( The Frisky ) -- One would think that becoming engaged would make a woman happy , right ? Well , if status updates on Facebook are any indication -- and at least two research scientists say they are -- that theory is all wrong . Cameron Marlow and D.J . Patil spend their days tracking trends on Facebook where the roughly 400 million users give them a totally unprecedented insight into human behavior . Together , they study what Facebook calls the `` Gross National Happiness Index , '' an application `` that measures the positive and negative sentiments expressed in status posts , '' and what they 've discovered is that becoming engaged makes women less happy than they were before getting engaged . The Frisky - Bad marriage may be a health risk . `` Maybe this is the effect of having to plan a wedding , '' Marlow told the San Francisco Chronicle in an article ( `` Researchers Study Behavior in Social Networks '' ) that ran on May 12 . `` While the process of being engaged is stressful for women , once you 're married , then in general , you 're less negative than you were before . But if you 're a man , then something else changes , it increases the negativity . These fit the gender stereotypes so perfectly that it 's almost uncanny . '' Facebook 's `` Gross National Happiness '' prototype app . As someone who has wasted too much time perusing a popular website that pokes fun at status updates from people who are happily -- often annoyingly so -- coupled up , I kind of have a hard time believing these findings . It 's all , `` Ooh , another lovely evening at home waiting for the pizza delivery and watching my husband clip his toenails ! '' And : `` I 'm getting marrriiieeeeed , suckas ! '' Whether these people are truly happy or just want people to think they are is open for debate , but I have a hard time believing they 're illustrating `` negative '' tendencies . Then again , I deleted my Facebook account months ago , so maybe I 'm simply missing out on the `` woe is me '' updates from the newly engaged and married . The Frisky : Kim Kardashian drowns her food in Windex . Another finding the researchers have discovered is that `` being in an open relationship 'is uniformly bad , ' decreasing positive feelings by 15 percent compared with single people . '' Interestingly , it 's women who are actually less negative about open relationships than their male counterparts . Who would have though that ? The Frisky : Bad breakup gave me more confidence . On a different note , it 's a little creepy that people on Facebook -- all 400 million of you -- are unwitting participants in these research studies , is n't it ? As if there were n't already enough performance anxiety when writing one 's status update . Now you 've got to write about what you had for lunch and worry about what researchers think that says about your happiness level . TM & © 2010 TMV , Inc. | All Rights Reserved .
Study finds women not-so-happy after getting engagement ring . Two researchers gathered data from Facebook status updates . After wedding , women 's negativity lessens , men 's negativity increases .