As expectations mount ahead of Valentine's Day, what will you be fighting about?
A new poll finds that Canadian couples bicker most about their "quality time" together: Ten per cent fight about this every day, 11 per cent every week.
That's right: Spending time, together, fighting about the quality of your time together.
"For some, quality time is dinner and a movie. For some it's sex. And those differing and competing perceptions of quality time are often the source of conflict in a relationship," said Craig Worden, executive vice-president of Pollara, a public-opinion and market-research firm that conducted the poll.
The online poll of 670 adults found that a typical week of cross-country feuding shakes down like this: Twenty-one per cent of partners squabble about quality time together; 16 per cent about housework; 15 per cent about their children; 12 per cent about work-life balance and money.
"The common myth that couples mainly argue about money is outdated," Worden said in a release.
Across the board, lack of time emerged as a theme. Some 46 per cent of couples quarrelled about work-life balance monthly. Again: Less arguing, more life time? And half of the respondents sparred monthly about domestic chores and errands, at about the regularity of a deep clean.
Pollara's poll found that regionally, Quebec couples argue the most in Canada, with 25 per cent admitting they fight every day, 11 per cent more than the national daily average. Another 21 per cent of Quebeckers copped to clashing every week. Atlantic Canada took second place as most fighty, with 19 per cent of respondents acknowledging a daily spat in their relationships. Couples in British Columbia appeared to argue the least frequently: Forty-two per cent reported quibbling only a few times annually. Notably, 10 per cent of Canadians claimed to never argue, all from behind a white picket fence.
The poll follows the original "bicker index," a 2014 study that scanned disagreements among cohabiting and married couples in 22 European countries. It found that cohabitors (people who live together but are unwed) had more disagreements about housework, the same disagreements about money, but fewer disagreements about paid work than did married people.
Another study out today proposes a hazy panacea for marital strife. Published in the journal Psychological Science, the study suggests that being idealistic about your spouse (if not downright clued out) can help marriage satisfaction, serving as "a buffer against the corrosive effects of time," according to the study release.
"Seeing your partner in an unrealistically positive light is predictive of more forgiveness and less suspicion when difficulties come up, and a general tendency to look for the best explanation of your partner's behaviour," University of British Columbia business professor and study co-author Dale Griffin explained in the release.
Caveat: The study looked only at the three first years of marriage – a honeymoon phase to those who've been together for decades. How you maintain that rosy idealism past year 10 is the question, quality time and all.