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Comment by CuriouslyC | Hacker News Reader

People who have more relationship experience can recognize when a relationship isn't living up to what it could be, unexperienced people are just ignorant. It's hard for the grass to always be greener when you live in a windowless box.

Attractive people fuck, news at 11.

People get jealous/insecure when they feel like they're not living up to their partner's experiences/expectations. This is totally a HUGE problem, and also people should never eat any fancy or exotic food because then they'll be disappointed they can't afford to eat it all the time and affordable food has been ruined forever.

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So you're saying people who have been in fewer relationships are less happy in their relationships. Most of the evidence points to the contrary.

If you report being satisfied with your relationship to a third party because you think all relationships are like your current relationship and you don't see its dysfunctions, are you really more happy, or just more ignorant?

Happiness is a feeling. If you feel happy, you are happy. Ignorance is irrelevant, it may even be beneficial ("ignorance is bliss").

It's definitely not that black and white, because they're not directly measuring people's happiness, they're asking them to self-report their relationship satisfaction.

If I had a mediocre partner but I thought that was just how relationships were, I'd probably report being "satisfied" with them, even as I wished relationships weren't such frustrating things. If I thought marriage was an unbreakable bond I'd probably also avoid admitting I was dissatisfied with my partner to anyone (even myself!) as a coping mechanism as well.

The opposite could also be true, that people avoid admitting regret over their promiscuous past by convincing themselves that the "experience" makes them better judges of the quality of their relationships

There is no possible measure of happiness beyond self reporting, unless you are a dictator who has decided that all your subjects are extremely happy.

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