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Whether to marry and whom to marry are among the biggest decisions—arguably the most important—a woman or man makes.
The statistics reveal that human beings aren’t really as skilled as they need to be in this arena, with the rate of divorce roughly between 40% and 50% for first marriage and at 60% for second tries.
And despite the cascade of self-help guidance out there, we don’t seem to be getting any smarter about our choices.
So what gives? Is it the way we think about marriage that’s a problem?
A look at the research reveals that some of our most common beliefs about how to approach marriage and make it work are wrong.
1. Living together first is a good idea
I will readily admit that this is what I thought until I read the research, even though I was aware that cohabitation was less than a guarantee of wedded bliss.
It always seemed to me that when people married after living together for a substantial period of time, there was still an important transition ahead.
It’s only after you’re married that your (and your spouse’s) ideas of what marriage should be like and how spouses ought to behave kick in.
These conceptions, usually undiscussed and often unarticulated, come out of our childhoods, our perception of our parents’ marriage, our upbringing, and our personal expectations.
Some of us who were fine with our lovers’ behaviors before we tied the knot may find ourselves feeling differently afterward.
That said, the work of Scott M. Stanley and his colleagues goes much further, suggesting that living together gets in the way of the kind of deliberative and conscious decision-making the commitment of marriage actually requires.
The research suggests that couples “slide” into marriage in largely unexamined ways which account for the greater probability of divorce and lower communication skills among couples who lived together first. Continue reading
Sources
- Psychology Today
- Image: The Atlantic
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