Sorry for the slight lateness of this post, but I have been sick and I was hoping I’d be better by today, but no such luck. So I decided to just medicate and tough it out for the duration of this post (:
Anyways…I found several interesting articles this week. The first was in the online journal/magazine/whatever it is Psychology Today. I think two of my past sources were from there, too, but that’s just because it’s incredibly difficult not to just find personal stories or self help or counseling websites when googling marriage. If anyone has a suggestion on how to fix that, please let me know!
This article (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200001/will-your-marriage-last) was once again about what makes marriage work and what doesn’t, but it was completely different from the last two I read, both of which expressed somewhat similar viewpoints. The first one discussed different types of marriage and their success rates, and the one from last week discussed indicators of marital dysfunction and the idea that the way a couple handles conflict rather than the marriage type is what affects their chances of staying married. This one presented a different take: it’s not conflict handling or type of marriage, but rather what happens in the first two years of a marriage and courtship that affects whether it will last.
Ted Huston, Ph.D., conducted a long term study on over 160 couples for about 13 years. He found that marriages take one of four courses: divorce happens early, within the first two or three years, divorce happens later, at about 7 to 10 years (sometimes later), couples stayed unhappily married, or couples stayed happily married. Now while most people read about the unhappily married couples and question their sanity, Huston mentions that it’s really not that bad: these couples may not be satisfied with their marriage, but it’s not vicious or poisonously bad so there is no spillover into the rest of their life, so they can stay married out of habit or religion or whatever it is and still be okay.
He found that the major difference between the couples that stayed together and those that didn’t was shown immediately. Most psychologists think that couples who get married are in a state of total marital bliss, then that goes away after the honeymoon period and if the couple is unable to learn how to handle conflict, that’s when divorce happens. But Huston found that many newlyweds actually don’t have this period of marital bliss, and those that do run into more trouble later because that kind of joy and intensity is impossible to keep going for an extended period of time. Also, he found that it is not inability to handle personal conflict that leads couples to divorce, but rather an erosion of love and affection, which is why couples who had a boring, comfortable (or not boring, just comfortable) newlywed period are less likely to divorce because there are no Hollywood happily ever after romanticized ideals there from the outset, so there is no disappointment later when love turns out not to be the fairytale it was expected to be. Of course there were also the couples who were very loving and affectionate from the beginning, but they were able to maintain these feelings with few negative emotions creeping in. Those were the happily married ones. So the major predictor in whether a couple will remain married or not is not the level of affection or conflict management at the beginning of the marriage, but rather the amount of change the couple faces within the first few years.
For example, if a couple has a very short courtship that is pushed alone by other factors (jealousy, parental pushing, pregnancy, etc) then they get married, it is highly likely that in the first few years the idealized versions they had of their spouse will change as they reveal their true personalities, and this can lead to issues (obviously). This loss of the rah-rah-rah we’re so happy and affectionate woohooo feeling that propelled them through their short courtship and into marriage leaves them facing the stark reality of a person whom they no longer love, but they are married to. Meanwhile, the couples that are together for a longer period (say two to three years) BEFORE getting married, and are used to handling issues together and have open lines of communication and know and accept each other’s flaws are the ones that are more likely to carry this stability throughout their marriage and stay together.
Another article I looked at, but didn’t really get through because it was more about the history of marriage and not the psychology of marriage and I find that more boring (I know history is supposed to be part of my exit project, but I was thinking of making it a veryveryveryvery small insignificant part that requires far less researching than all the rest). And actually, I am being unfair to the article (which is here: http://www.enotes.com/marriage-divorce-article) because it’s NOT all about history, that’s just all I’ve read so far.
So anyways, the article is discussing the way marital laws change in the late 1960s. Before then, the law was fault divorce, which meant that in a divorce, one party had to prove in court that the other party was guilty of doing something terrible enough to ruin the marriage (such as abuse, infidelity, etc) and only the innocent party could sue for divorce. This ensured that both parties wanted the divorce. California was the first to change the law into what it is today (no fault divorce) and all fifty states followed by 1984. Some researchers have blamed the change in divorce law for increased divorce rates between 1960 and 1970 and say that we should go back to fault divorces, because these days it’s easier to just give up on a marriage than actually try to fix it, which is why couples divorce so much. However, researchers on the other side say that correlation does not imply causation (and they are right! Yay AP Stats!) and divorce rates had been rising anyway since 1800, they peaked in 1980 and have now level off (at a terrible 50%) so the no fault divorce laws are not to blame. They also point out that although no fault divorces only require one party to want to end the marriage, fault divorces ensure that a marriage cannot end in a friendly manner, and kids are often psychologically harmed far more by a fault marriage where they have to witness the accusations and cruelty that occur in court.
I have not yet fully formed an opinion, but right now I am leaning towards no fault marriages. I will have to look into it more (and actually finish reading the article…). That’s all for this week! Bye!
upintheairika 
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