Two new studies just came out. They list several factors that might determine whether a marriage survives or not.
Among the things they mentioned are:
* The age of the man
* Whether it is their second/third marriage
* Whether the couple cohabitated before getting married.
* Whether they came from broken homes.
The full list is here
It seems like all odds are against a successful marriage and that love it is just one of many other factors that determines if a marriage succeeds or not.[/quote]
"What's love got to do, got to do with it..."
I think some of the material is good but the study itself is pretty weak and really doesn't get to the heart (no pun intended) of the matter.
First of all I take issue with wanting to find the majic formula...as if we can somehow come up with a majic checklist that once you have satisfied all the criteria will guarantee your marriage (or double your spouse back)
Second, I find it laughable that a study on the long-term viablility of marriage covers 6 years. 6 years!
Here's my spin, JMHO, so take it or leave it, (feel free to break into small groups and discuss amongst yourselves....) -
Yes Marriage takes more than love to survive. It is a parnternship, and like any successful partnership the likelhood for long term success goes up with both parties are contributors, there is good communication and certain expectations are set up front (and the converse is true for failing partnerships.
- contributors - Some people say marriage needs to be a 50/50 deal. I disagree, I think marriage needs to be a 100/100 deal, both parties giving everything they have. When you start going down the road of "One weeks toilet cleaning is worth two weeks garbage removal, and you've missed a week of garbage removal, that kid of score keeping then you're in trouble. If both partners are really giving of their full efforst everything will get done and when one is down the other can pick up their slack, like a good functioning team.
- good communication - it's so easy to grow accustomed. Don't assume you know anything about what your spouse will think about a given topi or situation, just talk about it and hopefully you aren't afraid to bring up any suubject, if you are, that's not a good sign and you probably need to talk about not talking about things.
- expectations. I'm amazed at people who've never talked about how to handle conflict, the rules for fighting, how to handle family money etc. before entering a marriage. Personally, DW and I had a very specific discussion prior to getting married, about what happens if thing get tough, and we made a commitment to work on it, we agreed that divorce is too easy of an answer for too many people and that guiding principal has lead us through some pretty damned difficul patches. All we have to do is say, "well, that's something I guess we need to work on..." and we do.
I'm not saying our marriage is perfect, but we've been married 21 years this fall (and we did live together alomst 1 1/2 years) and we're even going through some rough stuff right now, but we are appraoching it together, how can WE fix this, how can WE make it better and having that perspective really does help.