In Sonnet 14, Elizabeth Barrett Browning grapples with an existential dilemma: how can any love be truly eternal when the people involved are both mortal and constantly changing? The speaker ends the poem by asking her listener for a love so pure and self-sustaining that it transcends impermanence. In the years following Browning's writing, a number of social scientists have attempted to answer a similar question using very different approaches. In disciplines like psychology and sociology, the nature of lasting love has been a topic of rigorous study. Conversely, scientists have also sought to find out what elements lead to the breakdown of romantic relationships. How, studies have sought to discover, can we predict which relationships are bound to survive longest?
In the context of the contemporary U.S., surveys indicate that a number of demographic factors correlate with long-lasting marriage. The educational attainment of individuals, for instance, can to a degree predict the duration of marriages: university-educated women have a 78% chance of their marriages lasting two decades, while their high school-educated counterparts instead have a 41% chance of the same. While the available data is still preliminary, available information shows that same-sex marriages are less likely to end in divorce than heterosexual ones. Finally, studies suggest that couples with financial assets are less likely to divorce than those with none. Collectively, these finance-related findings may be linked to another set of studies that show a correlation between stress and relationship problems: significant stress, whether financial or otherwise, tends to predict divorce or strain in relationships.
The circumstances under which couples meet and marry offer more insight into relationships' longevity. For instance, couples who are very young when they marry are more likely to divorce than those who marry after leaving their teen years. Other studies show that women who experience "cold feet" before getting married are twice as likely to get divorced, though the same does not appear true for men. Some studies also show that arranged marriages, in which parents or professionals introduce a couple, are less likely to end in divorce than "love marriages." Other scholars, however, caution that other factors, such as heightened stigma around divorce in religious communities that practice arranged marriage, may be behind this difference.
Finally, a number of scholars have attempted to use the scientific method to predict which relationship patterns and interpersonal dynamics are most likely to lead to longer marriages. The psychologist John Gottman argues that there are "four horsemen" of divorce—factors that collectively have been shown to strongly correlate with marriages ending. These include "criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling." Gottman also notes that couples who respond to one another's "bids" for connection by offering interest and attention are more likely to remain together than those who do not.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning explores questions of lasting love from a wholly different perspective than these contemporary social scientists. Her poem is interested less in staving off breakups and divorce, and more in the ambitious, even mystical issue of eternity itself. Moreover, while these studies deal in the quantifiable world of data, Browning's poem reaches into areas of emotional nuance outside the realm of social science. Still, the popularity of this subject matter—not only with professional scholars but also with the large audiences who consume their work—reveals that it remains a site of concern and fascination from Browning's time to today.
