I don't know, I try, as a man, to be careful telling women what they feel or what their lives are like. But . . . it seems that most people to want to couple up. If married women hated their married lives so much I don't think we'd see so many divorced people remarrying.
I can say, as an older man, that it feels good to know you have someone who wants to spend the rest of their life with you. Being two is better than being one.
That being said, the question is, how do we tell which articles to disbelieve? It can't be just those we disagree with.
Well, the fact that the author used such sloppy methodology puts me off this one.
It doesn't mean it might not be true; it just means I would never use this study as support for the proposition.
I don't know the answer.
I've lost my faith in a lot of psychology research given the replication problem.
As to the underlying issues, ignoring any of the "psychology" papers, I can only go both by my own experience and what I hear from women friends.
For many of them, if they could continue their lifestyle (i.e. the same amount of money was coming in), they'd have a boyfriend, but most would not "marry" again, as in live in the same house, have "obligations", duties, etc. Of course, this is a completely unscientific sample.
I mean, look at the divorce statistics: if women are married to doctors, they're less likely to get divorced. Is that because doctors just make better husbands, or pick nicer women, or do financial factors enter into the picture?
Just to get personal for a second, I always wanted to be married, and I'd do it again if I had my life to live over again (Ever watch the film "Peggy Sue Got Married"?) However, at this stage in my life, if something happened, I doubt I'd marry again. I've done a lot of compromising. I wouldn't want to start compromising all over again because of someone else's needs, habits, attitudes. My gentleman friend and I could go out, he could stay overnight, but then he could go home and do his own laundry, and my home and my life would be run the way "I" want. Plus, I doubt I'm any longer capable of feeling for another man what I felt and still feel to a great degree for my husband: that kind of hit by "un colpo di fulmine", I'd walk through fire for you, I can't bear to be apart, thing perhaps only happens and imprints you when you're young.
Honestly, I think it will be decades before scientists really figure out human emotions, sexual attraction, "love", if they ever do.
That isn't to say that I don't know women who have to be married or they feel adrift. That's more than fine. No lifestyle is perfect for everybody.