Drinking wine can save your relationship!!!
/Man, that's one hell of a sales pitch. My initial reaction having seen this curious headline was that this must be a piece circulated by Hallmark or some other empire that profits off the forced romance of Valentines Day. Then I realised that it's not actually February...
So, on digging further, it seems that the research has in fact been published in the Journals of Gerontology ( a much better 'ology' than the Scientology crew) which makes it seem even more official. They even titled the article as Drinking Patterns Among Older Couples: Longitudinal Associations With Negative Marital Quality which suggests that those involved with the publication were taking their task quite seriously and didn't have the time, resources or inclination to devise a punchy or humorous title....
If you want to read the official report, knock yourself out (or at least sedate yourself heavily) and click through here. However, to save time, let us instead argue the case based on many years and bottles of wine that drinking wine can indeed save your relationship.
- Wine makes you and your surroundings more interesting. This is achieved either through people sharing a common passion for wine, increasing your animation levels and making you more interesting to those around you or providing a level of intoxication that acts as a diffuser to unwanted interference. Political debate is like nails on a blackboard to many, but add a bottle of Rioja and all of a sudden its a Punch and Judy show for adults.
- Nice wine makes you happy. And euphoria is infectious. They say misery likes company but company would much rather silliness and Chardonnay.
- Arguing after (too much) wine doesn't count. If we do remember having an argument, we usually can't remember what it was about. It gets all the angry out of the system in a controlled manner where slip ups such as 'you are turning into your mother' and thankfully forgotten by the next day. This release mechanism means we don't need to have real arguments which is nice for all involved.
- Wine collections keep couples together. Of those possessions where there is a genuine concern as to what happens post relationship, the order of priority is (1) dog, (2) wine and (3) children. If your dusty bottles all of a sudden have some fingerprint marks, these could be a sign of your other half weighing up his or her options before making a call to stay or to go. If you don't have a dog and do have nice wine, best cook something special, wear something clingy and suggest an early night.
So in conclusion, it is interesting to note that, (without scientific qualifications or substantial lottery funding) we have managed to come to the same conclusion as our intellectual superiors. However, I bet we had a lot more fun completing our research... ;-)
