Sometimes evenings just call for a bottle of wine and a natter with your significant other.

They’re bound to you indefinitely and have no choice but to sit and listen while you down a bottle of Tesco’s finest and unleash your wrath. Ah, modern love. It’s not unusual that most Irish relationships would follow that pattern but are there any side effects to the cycle? A new study new study from the University of Michigan has revealed that, well, actually, couples who drink together are significantly happier than couples who don’t. To determine the effect of drinking on relationships, researchers interviewed over 2,700 married couples about their alcohol consumption and drinking habits. Each participant answered questions about how often they and their partner drank, and how demanding, or irritating they felt their partner was in general. The study found overwhelmingly that couples who drank together were far happier than couples where only one person routinely drank. The study found that women, in particular, were more dissatisfied over time when only they, and not their husband, drank. Interestingly, though, the troubles in paradise had nothing to do with how much each partner drank but rather seem to stem from the feeling of being excluded. We call that FOMO. More research needs to be done but at the moment study author, Kira Birditt believes the findings indicate that happier couples are the ones that generally socialize more together. "We're not sure why this is happening, but it could be that couples that do more leisure time activities together have better marital quality," she told Reuters Health.