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Statisticians Uncover What Makes For a Stable Marriage
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."
Your marriage will "succeed" or "fail" based on why you're getting married, period. Things come up during any relationship, but reasoning keeps things going. Look at business relationships. Look at the cultures where they have arranged marriages. The thing is, when one side tries to make it work for the sake of the relationship itself, then the other side feels this and also tries. When both sides are trying, then success. Eventually true love develops out of the pure sacredness of the effort from the other side toward your side. Each side sees personal sacrifice and feels in debt.
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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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.
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.
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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.
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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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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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."