I suspect that after a few years, a lot (if not most) of "regular" couples are de facto platonic and don't have romantic feelings. In a sense, these guys just skip the first step of sex, romance and infatuation.
"Contrary to what has been widely believed, long-term romantic love (with intensity, sexual interest, and engagement, but without the obsessive element common in new relationships), appears to be a real phenomenon that may be enhancing to individuals’ lives—positively associated with marital satisfaction, mental health, and overall well-being. [...] long-term marriage does not necessarily kill the romance in one's relationship"
This is the case in my marriage, but not in my parents’. They are musicians, artists, perform together and/or take active stakes in each other’s careers. They weren’t sexual as I was growing up (I’m not giving intimate details here) but they had this whole other source of cohesion. A much greater one indeed — I have fond sexual memories but my parents have dozens of live albums at cool venues.
Then, maybe all of this anomie is a disease of affluence. The other thing that united my parents was that, well, they had to fight for survival and for the means if giving us kids a decent childhood experience. Maybe that alone works like continuous shared trauma, us-two-against-the-world.
That article says romance exists, not that it's the majority situation. Even leaving aside unromantic surviving marriages, the high divorce rate is strong evidence.
of course there are couples like that. OP was asking about the majority. is the majority like that? that study you linked doesn't seek to answer this question.
OP had a hunch and I provided something that wasn't just an opinion. If you then looked at the literature you could have pointed out that some research support an erosion theory of relationship satisfaction. I could have answered back that there is evidence that relationship satisfaction is a huge factor for relationship stability (who would have known), and stability should support relationship longevity. In the end we wouldn't be that much closer to a sure answer to the question, but we would all have learned something worthwhile about the topic.
It's a large and sprawling field of research. Why don't you dig into it yourself?
You know who has more sex? Unmarried couples. Sex frequency goes down with relationship duration. So if you want to have lots of sex you want to go between relationships instead of staying a long time in one.
That assumes the person in question is moving from relationship to relationship quickly, as opposed to more common pattern of long stretches of time with no relationship.
I think it almost is guaranteed to at least sometimes, if it's not already there from the beginning.
I am deeply skeptical of claims of a platonic relationship in which the couple is having sex to conceive (per the article). It seems almost by definition not platonic at that point.
It think the "platonic" schema is what binds the couple. A couple where the members are saying they don't want romance etc but are having sex and raising children over the long haul might just be expressing a mutual interest in a form of relational style, just like other couples that express a desire for a different relational style. If you have two people who don't want to admit they want a relationship, or want some basics but not the warm and fuzzies most people are looking for, you'd end up with something like this.
Anecdotally many are in unhappy marriages but we also have no-fault divorce. So you can end it if need be. I suspect you are wrong though. If everyone has an exit to take and everyone wants to take the exit, aside from a cohort that cannot take the exit, why don’t they?
Divorce statistics say that a lot of people do take the exit. But, yes, statistics also say that a lot of those people get remarried. So if people keep getting married over and over, they must like it for some reason.
