'I hardly know my husband of 40 years. Or so the study says.'

In the last week or so I have come across two different studies about couples. The first says that younger couples (married an average of two years) know each other better than older couples (married an average of 40 years).

The researchers tested this idea by asking the couples to name their partners preferences for food, movie choices even house designs. Neither group did very well, but younger couples were considerably more successful than older ones.

The other study says that childless couples are happier than couples with children. (Well d’uh!)

My husband and I have been together for 40 years in November and we have two daughters. Clearly we must know very little about one another and be absolutely miserable.

However, I am in the middle of filming a five-part TV series for ABC's Compass on long lasting relationships - it's called called For Better For Worse. It is the TV version of a similar series I made in 2013 for ABC Radio National's Life Matters. Out of the 10 couples I have now interviewed about their relationships only one was childless and they’d all been together for yonks or – obviously – wouldn’t have qualified for the program.

Oddly, most of them seemed fairly content.

I'm sick of all these ‘studies’ we are inundated with. I suspect you could find one that would justify any particular view of the world you happen to hold. Progressives have a study that says conservatives tend to have lower IQs. Conservatives have a study that says those with right wing views have better self control. My favourite was a study I read about years ago that said everyone’s God agreed with them politically! In other words, if you are a feminist Christian, Jew or Muslim, your God is one too. If you believe in the right to carry guns, slap me upside of the head, your God loves a gun-toter.

I was once on a panel and received some feedback from the organisers that I wasn’t coming across as intelligent as the other panel members. As you can imagine, this was fairly hurtful. For a while I thought about quitting the panel but then I did what women always do when wounded, I rang my girlfriends for support and advice. One of them reassured me that the feedback was wrong but suggested a strategy.

“Next time,” she said, “Just preface your opinion with the words ‘studies have shown’ or ‘research indicates’ and see what happens.”

“But what if someone challenges me?”

“They won’t and, even if they do, there’ll be a study somewhere that agrees with you.”

I followed her advice and, sure enough, my previous critics raced up to me afterwards beaming from ear to ear. “Nailed it!” they said. (And, apparently, I was the dumb one.)

Don’t get me wrong; I am a great supporter of proper, peer-reviewed research. I am on the side of the scientists about climate change, vaccinations, even genetically modified foods. I like hard facts. What I am not so keen on is experts pontificating on the back of very soft research and making us all feel either bad, or smug and sometimes both.

It also interests me how many of these ‘studies’ focus on women and what they do. I think that’s because many women are still uncertain about how they are ‘supposed’ to be and keep looking for guidelines - so these studies sell. Women are still trained to seek outside approval rather than follow their own star and earn respect.

But to return to the two studies that got me thinking; do younger couples know more about each other’s preferences for food, movies, house design etc than older ones? Probably, because they are still in the obsessive stage of love.

But successful older couples know something much more important. They know their partner is there for the long haul, regardless of ups and downs because they’ve already been there and done that.

Are childless couples happier than those with kids? No doubt, particularly when you compare them with couples with very small children. Division of labour expert Michael Bittman says women’s workload increases by 11 hours a day (!!!!) when they have a baby (and that’s hard data) so I think new mothers can be forgiven for being a bit grumpy. I know that I was furious for about five years.

The great failing of all these studies is they assume our lives are static. They assume we will always be just as we are when we fill in the researcher’s questionnaire or get observed through a two-way mirror. Life is just not like that and it is particularly fluid for couples, especially if they take that huge punt on the future that is having children.

My kids are now 27 and 24 and I have never been happier. My relationship with my husband has returned to what it was pre-kids but we have the priceless advantage of our daughter’s interesting, loving and challenging adult presence in our lives. We even have hopes of grandchildren.

And I wouldn’t swap that for the world.

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