Have you noticed or are you wondering why couples who initially had no particular facial resemblance to each other when they first married now resemble each other after many years of marriage?

It seems weird for people to look for those who resemble them when they want to choose partners. However, over time, what seems weird becomes an easy-to-get. It’s strange though, a study has proved, with evidence, that it happens. So, if you stay with your spouse for a couple of decades, you will end up looking more like him or her. But why is it so?

The study published in the journal of Motivation and Emotion found that physical likeness between couples increases over time, and through the years, couples’ wrinkles form in the same places because of a lifetime of shared emotions.

Sometimes, it is even tempting to think the semblance has been there before they married, but the study has shown that the emotions people experience everyday could change their facial features over time. The increase in facial similarity results from decades of shared emotions, hence, couples who have been married for about 25 years start to look alike gradually.

In the study carried out by Robert Zajonc, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, with his graduate students Pamela Adelmann, Sheila Murphy and Paula Niedenthal, 110 participants were presented a random array of photographs of faces, with the backgrounds blacked out so that only the faces could be seen, with an instruction to match the men with the women who resembled most.

Two dozens of the photographs were of couples when they first got married; another two dozens were of the same couples 25 years after marriage, most taken around the time of their silver wedding anniversary. All the couples in the photographs were white, lived in Michigan or Wisconsin and were between 50 and 60 years old at the time of the second picture.

The results showed that the couples had grown to look more like each other over time and the researchers ensured that the participants indeed made judgements on the basis of facial features rather than any other criteria, and to the researchers’ satisfaction, the participants, were able to tell who was married to whom after 25 years with enough precision that it exceeded chance or guessing.

“When couples spend a lot of time together they develop empathy and start to experience the same emotions together, most of the time, such as stress, anxiety, sadness and even happiness. Since these emotions affect their face features, they start to look alike after years of being together,” Zajonc said.

It was also revealed that the more marital happiness that the couple said they had, the more likely they were to have increased in their physical similarity.

The young couples showed only a chance similarity to each other, the study found, while the judges found a definite resemblance between the couples who had been married a quarter-century. While the resemblances were not dramatic, some seemed to involve subtle shifts in facial wrinkles and other facial contours, clear enough that the judges were able to match husbands and wives when the couples were older than when they were newly married, and the resemblances were greater in some couples than in others, the study found.

In support, he points to the finding in his study that those couples who were found to resemble each other most greatly after 25 years were also those who reported the happiest marriages. Zajonc contends that this mimicry is sustained in married couples because experiencing the same emotional state is reinforced by its effects in strengthening feelings of closeness.

Factors considered in assessing what could make two people who are not related come to look like one another included similar diet, similar environment and disposition, but the researchers settled on empathy, considering that couples composed of people who feel for one another would be more inclined to mimic one another’s facial expressions, which tend to leave evidence of their presence over time.

No wonder my parents are starting to look alike. They've been married for twenty years. I want dat for myself, to be happily married for years.

I think we don't look alike!!!

koligs: I think we don't look alike!!!

D research was based on marriages as old as 25yrs

A more realistic answer is the similarities in environment and diet.

A more realistic answer is the similarities in environment and diet.

yeloyhemzy: No wonder my parents are starting to look alike. They've been married for twenty years. I want dat for myself, to be happily married for years.

I would never understand girls and their quest for the fantasy wedding and marriage.

Very unrealistic I agree.

Twenty years is not that much in the grand scheme of things.

fr3do: A more realistic answer is the similarities in environment and diet.

I would never understand girls and their quest for the fantasy wedding and marriage.

Becos a woman is d face of a marriage.....'a successful marriage'