You can drive yourself crazy deciding whether to marry your partner.
Can you two really survive a lifetime together?
I mean, you adore them — but they constantly leave hair in the shower. They tell the worst jokes — but they're always there to comfort you after a hard day.
Perhaps it would help to turn to the scientific research, which has pinpointed specific factors that can make or break a romantic relationship.
Below, we've rounded up 15 nontrivial things you might want to keep in mind before hiring a wedding planner.
This is an update of an article originally posted by Drake Baer.
SEE ALSO: 10 myths about dating too many people believe
If you wait until you're 23 to commit, you're less likely to get divorced.
A 2014 University of North Carolina at Greensboro study found that American women who cohabitate or get married at age 18 have a 60% divorce rate, but women who wait until 23 to make either of those commitments have a divorce rate around 30%.
"The longer couples waited to make that first serious commitment [cohabitation or marriage], the better their chances for marital success,"The Atlantic reported.
The 'in love' phase lasts about a year.
The honeymoon phase doesn't go on forever.
According to a 2005 study by the University of Pavia in Italy, it lasts about a year. After that, levels of a chemical called "nerve growth factor," which is associated with intense romantic feelings, start to fall.
Helen Fisher, a psychologist and relationship expert, told Business Insider that it's unclear when exactly the "in love" feeling starts to fade, but it does so "for good evolutionary reasons," she said, because "it's very metabolically expensive to spend an awful lot of time just focusing on just one person in that high-anxiety state."
Two people can be compatible — or incompatible — on multiple levels.
Back in the 1950s and '60s, Canadian psychologist Eric Berne introduced a three-tiered model for understanding a person's identity. He found that each of us have three "ego states" operating at once:
• The parent: What you've been taught
• The child: What you have felt
• The adult: What you have learned
When you're in a relationship, you relate on each of those levels:
• The parent: Do you have similar values and beliefs about the world?
• The child: Do you have fun together? Can you be spontaneous? Do you think your partner's hot? Do you like to travel together?
• The adult: Does each person think the other is bright? Are you good at solving problems together?
While having symmetry across all three is ideal, people often get together to "balance each other." For instance, one may be nurturing and the other playful.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider