Are Couples Who Eat Together Happier Together?

A number of articles and books have investigated the recipe for a happy marriage. But is the eating of food together itself part of the recipe? Do couples who eat a meal together have better quality relationships? 

Along with my colleague Professor Steve McKay at the University of Lincoln, I delved into that question using the UK Time Use Survey conducted in 2014 and 2015. More than 7,600 people in 4,000 households were asked to record what they were doing throughout one weekday and one weekend day, putting the detail into ten-minute time slots. From this, we gathered 46,000 data points from those who lived together as a couple.

Here’s what we found (download our paper here):

Married couples eat together slightly more often than cohabiting couples.

In fact, 35% of UK married couples ate together most or all of the time, whereas 22% ate together rarely or never. Among cohabiting UK couples, 22% ate together most or all of the time, whereas 27% ate together rarely or never.

Source: Marriage Foundation. Based on analysis of the UK Time Use Survey, 2014-15.

Married couples who eat together are more likely to report maximum happiness with their relationship.

Whereas 67% of those who ate together scored 7 out of 7 for relationship happiness on the happiness scale, only 58% of those who ate apart were similarly happy. Slightly counterintuitively, couples who were the least happy in their relationship—scoring 1 out of 7 on the happiness scale—were just as likely to eat together as those who were pretty happy—scoring 5 or 6 out of 7.  

Source: Marriage Foundation. Based on analysis of the UK Time Use Survey, 2014-15.

So, it’s not just the happiest who are most likely to eat together but also the unhappiest. Those least likely to eat together are moderately unhappy in their relationship. This fits some of our other findings that show those who are moderately unhappy tend to have the worst relationship outcomes.

Couples who eat together are 19% more likely to enjoy their meal.

Specifically, we found that 74% of couples who ate together enjoyed their meal a lot, compared to 62% of couples who ate separately. And 36% of those who enjoyed their meal the least ate together, compared to 69% of those who enjoyed their meal most.

Couples who use their phone during meal times are 8% less likely to enjoy their meal.

For example, 69% of couples who did not use their phone at the table enjoyed their meal a lot, compared to 64% of those who did use their phone. Couples use their phone only 14% of the time during meals, with the most use by those who only moderately enjoy their meals.

Overall, these findings show a clear, positive link between eating together as a couple, enjoying the meal, and having a happy relationship. Of course, this is a cross-sectional snapshot, so we have to be cautious about cause and effect. It could be either that happy couples enjoy eating together or that eating together helps make couples happy.

However, the questions about enjoying the meal do suggest a direction of travel. It seems fairly implausible that couples eat together because they enjoy their meals. It seems a lot more plausible that couples enjoy their meals because they have shared it together. It’s only a small step from here to suggest that happiness might also be the consequence of eating together.

So, if you want a happy relationship and want to enjoy your meals more, then eat together as a couple and put that phone down!

Harry Benson is Research Director of the UK-based Marriage Foundation. An earlier version of this post appeared on the Marriage Foundation blog. This version has been edited with the permission of the author.