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What makes for a stable marriage?

randalolson.com

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Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#91

Post by wglb »

linguafranca wrote: post #81

Funny how we feel the need to do statistics and draw charts to figure out what makes a good marriage, when all that's really needed is a little common sense. 1. Communicate your feelings instead of bottling them up. 2. Be selfless and stop focusing so much on getting your wants and desires, and trust that your needs will be met. 3. Be realistic, expect that you won't always get your way, things will go wrong sometime…

Oh if it were simply at's really needed is a little common sense

None of this really bears out.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#92

Post by okaram »

disallusioned42 wrote: post #60

This is a fascinating topic to me. I read it with great interest, and I might even go and do a bunch of my own analysis of the data. But I can't help but think that in a way the whole thing deeply misses the point. My skepticism started when I got to the third point: "How often you go to church". The results seem obvious to me. In general, churches frown on divorce, so of course church goers are going to have lower d…

The problem is that happiness in a marriage varies heavily over time, and has lots of ups-and-downs.

I think a big thing that commitment devices (religion, family ...) help with is that when the going gets touch for a little while, you stay together, which is usually good in the long run.

If your marriage sucks for several years, or if there's abuse, then breaking it may be OK; but many of the issues you discard would also signal people not committed, and marriages breaking because they suck for a couple of months.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#93

Post by Periodic »

Wintamute wrote: post #68

Slightly off topic, but I'm genuinely curious why forward-thinking secular people in the west still want to get married. Historically, and still in many parts of the world, its arguably an incredibly sexist tradition that has its roots in religious and patriarchal control. In many ways it has been completely re-defined, at least in the west, and doesn't have any/many of those connotations any more - but it begs the q…

My wife and I are both very secular. We were together for about four years before we decided to get married and then another year before we actually did. There were basically two reasons why we did it.

1. There are obvious legal and financial incentives which lead to our decision to have a legal marriage. You can easily share property, finances, death benefits, etc. Being able to jointly own property without doing a ream of paperwork as well as be on each others insurance was quite useful. After a few years our finances were already very intertwined and both of us had supported the other through periods of unemployment. It had become impossible to separate our personal successes and so we decided to essentially merge our financial and legal entities. Some married couples keep separate bank accounts and maintain a lot of separation, but we did not.

Also, a pair of people is far more stable than an individual. As I mentioned we have supported each other through unemployment and I supported my wife when she became ill. From a purely economic and social standpoint our marriage is a way to hedge our risks. I support my wife when she struggles and I know that she will support me if any ill ever befalls me.

2. We wanted to proclaim and strengthen our bond through a marriage ceremony. This was the reason we decided to do a social marriage. We felt that there was value in clearly proclaiming our intent to live together indefinitely in front of our family and friends. The act of clearly stating something out loud to witnesses can have a powerful psychological effect and it forced us to confront any doubts we had and think into the future to decide whether the course we were on was really one we wanted to pursue. Basically, the marriage prevented us from simply coasting into the future and forced us to make a clear and conscious decision about what we were doing and then we reinforced it by announcing that decision publicly.

So there are real benefits to having a marriage which are entirely non-religious. I do sometimes wonder about the gender issues and what is biological vs. rational. We do not plan to ever have any children, so our marriage isn't to provide a stable environment for them.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#94

Post by MichaelGG »

I can't help but feel that there must be some other underlying variables and the ones they measured are just reflections. For instance, the culture -- I'd imagine Mormons tend to not get divorced, have lots of attendees without spending a lot of money, and they seem to really be into marriage, so perhaps some of this could reduce to just "be Mormon".

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#95

Post by sreitshamer »

When I told my father I wanted to get married he just asked, "Do you get along?" I think that's the most important question if you're expecting to stay married for the rest of your life.

Many of the things cited in TFA are symptoms of not getting along.

Also, I recommend always assuming you're the one who's wrong when there's a disagreement. You probably are, and if you're not it still works out better :)

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#96

Post by maurits »

One critical note to

"The particularly scary part here is that the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. is well over $30,000, which doesn’t bode well for the future of American marriages."

Since wedding costs are not Gaussian (quick guess exponential), the mean is not very informative. Even misleading.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#97

Post by gus_massa »

linguafranca wrote: post #86
disallusioned42 wrote: post #60

This is a fascinating topic to me. I read it with great interest, and I might even go and do a bunch of my own analysis of the data. But I can't help but think that in a way the whole thing deeply misses the point. My skepticism started when I got to the third point: "How often you go to church". The results seem obvious to me. In general, churches frown on divorce, so of course church goers are going to have lower d…

From my experience, the happiest marriages are of people who don't just "go" to church, but actually try to "live" their church's teachings in all areas of their lives. Churches usually promote selflessness, sacrifice, honesty, gentleness, and sincere love. So it's a recipe for happiness inside or out of marriage, but especially inside marriage.

YMMV. Other churches promote killing everyone that don't believe in the same god, or believe in the same god but have a method to pray, or has other social habits.

I think that it's not a problem of a specific religion. Most religion has peaceful periods but 300 years later the "same" religion has a violent period and 300 year later the "same" religion is peaceful again, ...

And sometimes, some members of the same church are peaceful and some are violent. It's more complicated.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#98

Post by mattchew »

Wintamute wrote: post #68

Slightly off topic, but I'm genuinely curious why forward-thinking secular people in the west still want to get married. Historically, and still in many parts of the world, its arguably an incredibly sexist tradition that has its roots in religious and patriarchal control. In many ways it has been completely re-defined, at least in the west, and doesn't have any/many of those connotations any more - but it begs the q…

Roughly speaking, it looks to me like younger people do not want to get married, and are in fact choosing partnerships that are expected to be only semi permanent instead. The idea of traditional, permanent marriage is taking on stuffy and backward-thinking connotations.

Some will still get married, even forward thinking secular people. There's a big difference between trying to build a family with someone who wants to partner up for as long as they're not unhappy, and having kids with someone who at least aspires to a permanent commitment. Marriage is pretty messed up in the U.S., but I still think it makes more sense to get married if you want to have kids.

Some won't. I don't think a culture built around transitory relationships is a good one for either parents or children. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a backlash in time, though I think another possibility is people just give up on having kids altogether. We'll have to see.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#99

Post by michaelsbradley »

linguafranca wrote: post #86
disallusioned42 wrote: post #60

This is a fascinating topic to me. I read it with great interest, and I might even go and do a bunch of my own analysis of the data. But I can't help but think that in a way the whole thing deeply misses the point. My skepticism started when I got to the third point: "How often you go to church". The results seem obvious to me. In general, churches frown on divorce, so of course church goers are going to have lower d…

From my experience, the happiest marriages are of people who don't just "go" to church, but actually try to "live" their church's teachings in all areas of their lives. Churches usually promote selflessness, sacrifice, honesty, gentleness, and sincere love. So it's a recipe for happiness inside or out of marriage, but especially inside marriage.

And some churches have particularly well-developed theologies of marriage and family. See, for example, Pope St. John Paul II's apostolic exhortation Familias Consortio and its many church-teaching references (and, in turn, their references and so on).

http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2famil.htm

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#100

Post by ChiperSoft »

disallusioned42 wrote: post #60

This is a fascinating topic to me. I read it with great interest, and I might even go and do a bunch of my own analysis of the data. But I can't help but think that in a way the whole thing deeply misses the point. My skepticism started when I got to the third point: "How often you go to church". The results seem obvious to me. In general, churches frown on divorce, so of course church goers are going to have lower d…

Also people who stay together for their kids.
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