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What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

randalolson.com

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Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#41

Post by sergiosgc »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #37

He didn't address couples counseling and therapy as factors in keeping marriages going. There's always been marriage counseling; today it's a professional therapist you hire, but in the old days it was your priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you on how to get along. Today in First World industrial societies, couples just try to wing it, moving out from the parents' house as soon…

> (...) in a certain sense it's an empty life.

Inappropriately harsh position. A couple unable to conceive can easily have a meaningful life, even without going through the adoption path. It's just that having kids is the beaten path. You know from the onset the path all the way through. It is known what society expects from you and you feel happy fulfilling the expectation.

A childless couple must create a journey together. It's a different path for each couple, thus with higher risk. The good news is that higher risk carries higher reward.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#43

Post by gmarx »

Bill_Dimm wrote: post #11

It's a shame the "being the same age" item didn't separate the data for men being older from the data for women being older (for heterosexual marriages). With society being somewhat more accepting of older men marrying younger women rather than the other way around, it would be interesting to see if marriage success agreed with that or not.

I disagree that society is more accepting of older men marrying younger women. There is a different reaction to it, a different set of assumed scenarios, but in my limited experience people accept both until the age difference goes over about a decade.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#44

Post by drdaeman »

watty wrote: post #6
qwerta wrote: post #3

I have great advice howto improve your health and productivity tenfold: DO NOT GET MARRIED! EVER! :-)

Both of those things could be improved by marrying the right person.

I'd say, by meeting and partnering with the right person.

IMHO, marriage is just a millennia-old artifact concept where you inform and/or conform with your superior (church, state or whatever) on whom you're going to live with.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#46

Post by john_b »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #37

He didn't address couples counseling and therapy as factors in keeping marriages going. There's always been marriage counseling; today it's a professional therapist you hire, but in the old days it was your priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you on how to get along. Today in First World industrial societies, couples just try to wing it, moving out from the parents' house as soon…

> "Kids are inconvenient and expensive and people mistakenly feel they'll have a happier life without them, but in a certain sense it's an empty life."

s/kids/startups/ to see how ridiculous this sounds. Any kind of presumption that other people should make certain major life decisions a certain way just because you feel that will make them happy sounds extremely presumptuous.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#47

Post by PavlovsCat »

qwerta wrote: post #3

I have great advice howto improve your health and productivity tenfold: DO NOT GET MARRIED! EVER! :-)

Marriage and love are two very different things. Marriage is a bit like a sticker that you can stick on anything; if you have the thing, you don't need the sticker. So I would say you're correct, maybe even when it comes to relationships. Which, by the way, can also greatly motivate and round out a person (relationships I mean). Productivity isn't everything, we also need things are productive for. That can be being happy alone, but also being happy together.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#48

Post by ArtDev »

For a more in depth analysis check out "The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work", a book based on decades of research at the Seattle "Love Lab". Dr Gottman has written other books, but this is the book on marriage research. http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Principles-Making-Marriage-Work/...

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#49

Post by ubercore »

crayola wrote: post #17

"On the bright side, the longer your marriage lasts, the less likely you are to divorce." Emmm.. Not too surprising, is it? Divorces kind of tend to terminate marriages early.

I believe the point being made here is that for a given couple on a given day, the length of their marriage dictates the probability that they _will_ get divorced. Almost like a hard drive where MTBF increases as the drive is used.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#50

Post by ddebernardy »

barbudorojo wrote: post #36
ddebernardy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly more important than communication is the ability to pick your battles and let go a bone when it's not worth fighting for. Long term couples invariably survive because the two involved never wanted to divorse at the same time.

"Long term couples invariably survive because the two involved never wanted to divorce at the same time" If I may be allowed a little joke, statistics here are really of little use in order to estimate a conditional probability (i.e, the probability that you (yourself) get divorced). But your sentence, while true, seems to be produced by a excessive rational mind an sounds like a pure truism, anyway, enhancing that t…

It goes a little deeper though.

The quote about not wanting to divorse at the same time isn't mine and has been attributed to many. Because it's funny, and (reportedly) inherently true for anyone with a decade of wedlock to speak about.

The remark on picking your battles, in contrast, is in no way as simplistic as you seem to suggest it is -- pardon if I misunderstood.

In essence, psychological studies back that idea, and researchers on the topic are able to predict with relative reliability whether a young couple will survive 5 or 10 years or not.

The gist of their criteria, as I understood it anyways, amounts to whether either or both of the two have a giant ego trip or not.

So if you want a long-term marriage, which most people do when they say yes, well... learn to give up on what's not so important in retrospect, and pick a partner that does -- or will probably learn to do -- the same.

The less fighting, the less likely either of the two wants to divorse. And that gets us back to the first point.

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