Statisticians Uncover What Makes For a Stable Marriage 447
HughPickens.com writes Randy Olson, a Computer Science grad student who works with data visualizations, writes about seven of the biggest factors that predict what makes for a long term stable marriage in America. Olson took the results of a study that polled thousands of recently married and divorced Americans and and asked them dozens of questions about their marriage (PDF): How long they were dating, how long they were engaged, etc. After running this data through a multivariate model, the authors were able to calculate the factors that best predicted whether a marriage would end in divorce. "What struck me about this study is that it basically laid out what makes for a stable marriage in the US," writes Olson. Here are some of the biggest factors:
How long you were dating: (Couples who dated 1-2 years before their engagement were 20% less likely to end up divorced than couples who dated less than a year before getting engaged. Couples who dated 3 years or more are 39% less likely to get divorced.); How much money you make: (The more money you and your partner make, the less likely you are to ultimately file for divorce. Couples who earn $125K per year are 51% less likely to divorce than couples making 0 — 25k); How often you go to church: (Couples who never go to church are 2x more likely to divorce than regular churchgoers.); Your attitude toward your partner: (Men are 1.5x more likely to end up divorced when they care more about their partner's looks, and women are 1.6x more likely to end up divorced when they care more about their partner's wealth.); How many people attended the wedding: ("Crazy enough, your wedding ceremony has a huge impact on the long-term stability of your marriage. Perhaps the biggest factor is how many people attend your wedding: Couples who elope are 12.5x more likely to end up divorced than couples who get married at a wedding with 200+ people."); How much you spent on the wedding: (The more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you'll end up divorced.); Whether you had a honeymoon: (Couples who had a honeymoon are 41% less likely to divorce than those who had no honeymoon)
Of course correlation is not causation. For example, expensive weddings may simply attract the kind of immature and narcissistic people who are less likely to sustain a successful marriage and such people might end up getting divorced even if they married cheaply. But "the particularly scary part here is that the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. is well over $30,000," says Olson, "which doesn't bode well for the future of American marriages."
How long you were dating: (Couples who dated 1-2 years before their engagement were 20% less likely to end up divorced than couples who dated less than a year before getting engaged. Couples who dated 3 years or more are 39% less likely to get divorced.); How much money you make: (The more money you and your partner make, the less likely you are to ultimately file for divorce. Couples who earn $125K per year are 51% less likely to divorce than couples making 0 — 25k); How often you go to church: (Couples who never go to church are 2x more likely to divorce than regular churchgoers.); Your attitude toward your partner: (Men are 1.5x more likely to end up divorced when they care more about their partner's looks, and women are 1.6x more likely to end up divorced when they care more about their partner's wealth.); How many people attended the wedding: ("Crazy enough, your wedding ceremony has a huge impact on the long-term stability of your marriage. Perhaps the biggest factor is how many people attend your wedding: Couples who elope are 12.5x more likely to end up divorced than couples who get married at a wedding with 200+ people."); How much you spent on the wedding: (The more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you'll end up divorced.); Whether you had a honeymoon: (Couples who had a honeymoon are 41% less likely to divorce than those who had no honeymoon)
Of course correlation is not causation. For example, expensive weddings may simply attract the kind of immature and narcissistic people who are less likely to sustain a successful marriage and such people might end up getting divorced even if they married cheaply. But "the particularly scary part here is that the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. is well over $30,000," says Olson, "which doesn't bode well for the future of American marriages."
outsource your wedding (Score:2)
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Really...with 1000 dollars you can already have a luxury wedding in the Phillipines. Plus, you are already on your destination honeymoon.
Yeah, but how do you get 200+ people there for the party, without the cost going up?
Re:outsource your wedding (Score:4, Insightful)
And how do you get rid of them before the wedding night?
Re:outsource your wedding (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but how do you get 200+ people there for the party, without the cost going up?
Just hire some locals to attend. The important thing is to get over the 200 guest threshold so you don't get divorced.
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Don't have to pay them. Just say "free lumpia" and you'll fill the tables.
Or marry a Filipina. Half the town will be related. The remainder will be honorary "aunties" and "uncles".
Re:outsource your wedding (Score:5, Funny)
Better yet, just hire an indian couple to get married for you. MUCH MORE EFFICIENT!
Re:outsource your wedding (Score:5, Insightful)
A $9k wedding can be quite a treat in the U.S. as long as you dispense with the bullshit of playing dress-up and having a formal, overpaid party. Just go to a good restaurant, eat a good dinner, hit a club afterwards. Heck, if you want to look cute, $1k buys all the clothes, hairdo and makeup you'll need, if you wish to put a little bit of elbow grease into it.
Questiona re a bit sexists (Score:2)
What about men caring for their wife wealth and women caring for their husband looks ? What about homosexual couple ? Also a lot of the reason given seems to boild down to the following :
* if you know somebody for a long time before getting married your marriage is more stable (le
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if you or your spouse has a lot of wealth invested [...] in the ceremony [...] you are less likely to "split" away and lose wealth
The more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you'll end up divorced.
How did you get that out of the summary?
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What about men caring for their wife wealth and women caring for their husband looks ? What about homosexual couple ? Also a lot of the reason given seems to boild down to the following :
* if you know somebody for a long time before getting married your marriage is more stable (less bad surprise)
* if you or your spouse has a lot of wealth invested either in the ceremony or yourself, you are less likely to "split" away and lose wealth
Not necessarily sexist. Maybe they asked both sexes the same questions and they found that the there was no significant correlation with whether women cared about men's looks or whether men cared about women's wealth.
I'm more interested in the "churchgoing" thing. It flies in the face of studies that show atheists don't have very different odds of getting divorced, whereas conservative Christians have higher divorce rates. Maybe the actual atheists are buried in a larger population of people that are nom
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I would be really interested in a link for something like this because on the surface it seems intuitive that people why go to church may be exposed to more societal pressure to maintain an unhappy marriage than risk social shame for going through a divorce.
Re:Questiona re a bit sexists (Score:5, Interesting)
It is more than just pressure. There is also a support network of close friends and any good church will offer marriage counselling to try and sort out problems long before it gets to divorce.
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And shame the spouses if they consider divorce.
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It's more than just shame -- the Catholic Church has a number of hoops its members have to jump through before it will recognize a divorce. In fact, you cannot get divorced as a Catholic. From the state's perspective, of course you can, but the Church will require that you get the marriage declared annulled retroactively, so that from the Church's perspective, the marriage never happened (or was, more accurate, never valid from the start).
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Statistically, the Bible Belt has the hig
Re:Questiona re a bit sexists (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think your irrational belief in ghosts is less annoying than someone else's?
Ultimately, the willingness to believe things because "someone said so" is what leads to the ills of religion in its many forms. Your religion is no less irrational or annoying than someone else's.
As an atheist, I'm obviously a non-believer as well, and I think you need to stop with the belittling. The combative, militant atheist is just as annoying as the Westboro member. Well. Maybe not quite so much. But you will convert no one with such tactics, and you drive away the people in the middle who may just come to the conclusion "man... atheists are a bunch of assholes."
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I also have this hard time "accepting" that what I experience as consciousness is not only just a collection of particles interacting with each other, but that the Universe is essentially a static n-dimensional crystal that is fixed and non-changing, which is the logical conclusion of accepting a purely deterministic Universe.
I
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'm more interested in the "churchgoing" thing. It flies in the face of studies that show atheists don't have very different odds of getting divorced, whereas conservative Christians have higher divorce rates.
In some places there is still quite a high stigma in divorce. There shouldn't be, a relevant quote is "Divorce isn't the death of a marriage. Divorce is the funeral", but still there are people who won't get divorced for some reason when there is no value in their marriage. This may be stronger among some Christians (and other religions where one of the couple isn't really asked about their opinion in the matter).
Re:Questiona re a bit sexists (Score:4, Insightful)
There might also be a sort of "reverse correlation" between divorce and going to church. If you go to a church where divorce is frowned upon and you get a divorce, you might be less likely to go to church (and deal with the whispers of "X got divorced... how SCANDALOUS!"). Thus, when the survey hits, they'd find that more people who go to church are still married. It could easily be the attitude of the parishioners keeping divorced people out, not the church keeping people married.
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I read that as there being a lot of miserable souls stuck in failed marriages because they fear the social stigma of being divorced that rains down from their church/cult. These are the sort of people who let their sense of social worth be impressed upon themselves by others rather than come from within. Meanwhile the rest of the secular world has wised up to the stupidity of wasting the remainder of one's life with the wrong person.
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Or it could be church goers on the whole have a better attitude to marriage. Like 1cor13, exposing the selfless virtues of love, and the many endorsements of sticking with the partner you have chosen.
Re:Questiona re a bit sexists (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Questiona re a bit sexists (Score:4, Insightful)
Marriage isn't necessarily like an overripe fruit which, once it goes bad, it is done. Relationships can be worked on, and when they are, you can overcome bad situations.
I won't suggest that all relationships can be repaired, nor should they be. Still, if you spend the time finding a good match, as opposed to going straight for the fat wallet or a nice pair of tits, you have a shot at picking someone who isn't necessarily perfect, but someone you have a fighting chance of having enough in common to mend a relationship, if you try.
Point being, there is a tendency to be dismissive of Christians (or whoever), who stick it out longer than others might due to community influence. Without effort put into working on the relationship, that may well just generate misery, but if the couple has a solid basis for a relationship, it can cause the couple to actually work on something when they might otherwise have decided to simply give up.
Marriage is one of those things where people are inclined to turn it into something disposable, where in reality, many of those people simply shouldn't have gotten married at all. The problem isn't with the ability to get divorced quickly or easily, the problem is with the people who think they should get married, but who really shouldn't have even left their number for the other person after the drunk sex.
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I'm more interested in the "churchgoing" thing. It flies in the face of studies that show atheists don't have very different odds of getting divorced, whereas conservative Christians have higher divorce rates. Maybe the actual atheists are buried in a larger population of people that are nominally religious but don't go to church. I can see how the latter might be an interesting subgroup of religious people. These are people that think something is important but don't do it anyway. Atheists might be a lot more like the unfiltered population of religious people in that they are neither more nor less likely to do things they regard as important.
You have hit the nail on the head. There is a massive group of self identifying Christians who never attend church and never read the bible for themselves but call themselves Christians because their parents (or some family in the past) were Christians and since they outnumber Christians take their faith seriously, it has produced a lot of statistical noise and now we see clumsy attempts like this to work around the problem.
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Stats regarding who is / isnt Christian and what theyre like are all over the road depending on your criteria:
* Do Jehovah's Witnesses / Mormons (who deny pretty core tenets) figure into the stats?
* Is belief in the deity of God / Christ required?
* Is any particular personal conviction required, or just an upbringing by professors?
etc.
I recall a poll (Gallup?) that had some 75% of responants claiming to be christian, but only something like 50% believed in the deity of Christ (pretty
Re:Questiona re a bit sexists (Score:5, Insightful)
Also wealthier people simply have more resources to deal with financial trouble. They're not as likely to be split by external financial pressures, able to afford marriage counseling, possibly less likely to have been financially pressured into selecting a poor match and less likely to be looking to upgrade to a wealthier partner.
Re:Questiona re a bit sexists (Score:4, Interesting)
I would argue that larger weddings are evidence of a larger social support network of family and friends. More social support likely leads to improved psychology for both partners and perhaps better support when the marriage may encounter trying circumstances.
Cost in and of itself seems to be a function of narcissism and expectations that diverge from reality. Plus a lot of couples who spend freely on a wedding may burden themselves financially and face economic challenges early in a marriage when they may be younger and less capable of weathering them. Or it may indicate a lack of financial discipline which just repeats itself when married.
Re:Questiona re a bit sexists (Score:4, Interesting)
But maybe that is just the old-fashioned version of a modern online dating service's compatibility algorithm.
Couples where one partner says, "Well yeah but" (Score:5, Funny)
Couples where one partner says, "Well yeah, but correlation doesn't equal causation" at least three times a day are almost 100% guaranteed to end up with the death of one spouse at the hands of the other.
Re:Couples where one partner says, "Well yeah but" (Score:4, Insightful)
With the "Correlation doesn't equal causation" argument doesn't mean you can just dismiss the findings.
For example.
The 1-2+ years before marriage, means that the couple takes marriage seriously, and wants to be sure it is the right person not just a random fling.
Having a wedding vs eloping. means that the family is supporting the wedding and less stress of being with that person that is in conflict with your family.
The length of the wedding. The old wives tail that a long wedding means the couple has been coupling for a while and they are not anxious to consummate their marriage. The shorter wedding means they are much more eager. It could also just mean shorter weddings means they are much more interested in each others than trying to impress other people.
Money of course creates a lot of tension. Having more of it means less overall stress in the marriage.
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Well sure, but
- does the one partner saying "Well yeah, but correlation doesn't equal causation" cause the death of the spouse, or
- does the death of the spouse cause the partner to say "Well yeah, but correlation doesn't equal causation", or
- is there a third explanatory factor causing both the partner to say "Well yeah, but correlation doesn't equal causation" and the death of the spouse?
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Hey, fellow married Slashdot men, have you ever tried to win an argument with your wife (or husband, I guess) by saying "No, because that's a logical fallacy!" It doesn't work on my wife.
Why get married? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no mathematical formula for this, for the same reason that pi cannot be pinned down to a certain number.
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I agree with your first paragraph, but the analogy is lacking. Pi is by definition a single, unique number. You claim that pi isn't a number, essentially. It has an infinitely long representation in a positional system that uses digits, but that's just a representation of a number. Don't conflate the number with its representation, or you'll end up with heated nonsensical discussions about whether 0.9999(9) = 1.0(0) or not. Protip: some numbers have multiple positional representations. There's a 1:N relatio
Re:Why get married? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily.
From my own experience, the BIGGEST impediment to my marriage stability was my wife's bipolar syndrome. I was able to hold it all together for nearly 18 years before she finally left the reservation completely. She is now untreated, although it was hit-or-miss when she was with me. I am now the "single dad" with a "deadbeat" absentee mom. She has gone through two more husbands in six years since we split. My financial problems left when she did, which were a great source of our strife, and now she is in financial ruin despite being an employable RN.
After my own experiences, I would never be serious with a woman who suffered bipolar again. Sorry to all of you who have to deal with it personally, but for two decades it was ruinous for me psychologically, financially, and socially. I will never again be with someone who stays pissed at me for days because of something "I did" in her dreams or yell at me at 2AM because I could sleep during her manic states when she couldn't.
I hate to be someone that makes wife/girlfriend requirement lists, but.. Crazies need not apply.
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Rule 1: Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
I sure don't fit the profile (Score:5, Interesting)
That was 36 years ago.
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We had a total combined cash pile of $14.00.
We both are really into our religion
Does it involve flying piles of pasta and meatballs?
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I know a couple like you, met at a bar, married two weeks later, been happy ever since. I many more couples who were divorced after a year who did one of the following: dated less than a year, had more than 200 people at the wedding (more people = more expensive), or eloped.
People vary a lot. Relationships vary a lot, but there do seem to be trends that help form long lasting marriages: date at least two years, don't live together before the marriage, have a nice wedding, have a honeymoon, and DO discuss
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One took our advice, lived together for a couple of years and appears to have a great marriage. We're watching to see how the other one does.
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At Odds (Score:4, Insightful)
"Couples who elope are 12.5x more likely to end up divorced than couples who get married at a wedding with 200+ people.");"
"Whether you had a honeymoon (Couples who had a honeymoon are 41% less likely to divorce than those who had no honeymoon).""
Those two seem to be at odds with this one:
"How much you spent on the wedding (The more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you'll end up divorced.);"
Unless they mean that you should invite 200 people to a park wedding with no food, and then honeymoon in the alley behind Dunkin' Donuts to take advantage of their dumpster?
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> "Couples who elope are 12.5x more likely to end up divorced than couples who get married at a wedding with 200+ people.
Doesn't seem at odds to me.
People who act impulsively for their own immediate gratification are more likely to get divorced than those who plan stuff intricately and have the combined social pressure of all their friends and relatives acting on them. Well, knock me down with a feather.
Re:At Odds (Score:4, Insightful)
Excessive spending on a wedding may also reflect a "prince/princess" mentality, where people see their wedding day as the beginning of some great romantic journey straight out of a Disney movie. Many younger people jump into marriage without an understanding about what marriage really is. When the rather dreary realities of life set in and don't match their preconceptions, the entire marriage can fall apart. An expensive wedding can be an indicator of that mindset.
My sister dropped over $30k on my nieces wedding, only to be floored when my niece divorced her husband just three years later. Her excuse? He wasn't "romantic anymore". She wanted a fairytale romance with a "happily ever after", and thought that something was wrong with her marriage when "happily ever after" turned into "working to pay the bills", "only vacationing twice a year", "what do you mean, I should get a job too?" and "my adorable Prince Charming husband works 14 hours a day to make ends meet and is so tired when he gets home that he has no time for meeeee *whine*".
It's the fallout from the princess culture, imho.
You have to have an inexpensive wedding for 200+ (Score:2)
The two statements about the more expensive the wedding the greater the chance of divorce and that the larger the ceremony you have the less likely you are to end up divorced seem mutually exclusive to me.
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The two statements about the more expensive the wedding the greater the chance of divorce and that the larger the ceremony you have the less likely you are to end up divorced seem mutually exclusive to me.
Not necessarily. The biggest wedding I ever attended was outdoors in a natural setting, with no added decorations or frills. The reception was a BBQ. After we ate, we played "capture the flag". There were several hundred people, and the total cost was likely just a couple thousand. That was more than twenty years ago, and the couple is still married.
Why is the paper so important? (Score:2)
I wonder how the "Couples who dated 3 years or more are 39% less likely to get divorced" extends to us if we ever got married (not that we've ever thought about it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.)
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My lady and I have been together over ten years, we have an eight year old daughter and are completely happy.
I wonder how the "Couples who dated 3 years or more are 39% less likely to get divorced" extends to us if we ever got married (not that we've ever thought about it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.)
Tricky. It might be that right now, you both behave in a way so that the other person would marry you if you insisted on it. But after getting married, you might both stop behaving that way and then things go downhill.
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Tricky. It might be that right now, you both behave in a way so that the other person would marry you if you insisted on it. But after getting married, you might both stop behaving that way and then things go downhill.
We are not acting in a 'sales mode' after 10+ years, we clicked early on and are ourselves: no lies, no masks, no illusions.
Reading TFA was interesting as, according to that data, we are perfectly set other than the marriage question. We're both atheist, so for the religious question it d
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So why don't you get married and add the legally binding commitment as well as all the legal protections that marriage offers?
If it is just a piece of paper "that happens to offer legal bindings and benefits" they why not just get married?
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So what you're saying is that everyone considers you married already, so effectively you are. In your country it would be about publicly making a promise about the other person, and since that is assumed then probably no reason at all.
Other countries and social structures are different though, sometimes there's a legal benefit (ie some hospitals in the states have been preventing gay partners from visiting their other because they're not family, because they have no legal status and presumably the hospital
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Seriously, this is just statistics, correlation without causation most likely. I am sure they can find similar correlations for unmarried couples: 10% more chance of a breakup if your first pet was a cat instead of a dog, that sort of thing.
Is it mostly a pressure thing? (Score:2)
The wedding data is very interesting in that eloping scored really bad, having a wedding with 200+ people really good, how much you spend on wedding bad... but since a 200+ person wedding is going to be expensive, perhaps it's good if the bride's parent's pay as opposed to the couple paying for it themselves? Anyway, these factors and the going to church factor could all be interpreted as peer pressure factors. A big wedding paid for by the parents would provide pressure both from the parents and the 200+ p
Living Together (Score:2)
I remember hearing that couples who lived together before they got married were more likely to get divorced. That never made sense to me, but new research suggest that it's actually not true:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
FWIW, my wife and I have been married for ten years and we didn't live together before then.
Go to church? (Score:2)
Anarcho-syndicalist matrimonial contracts (Score:2)
are statistically less prone to separation forces inherent in the system.
(A related study claims that weeks beginning with a dose of python are 42% more likely to contain mirth.)
A serious academic study of this topic . . . (Score:2)
. . . can be found here: http://www.amazon.de/gp/produc... [amazon.de]
This is really a topic for psychologists and not statisticians, because, well . . . people tend to lie on questionnaires. And there is a lot more going on in marital processes than simple numbers can reveal.
Would be more interesting with better analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
There are lots of correlated variables here, so it's difficult to pick out useful information.
The comment thread on the article includes lots of discussion about the impossibility of a wedding that is both cheap and large, but lots of people pointing out that weddings with lots of church and/or community support can be both cheap and large. But church and/or community support are also correlated with other elements of a very stable social structure.
For example, my wedding was both large (> 600 people attended our reception) and cheap (< $3000). How is that possible? We're Mormon, so the actual marriage ceremony was at the LDS temple, which is free, and allows limited attendance. Then we had a wedding breakfast for the ~50 people who attended the ceremony, but the breakfast was at the church (free) and the food was cooked and served by members of our congregation (ingredients cost: low; labor: free). The reception was at the church (free); the bridesmaids paid for their own dresses, best man rented his tux, etc.; the flowers were a wedding gift from a cousin with a flower shop; the table centerpieces and other decorations were handmade by friends and relatives, so we only paid for the materials (cheap); the cake was made by my aunt, who had a wedding business on the side, and cost us $200 for a large, beautiful and tasty cake; my aunt also provided backdrops and other decorations; and some other relatives who are professional photographers did the photos. I don't recall who did the music, but it was all free, using the church's sound equipment. Our biggest expense was the hors d'oeuvres which were actually made by my wife's sisters, so we paid only for the ingredients.
The common thread throughout that list is heavy support from friends, family and community. But I suspect that deep family and church/community support are strongly correlated with long-lasting marriages for lots of reasons which have nothing to do with the wedding day, which to me suggests that those are far more relevant and that wedding cost and attendance are mere proxies for those variables. Also related is the fact that if a lot of people attend, you also get a lot of gifts. So big/cheap weddings are financially beneficial to the couple (mine sure was; spontaneous cash gifts alone -- from the "money tree" -- were more than 2X what we spent, plus all of the gifts of housewares, etc.), while small/expensive weddings are a net drain on their finances.
Similarly, long-term dating tends to be more uncommon among those who get married very young, because it takes time to date someone for 2-3 years, and it's well-known that marriages of the very young are riskier.
Elopement is another one: Those who elope are generally people who decide to get married on the spur of the moment. Such impulsiveness doesn't bode well for future decisions if your goal is long-term stability.
It would be interesting to see a study on this done well, with lots of effort put into teasing apart the correlated variables. This one doesn't actually tell us much.
Re:Would be more interesting with better analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
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Note that your wedding wasn't really cheap, you just spread out your costs through expected reciprocal obligations.
Obviously. Ignoring the tithing issue (since that really isn't relevant to getting married), I have reciprocal obligations to my community and family. My brother-in-law is getting married next week, and he and his husband-to-be have asked me to be their photographer (I'm not a pro, but I don't suck). I've helped out in various ways with many other weddings, and I end up giving several wedding gifts every year. It seems to average about one a month, actually... I just looked in my financial software and I've
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This is one the things that sucks about being an atheist. Other than the existential dread, of course. I will never really have this feeling of community. I know that I will always be able to count on my close family, but that's where it ends.
I have no belief in god nor any intention to change my mind on the subject, but what you described is pretty appealing.
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For example, my wedding was both large (> 600 people attended our reception) and cheap (< $3000). How is that possible? We're Mormon
Yea, you're Mormon, that's why. Sure. It has nothing to do with the fact that there was no open bar. I've been a guest at many weddings, and it sounds like yours sucked. I mean, breakfast?! Who gets married in the AM?!
I'm joking. But seriously, what you describe has as much in common with a "wedding" as simply going to the courthouse to sign some papers and then hitting up the White Castle drive-thru. To many people, a wedding by definition includes a celebratory wedding feast, complete with flowing alcoh
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I prefer to reason about things in a vacuum, independent of "how it's done around here" and other such practical considerations. When I find a person I want to spend the rest of my life with, what should I do? Well, clearly, I should spend the rest of my life with them. Should I throw a huge party for all my friends and family? Should I provide them with all the food
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With regard to reasoning in a vacuum, I both agree and disagree. I definitely agree that it's a good idea to take a step back and reconsider old ways in light of new understanding. For example, I've been reading a lot lately about the history of the civil rights of blacks in the United States, the progress from outright slavery, to wink-and-nod slavery that was arguably worse, to equal-but-separate which wasn't in any way equal, to equality in principle but not practice, to the current state which is near e
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The factors, condensed (Score:5, Insightful)
This can really be condensed to only three, since some are redundant if you know the underlying cause. It's not like a research study is needed if you know people with successful marriages. The factors they chose that have an impact really only reflect the relevance of the following factors:
1. Taking marriage seriously. Eloping or skipping a honeymoon says "I don't want to invest much in this." Even those with moderate income can have a modest wedding and inexpensive honeymoon instead of going all out. Any indicator of not taking the marriage seriously is a negative, no matter what form it takes.
2. Genuinely valuing the other person for who they are. Hence, this means to not be a gold-digger or care more about looks. Also, dating longer is just an indicator that "finding the right person" is the attitude the person is taking, which means they want the person as a person to be a good match. By contrast, looks and money can be identified immediately, so it doesn't require a long time to get engaged. Desperation is also not a good reason for marriage, and desperation doesn't need a long time to get engaged.
3. Having a deterrent for divorce. Rich people, church-goers, and people with lots of people at their wedding have a lot of people to pressure you to stay together because you lead *public lives*. You don't get a private divorce, you get public embarrassment. Rich people have an additional deterrent in that it's a lot of money to lose if your ex-spouse wants to take you to the cleaners.
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4. Taking marriage vows seriously. A vow is a promise, a promise you make primarily to yourself but of course also to your spouse and your children (if any). Life has ups and downs. When things get really rough, you will have to depend on the promise you made to keep you in the marriage until you can get to the other side.
That said, it is possible for your partner to make it impossible for you to keep your vow, by breaking the relationship itself. If someone is unfaithful and abandons the relationship, for
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Left out male height (Score:5, Interesting)
Stability criterion (Score:5, Funny)
According to my wife, its no poles in the right half plane.
No matter how much I beg.
I call BS on a few of these stats (Score:4, Informative)
First off that 30k average for a wedding is based off a survey in a high end bridal magazine. So the people who answered that are exactly the sort who would be in the market to spend 30k on wedding. http://resultzdigital.com/wall... [resultzdigital.com]
Second, this church going statistic needs a bit more elaboration. Because atheists and agnostics have the lowest rate of divorce in the U.S. while fundamentalist Christians have the highest. http://www.religioustolerance.... [religioustolerance.org]. So do they mean to imply that Christians divorce less or is it that lazy Christians divorce more?
Other than that interesting statistics.
And now some idiots will turnt his round... (Score:3)
... and think that generating all these factors will give them a more long-term marriage. People routinely do not understand the difference between correlation and causation, and, more importantly, that causation has a _direction_ that is all-important.
Basically, all the study says is that the more serious you take marriage, the longer it is likely to last. It does not say anything about happiness or achievement of personal goals (unless the number of years is a goal for you).
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Re:lies, damned lies, and... (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a social scientist. The methodology employed in this paper; and the summary offered by OP is completely off. OP alludes to causality, but that isn't really possible with summary statistics. Please don't lump all of us in with this terrible methodology.
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Source?
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"Source?"
This painting- http://www.essaysbyekowa.com/T... [essaysbyekowa.com]
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Thanks, that explains everything.
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Source?
Marriage [wikipedia.org] is a cultural universal [wikipedia.org] practiced by almost all human societies. Even the most primitive tribes have some type of marriage ritual. The Mosuo [wikipedia.org] society in Yunnan does not have a tradition of marriage, but AFAIK that is the only society that does not.
Re:Why anyway? (Score:5, Informative)
Look up Shinto Buddhists
Look up Hindu
Look up Taoists
Look up Buddhists.
Many of these religions had little or no contact with Christianity.
Christianity didn't even handle marriage until after the fall of the Roman Empire. Before that, marriage was tied to the state.
Does not have to be exclusive to be christian (Score:3)
Too bad basic literacy isn't part of your religion. The original poster specifically called marriage a "Christian tradition."
It certainly is a Christian tradition, but it is clearly not a exclusively Christian tradition. Just like "Honour your father and mother" is clearly a Christian value, it clearly is not a value that is exclusive to Christianity.
Re:Or, just don't get married. (Score:5, Interesting)
8.5 years later things really haven't changed since before we got married. We still argue at times, sometimes fairly heated. We don't always make up after the arguments but we understand we are two different people who often see things differently but are committed to each other.
I think having a wife that is just like me would be more relaxing but probably a lot less interesting.
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In France, it's an important piece of paper for inheritance. You wouldn't inherit of their share of your house if your partner died, you'd have to buy out the inheritor's share in a family home (your children, if any, or your partner's parents). You also put your taxes into one single pot, which can help using the full lower tax brackets if one of the spouses is earning less.
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Re:Or, just don't get married. (Score:5, Interesting)
The government has a good reason to favor certain lifestyles. Up until the last century, it was a lifestyle that had one person at home, raising the kids, and the other one out making money for them. And those were the same people who caused the children to come into existence.
The government doesn't give a shit if you love your partner, they just want to make sure that those who can breed are encouraged to control their spawn and provide for them.
The divorce rate and the whole "who can get married" debate is everyone missing the point about why you get married and why the government even gets involved. It's about the government providing convenience and some breaks in return for control.
Re:Or, just don't get married. (Score:5, Insightful)
Up until the last century, it was a lifestyle that had one person at home, raising the kids, and the other one out making money for them. And those were the same people who caused the children to come into existence.
That's actually bullshit. The "woman stays home" model may have been an ideal for a long time (though certainly not the entirety of human existence), but that doesn't mean most people could afford it. Aristocrats might do so, but then aristocrats don't really need either partner to work and the wife was more likely to have servants care for house and children to make room for a busy social calendar. Which leaves us with the middle class, which until the 1950s wasn't very large in America. If you marry a doctor or a lawyer, you could stay home (and your egotistical husband probably would rather you didn't threaten to be successful like the big important doctor). Otherwise...well, you found other ways to make a living.
The poor unwashed masses don't have the luxury of consistent income able to support an entire family from just one job. They have always had every possible member of the family working, especially in the past when children older than toddlers were given a lot more freedom with much less supervision. Husband working a construction job, wife working in a textile mill, and if you're really lucky the two could do both at the same time for years. If you aren't, well then somebody will be home raising chickens or something and probably engaging in a local barter market.
Not every "tradition" actually goes back any farther than your grandparents. Know your history. Not just the "great events" version of history either; know how people lived and the kind of economic opportunities they had. There's a lot more interesting about the 1800s than all the wars. Don't let some 1950s sexist reaction after WW2 overwrite the reality of your ancestors.
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Actually, I thought about it, and you're actually right, and I am somewhat ashamed about that particular statement. Contrary to your belief, I know quite a bit of economic history, but I can totally see why you might think I didn't. That's what happens when my brain gets detached from my fingers.
However, the point is still that you have marriage for a state objective of maintaining order. That is why the state even cares. Those who do not breed do not produce children. Maintaining a stable family unit,
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"Hey, why buy the cow when the milk is free?"
(Yea I heard that from her relatives fairly often)
[John]
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Obtain visiting rights at hospital and for couples with widely different incomes, filing jointly is better.
And then there's, of course, the lessening of the "When the hell are you guys going to get married?/Make an honest woman of her?" questions from rude relatives.
Funny, if you tell the nurse you are a family member or spouse, they let you right in. It's not like they do a background check. Plus, assuming the patient isn't comatose, they can give instructions to allow whomever in. As for taxes, unless only one spouse works or the other has minimal income, there is no real tax savings from being married.
As for rude relatives, well, you can't choose your relatives, but you can choose whether or not to be around them.
Re:Do a prenup (Score:4, Insightful)
If both party's motives are pure, they should have no problem with one.
Well, if someone asks for a pre-nup he or she is already considering divorce to be a event with a rather high likelyhood. Is it really smart to marry someone who considers divorce a likely event?
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Just wondering how 1. The more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you'll end up divorced and 2. How many people attended the wedding ("Crazy enough, your wedding ceremony has a huge impact on the long-term stability of your marriage. Perhaps the biggest factor is how many people attend your wedding
Would seem to be correlated. Normally the more you spend the more people you have attending the wedding ie it costs more to have a wedding with 100 people than with 25.
So how can one lead to more stable marriages and one to less??
Simple. Get someone else (e.g., the bride's parents) to pay for the wedding. The results said, "The more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you'll end up divorced."
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My wife and I have been together for ~40 years. When people ask us our secret, we say we're both too lazy to pack-up and leave.
Funny, but there's an element of truth there. The more time you have invested in a relationship (30 years here), the more likely you are to work through problems than to throw up your hands and call it quits. Divorce is messy, expensive, and exhausting, and rarely leaves a person where they want to be.
Or beating the spouse into submission (Score:2, Flamebait)
at least that's how it works in Islam.
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The secret of successful marriage is beating off.
There, FTFY. You seem to have made a typo.