The secret of a happy marriage

Psychologists Galena K. Rhoades and Scott M. Stanley at the University of Denver looked at how the circumstances of our premarital life affect the quality of family relationships*.

In 2007-2008, the authors recruited more than a thousand Americans aged 18 to 23 who were already in a romantic relationship but not yet married. And five years later, they checked how they were doing. It turned out that 418 people got married, and they became the sample.

First of all, they answered questionnaires that allowed them to assess the level of family happiness and well-being, and then psychologists compared exactly how the 40% of the happiest couples differ from the remaining 60%, those who are not so satisfied with their married life. And here’s what they found out.

First, those who marry “from scratch,” that is, with little previous experience of close romantic relationships, feel better.

Read more:

• How not to ruin a second marriage

Moreover, the number of sexual partners is not the most important factor here. Yes, it matters for women – the fewer lovers they had before marriage, the happier they are in marriage – but for men there was no statistically significant relationship. In addition, both women and men whose spouse was the only partner in their entire lives, whether before marriage or after (and their share in the sample was 23%), turned out to be more prosperous than those who had something, more precisely, with whom to compare .

But something else is much more significant: the experience of a previous life together, including, incredible as it may seem, even with a future spouse, reduces the chances of a successful marriage. The presence of a child is the same, and especially for women: the number of happy in marriage (the same 40%) included 43% of the sample participants who married without children, and only 25% of those who already had a child. Men also have this difference, but not so great, the figures are 41% and 31%, respectively.

Secondly, those who meaningfully and purposefully take important steps, such as entering into a relationship or having a child, discuss them with each other, plan and even attend marriage courses, are happier than those who “slip” into family life, moving from casual dating to casual sex, casual cohabitation and casual pregnancy.

Finally, thirdly, the wedding matters. The top 40% of the lucky ones included 41% of the respondents who played the wedding, and only 28% of those who did without this convention. And the most curious thing: in the same top were 47% of those whose wedding was invited more than 150 guests, but only 31% limited themselves to 50 guests or less.

Read more:

• “I broke up with my virginity twice”

The authors emphasize that the role here is played not by the amount of expenses for the holiday, not by money, but by publicity, the extent to which the newlyweds assume marital obligations in the face of friends and neighbors. It is likely that the more the family becomes a “public good”, the more incentives spouses have to work on relationships so as not to deceive the expectations placed. Or vice versa: the more people are confident in each other and in their love, the more they want to share the joy with the whole world and the more willingly they invite guests to the wedding.

So to guarantee a cloudless life, simply by writing as many invitation cards as possible, will not succeed. And in general, one should not take the conclusions of Rhodes and Stanley as some kind of unshakable dogma. The patterns they have identified are moderately expressed, the sample they worked with is very small, and all this applies only to young people entering into their first marriage, and moreover, Americans. In other countries, culture and traditions, which, of course, largely determine the behavior of people in family life, may well lead to completely different results.

*The National Marriage Project, August 2014. http://nationalmarriageproject.org/reports/