn't seem fair, does it? But science has spoken. And when science speaks, you bow your head until your nose tickles the frigid floor tiles.