Maybe It Isn't That Bad

MSN Dating & Personals - The Marrying Man
Rutgers University - The State of Our Unions

I know that I started out this blog trashing psychological research on relationships. I should know better than to indulge in hyperbole. OK, I apologize to all of you hardworking researchers out there. But, here's one piece of research that I thought needed sharing.

What got my attention a couple of weeks ago was this article, "MSN Dating & Personals - The marrying man"> by Margot Carmichael Lester. Margot is a contributor for Playboy Magazine and has extensively written about relationships for quite a while now. The article is a very lively and interesting description of a part of a study by The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University called "The State of Our Unions". Margot addresses the trends of marriageable men in her article. (If you are interested, I suggest you read the article for yourself.) However, after reading Margot's piece, I was intrigued, and went to the Rutgers Website to see the original article. If you’re interested, here’s the website: http://marriage.rutgers.edu/.

So, here's the good news. While the odds of getting divorced remains fairly high, close to the 50% mark we're all familiar with, these researchers have produced a table of statistics called "Your Chances of Divorce May be Much Lower Than You Think". The authors of the study make the point that:

1) Having an income of $50,000 or more decreases your chance of divorce by about 30%,
2) Having a baby 7 months or more after marriage decreases your chances of divorce by 24%,
3) Waiting until you are 25 years old to marry decreases your chances of divorce by 24%,
4) If your own parents are not divorced, your chances of divorce decrease by 14%,
5) If you are religiously affiliated, your chances of divorce decrease by 14%,
6) If you have some college education, your chances of divorce decrease by 13%.

Finally, they conclude that if you meet the criteria for all six risk reduction factors "your chances of getting divorced are very low indeed".

One of the unfortunate attitudes that I find among my individual clients who want to get married and couples who are in premarital counseling is an almost fatalistic view that their marriage probably won’t last their lifetime. However, as this report indicates, only one factor is totally out of a person's control -- whether or not your parents are divorced. Making the decision to wait until you are emotionally mature, making wise choices about sex and children out of wedlock, obtaining your education, choosing to affiliate with a religious community and waiting to get financially stable are all choices that we can make and work toward.

Perhaps having a lifelong partner is not about odds at all. Perhaps it's about making the right choices.

Being Clear About Your Relationship

There are quite a number of reasons for men and women to date:
* Social interaction.
* Recreation.
* Sex.
* Practicing social skills. (This is particularly true for people who have not dated or haven’t dated in a long time.)
* Practicing seduction skills. (This is particularly true for people who have been celibate or “out of circulation” for a while”.)
* Experimenting with different relationships. (This may be a motivation for people who have had unsuccessful relationships and want to see what other options are available to them.)
* Testing to see if they are desirable to others. (This may be a motivation for people who are insecure or narcissistic.)
* Finding someone to marry. (Yes, and some people really do date to find a mate.)

Obviously, this is only a partial list. The point here is that if you go out on a number of dates, you will meet people at a variety of emotional levels of readiness to tie the knot. This array of motivations is enough to be a veritable field of emotional landmines where your boundaries or your potential partner’s boundaries are in danger of being invaded.

OK. Let’s say you do find someone that interests you. There is yet another tangle of motivations to get through.

There Are Different Types of Love
There is
* Friendship
* Sexual attraction
* The love between siblings
* The love between a parent and a child
* Platonic love between students, teachers, colleagues.

Sexual love is often a fun place to start a relationship, but most couples know that it can’t just remain there. The relationship needs to be transformed into something deeper.

What’s often confusing is that couples will initially meet each other expecting that good friends will make good marital partners. Many dates turn into friendships where the couple will act out their sexual attraction. Later, when these friends decide to marry, they are surprised at the difficulty in transforming the relationship. The task for this sort of couple is to realize that it’s not enough to be friends in a marital relationship. Friends can go home when the night is over. Even friends who live together and have sex have the option of moving out.

A married couple goes home to each other – every night, for the rest of their lives. This is because somewhere after the marriage begins a mysterious thing called bonding occurs. At some point in the relationship, the couple mutually recognizes that they are more than friends and more than just individuals. Marriage has pushed these individuals into a situation where one partner always has to always consider the impact of one’s behavior on the other partner to maintain the relationship. At some point it dawns on the couple that they are no longer individuals, but have transcended into something more than themselves. You’ll often hear widows and widowers of every age describe their loss of a spouse with whom they have bonded by saying: “It was like losing an arm or a leg.” Genesis says it best: “Therefore, shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” We’re not just talking about being roomies here.