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What makes for a stable marriage?

randalolson.com

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Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#41

Post by jpp »

nathan_long wrote: post #17

I wonder how many of these factors are causation vs correlation. My guess is that, for example, that eloping doesn't ruin your marriage and having a big wedding doesn't improve it; it's just that people who elope are reflecting the reality that their attitude is "we're in this alone", and people who have a big wedding are reflecting their confidence and their sense that friends' and families' support is important.

As someone who dabbles in psychology research (mostly Big Five stuff), I had this same reaction: this is great correlation stuff, but I hardly expect it's casual. This is my grip with books like "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" -- picking up those habits won't make you necessarily effective.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#42

Post by lucb1e »

Interesting! I'm confused though: if you have 200+ people attending your wedding, you're over 90 percent less likely to divorce. However if you spend only $1k on the wedding, you're also much less likely to divorce. How does that add up? The most successful marriages somehow have lots of people on a marriage for almost no money at all?

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#43

Post by ska »

jasonparker wrote: post #37
themartorana wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's not really such a thing as a bad marriage so much as selfish participants This is absurd. It's constructed of a series of suppositions, only a few of which I'll address. First is that people are static. This simply isn't true. We all know that we all change - not just in age, wisdom, and so on, but in tastes, politics, religious dedication, and the lines we draw between wrong and right, just to name a few.…

Gotta disagree with you: marriage is a contract, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live. Divorce means your word is worthless, and that your own wants are more important than your word. It IS a personal failure, but go ahead, rationalize all you want.

One part of what marriage is, is a contract between two people. But remember that you don't get to decide the terms of that contract for them.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#45

Post by Xcelerate »

themartorana wrote: post #32
smoyer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So I'm not sure that religion makes a marriage stronger, it just places a higher degree of shame and stigma on divorce." But perhaps any social pressure that encourages marriage would do the same thing? I've got quite a few friends that have had arranged marriages - they marry strangers and work to build a happy marriage from it because their families expect it. On the other hand, "staying in a bad marriage" is a mi…

> there's not really such a thing as a bad marriage so much as selfish participants This is absurd. It's constructed of a series of suppositions, only a few of which I'll address. First is that people are static. This simply isn't true. We all know that we all change - not just in age, wisdom, and so on, but in tastes, politics, religious dedication, and the lines we draw between wrong and right, just to name a few.…

> series of suppositions ... First is that people are static.

I don't know of anyone who believes people are static. You even say yourself in the next sentence "We all know that we all change". No one (at least that I'm aware of) goes into marriage expecting the person they marry to stay the same over time. Another HN poster (can't remember who) put it beautifully once: marriage is an agreement to learn to love the person that each of you become over time.

A marriage is a promise, a vow, to commit to this. Now, I could certainly see a situation where two people tell each other at the altar "I promise to love and support you always, well... unless we change too much". However, both people should be aware of these terms! You can't make an agreement that you will always, unconditionally support the other person, and then back out of it later because you changed your mind. If both people are in agreement that they might change and get divorced later before the marriage begins, then fine with me. It's not that different than dating with some legal benefits. But if one person thinks they're going into something permanent, and the other person has doubts about it, then that is really not fair to the first person, and I would argue it's essentially evil to be that dishonest to someone.

> further stigma to those who have gone through divorce

There is a stigma, but it's not on divorce; it's on someone who goes back on their word. What are my terms for divorce? If there is abuse or cheating. Those are my only conditions. And before I marry anyone, I will make it very clear that these are the only conditions in which I will abandon them, and if they don't like those terms they can marry someone else. The stigma associated with the vast majority of divorces is that one (or two) people were unable to keep a promise. I don't want to be associated with these kinds of people. My life is simpler and happier if I associate with people who will keep their word at any cost. Maybe your experience is different.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#47

Post by trendroid »

smoyer wrote: post #27
shawnz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would those two people have discovered their incompatibility if they'd dated for more than a couple years? Of course they would. But we were discussing arranged and religiously motivated marriages, where that opportunity might not be afforded. Is there still "no such thing as a bad marriage" even when you "marry strangers"?

I don't think we were discussing "religiously motivated" marriages but rather that a shared religion (presumably one that both participants had before the marriage) was an additional social pressure "like" arranged marriages. In any case, I think that social pressure can be a pretty strong force and that it tends to counteract the sort of selfishness that leads to a "bad marriage". Of course bad marriages will statis…

>both participants cared to work a bit.

How do we measure whether the amount of caring done was enough or not? Considering it varies based on personalities and other convincing capabilities of a partner, how do we know for sure apart from just getting information from the partners themselves who say that they tried a lot to make it work.

Its important to remember that there is lot of suffering involved when one of the partner keeps working due to societal pressure while the other continues to mistreat them. This is more prevalent in developing countries like India and China. There is only so much a person can try on their own(they cant stand shaming so dont share oppression with other family)

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#48

Post by jostylr »

I would suggest that if you want a good and wonderful marriage, then respect is key. Have someone observe the couple and watch the dynamic. I wonder how much of the various graphs could correlate with likelihood of respecting the other.

I am surprised by the length to proposal. My opinion is that once you meet someone that really clicks, then it works out quickly and well. I wonder if there is another dynamic that correlates with the religious as well, one that perhaps is more in the vein of arranged marriages, so to speak.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#50

Post by bendtheblock »

I'm a bit surprised to see the conclusions on this post getting so much love on HN.

Let's assume it's tongue in cheek that the author says the best marriage is when "you've been dating at least 3 years before getting engaged, making a combined $125k salary, go to church together regularly, and don’t worry about your partner’s wealth nor looks".

All the data says is that those happen to be some attributes of long lasting marriages and not necessarily when combined together.

How can we know what about the pressures of a marriage where the the couple can't afford to go away on a Honeymoon? What social pressures could there be on a couple that spend over $20k on a wedding? How can we know about the stigma of ending a religious marriage when you go to church every week and invite 200 people to your wedding?

Most importantly - there's zero information about the quality of the marriage...

The site is responding intermittently but as rhiever says you can get it here https://i.imgur.com/rABtgo9.jpg

edit: I hate to write so negatively so I'd like to say that it's great that there's so much useful and honest marriage advice on here as a result of this discussion.

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