Career over love.

That’s the preference of a majority of adult Filipinos if they had to choose one over the other, results of a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed.

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SWS found that 59 percent would choose career while 41 percent would prefer love.

But four in five Filipinos said it was possible to have a love life and a career at the same time.

The survey was conducted on Dec. 8-16 last year and covered 1,200 respondents nationwide.

In general, the majority of men (57 percent) and women (60 percent) chose career over love.

But preference for career was more pronounced among singles (82 percent for men and 83 percent for women) and among those with no love life (81 percent).

But why choose one when you can have both?

Both attainable

For 84 percent of the respondents, success in both love and career was attainable. Sixty-six percent even said they had experienced a successful love life and a career at the same time.

While the majority opted for career, success in career-love balance was higher among those who chose love (71 percent) over career (62 percent).

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Likewise, the proportion of those who had success in both career and love was higher among those with a live-in partner (76 percent among men and 72 percent among women) and among the married (72 percent among men and 68 percent among women).

SWS also found 57 percent of the respondents saying their love life is “very happy,” not significantly different from the 55 percent in 2016.

Twenty-nine percent said “it could be happier,” slightly down from 31 percent in the previous year.

No love life

Those who “have no love life” accounted for 14 percent of the respondents, unchanged from a year ago.

Married men (71 percent) and married women (62 percent) reported they were very happy with their love life, compared with 62 percent for men and 53 percent for women with a live-in partner.

Only 21 percent of men and 23 percent of women who were single (widowed, separated or divorced) were very happy with their love life.

Young single men were found to be happier than their female counterparts.

Young and single

Forty-five percent of 18 to 34-year-old single men—who were never married or who were widowed, separated or divorced—said they were very happy with their love life.

It was only 28 percent for women in the same age group and civil status who said they were very happy with their love life. —Inquirer Research

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