The Institute for Family Studies released a new report led by researchers Rich Dell’Isola, Brad Wilcox, Grant Bailey and Jane Lankes Smith. What they uncovered reveals something we have probably all instinctually known for decades:

Married couples who regularly attend church are happier across every marital metric.

The major findings of this report offer insight into the marital satisfaction of couples who regularly practice their faith together (specifically Catholic and Protestant faiths). We will look at three of these major findings.

1. Married, Church-Attending Couples Stay Together and Have More Children.

While the hold that Christianity has on the West has noticeably lessened since the days of our parents and grandparents, data shows time and again that Catholic and Protestant couples have some of the most stable marriages in America.

“Churchgoing Catholics and Protestants marry more, have more children, and divorce less than their secular peers. For instance, churchgoers are 39% more likely to be married today. They are fewer in number, but stronger in family life.”

2. Married, Church-Attending Couples Are Simply Happier.

If you have been on social media for any length of time, the denigration of marriage and marital satisfaction is apparent. If you are a female, the algorithm likely feeds you content where women are complaining about their husbands, finding faults that annoy them, or any number of scenarios where you walk away feeling negative about marriage. If you are a man, you’re likely seeing content featuring the downside of being married to a woman who is so “needy, emotional, and draining on your resources.”

However, the report we are discussing shows that Catholic and Protestant married couples are objectively happier people and report high levels of satisfaction with their spouse.

“Married men and women who most fully embrace the classic beliefs and practices of Protestant and Catholic Christianity—including the conviction that marriage is a lifelong commitment, ’till death do us part’—enjoy the happiest marriages in America. In fact, 79% of churchgoing Catholics and 74% of churchgoing Protestants are very happily married, compared to 66% of non-religious husbands and wives. And husbands and wives who embrace an ethic of marital permanence have 1.85 higher odds of being happily married.”

3. Married, Church-Attending Couples Are More Sexually Satisfied.

In the age of Call Her Daddy podcast episodes with Alex Cooper where young women are foolishly encouraged to be as promiscuous as possible, data actually reveals a stunning conclusion that college-age kids may be stunned by.

As satisfying as your promiscuous lifestyle might appear to be on the surface, married couples who take their faith seriously are way more sexually satisfied than any college-age frat boy.

“Even the most intimate expression of connection in a marriage bears this out: religious couples enjoy significantly more sex, and more sexual satisfaction, than their secular peers. Indeed, they have been largely untouched by today’s “sex recession”—with a strong majority of churchgoing spouses (62%) having sex at least once a week now, even as sex drops for nonreligious spouses to the point where only a minority (48%) have sex at least weekly. Churchgoers also have 1.42 times higher odds of being sexually satisfied than husbands and wives who are not religiously active.”

Social media has done a phenomenal job of gaslighting younger generations that faith is unnecessary and marriage is some type of trap.

Yet, this data is indisputable.

Faith matters – it grounds you, gives you purpose, and it gives you hope. Marriage matters – it brings stability, happiness, and all-around life satisfaction.

And both faith and family are worth a lifetime’s pursuit.