Questionnaire’s source raises some questions of its own.

There’s a perception, bordering on a stereotype, that Japan has lost a lot of its interest in romance. Fewer people are getting married, those that do are getting married later, and young adults are dating less.

So a survey of married Japanese women in which the majority say that they regret marring their husbands has been met with a certain amount of grim smugness online, seen as yet another sign either that Japan thinks romantic relationships aren’t worth the trouble because there’s a high chance that you’ll end up with someone you don’t like, or, if you’re the other half of that couple, that you’ll end up with someone who doesn’t appreciate you.

The survey, performed by the company Presia (we’ll get back to them a little later), asked 287 married Japanese women, between the ages of 20 and 59, how they feel about their spouse, and 70 percent of them said that they have regretted marrying their husband. Some of those regrets are pretty strong, too, as 54 percent of the women also said that, if they could go back in time and start all over again, they would not want to marry their current husband again.

When asked what sort of regrets they had, economic issues were at the top of the list, with 22.6 percent of the women saying that they regretted compromising on their desired income for their husband to make and another 14.6 percent regretting not having stricter standards regarding his financial sensibilities. A lack of willingness to do housework, or simply not doing it well, was third on the list of regrets, chosen by 11.1 percent of the respondents. Meanwhile, the top response for what the women didn’t regret lowering their standards for was their husband’s physical appearance, selected by 36.6 percent.

So to summarize, the women in the survey largely regret getting married and don’t really care if they like looking at their husbands, especially if they were making more money. That’s a pretty clear picture that romance, if not dead, is at least badly injured, right? Not necessarily. Aside from the survey’s small sample size, remember earlier when we said it was performed by a company called Presia? Presia is a matchmaking service.

Specifically, Presia is an online portal for people looking to get married in the near future, with advice columns and introductions to matchmaking offices. While Presia has released the results of the survey, they haven’t said how the participants were selected. If the respondent pool was gathered from married women who were visitors to Presia’s website or followers of its social media channels, that would significantly skew the numbers toward “I regret marrying my husband,” since people who are satisfied with their spouse are less likely to frequent online spaces with a focus on finding a new romantic partner.

▼ Odds are this woman isn’t browsing singles sites because she’s looking for an “even better” husband.

With that in mind, the most telling part of the results isn’t necessarily how many of the participants regret marrying their husband, but that among those who do regret their choice of spouse, monetary issues are what really have them feeling like they made the wrong call. Even that, though, doesn’t necessarily mean that Japanese wives are only concerned with their husbands’ bank accounts, and not their hearts. It could just mean that for those who ended up in a marriage that’s unhappy for a variety of reasons, not even having the saving grace of comfortable finances is a concrete complaint that sticks in their minds.

Source: PR Times, Itai News, Yahoo! Japan News
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