What Makes Marriage Last - Older Adults in Long-Term Marriages

Summary: Dr. Hawkins has done a wonderful job in presenting the essential elements of what it takes to have a Biblically sound intimate and committed marriage. In Strengthening Marital Intimacy (1991), he has captured the two foundational truths, intimacy and commitment, makes a good marriage into a great marriage. It is not enough to know the Word of God intellectually there must be a real surrendering to the sovereign will of God. To do it will transform a life of commitment to God and to the marriage. The key concepts presented in this book cover marital intimacy, commitment, wisdom, reality, God’s sovereignty, the person, sexuality,

Patz opens the article with a personal anecdote and explanation of her interest behind this article, being a lecture given addressing high divorce rates and their roots, and her own experience with divorce. She directly discusses the emotions often felt early in a relationship and the euphoric nature of the marriage directly after the honeymoon. She specifically cites the indicator that the first two years of marriage directly correlate to the trajectory of the following marriage. Furthermore, she also later references specific examples from a long study on 56 different couples, in which couples that were in the ‘courting’ stage longer saw more successful results in creating a long and lasting marriage founded on love and respect. Her claim of the direct correlation between time and marital success is discussed frequently throughout the article, further underlining her message, and emphasizing ill-preparedness as a major factor in failing marriages.

The majority of people who join together with their significant other through the act of marriage hope and dream that marriage will surround them with infinite love and happiness; unfortunately that is not always the case. In fact, “according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey, 10 percent of Maine women and 11 percent of men in Maine are divorced.”1 Though 10 and 11 percent seem like fairly small percentages, 10 percent of Maine women is approximately 67,831 women, and 11 percent of Maine men is approximately 71,506 men, which truly are not small figures to take into consideration. Since marriages do not always have a happy ending

Pratz’s first main point is that marriages can be predicted to either succeed or end in divorce within the early stages of courtship or initial years of marriage. She offers that the early stages of distress are what determine a couple’s fate. Pratz includes Ted Huston, a professor of human ecology and psychology at the University of Texas, and his Process of Adaptation in Intimate Relationships Project as her main source throughout the article. Pratz states, “through multiple

“Will Your Marriage Last?”, by Aviva Patz, is a cohesive article about marriage and divorce. Aviva Patz is the executive editor of Psychology Today. Patz narrates the story of Ted Huston, a professor at the University of Texas, who followed the lives of 168 couples for 13 years after their wedding date. She was then able to draw conclusions about what makes a couple stay together or end up filing divorce papers. Although marriages and divorce are the themes of this article, it is really about society’s pressure on young people to be perfect.

Marriage has often been described as one of the most beautiful and powerful unions one human can form with another. It is the sacred commitment and devotion that two people share in a relationship that makes marriage so appealing since ancient times, up until today. To have and to hold, until death do us part, are the guarantees that two individuals make to one another as they pledge to become one in marriage. It is easy to assume that the guarantee of marriage directly places individuals in an everlasting state of love, affection, and support. However, over the years, marriage has lost its fairy

Interview questions emphasized cohabitation and the links between cohabitation and marriage. The final sample consisted of 6,881 married couples and 682 cohabiting couples; of these, 5,648 spouses and 519 cohabiting partners completed questionnaires (Vol. 22, Issue 2).

Marriage is a union many Americans hope to enter in their life. While some marriages last a lifetime, some sadly end in divorce. I got the honor to interview a lovely couple who have been married twenty-five years and are still standing strong today.

Marriage is an important event in a person’s life. From the old nursery rhyme, First comes love, then comes marriage, couples take the big step when they feel the quality of the relationship has reached the next level. Relationship

Marriage is an adjustment between two people getting married Communication can cause a relationship to succeed or fail. If you do not share how you feel, it can cause your partner to withdraw. Listening can save a relationship. Schonberg (2011) found that “affective affirmation –basically, behavior that makes your partner feel loved cared for or special plays a role in a happy marriage and those men need it more than women. There are several factors and problems that can cause marriage to either succeed or fail. It is important to discuss problem things left unsaid can cause your partner to with draw.

These constraints lead some cohabiting couples to marry, even though they would not have married under other circumstances. On the basis of this framework, Stanley, Rhoades, et al. (2006) argued that couples who are engaged prior to cohabitation, compared with those who are not, should report fewer problems and greater relationship stability following marriage, given that they already have made a major commitment to their partners. Several studies have provided evidence consistent with this hypothesis (Brown, 2004; Rhoades, Stanley, & Markman, 2009).

Marriage requires effort and work. Many newlyweds come into a marriage thinking it is easy but do not consider the consequences of marriage that heavily rely on balances and partnership. Marriage is all about compromise. It is important to engage in a premarital program to allow both partners to learn what to expect within a marriage, how to face certain roadblocks, and to better communication when conflict is aroused so that divorce does not become an option. Gottman’s research (2009) has made a significant contribution to the study of relationship and marriage tying unity, harmony, and communication together to make relationship and marriage work. When a couple who does not have consummate love (intimacy, passion, and commitment), they often portray the six indicators of divorce: harsh startup, the Four Horsemen, flooding, body language, failed repair attempts and reflecting on bad memories (Gottman, 2009). Divorce often occurs within the first two years of marriages and almost half of divorces end within the first seven years (Bhutto-Ramirez, 2015).

What were the common values involving marriage relationships, changing, and aging? Common values demonstrated in this film involving marriage and relationships were ideas like love, and having a mutual contract or agreement. By understanding that they shared a contract together, these couples also understood that change is definitely going to happen whether it is negative or positive. Common values involving aging represented devotion toward each other, because despite their differences they felt that they had a purpose by crossing each other’s paths.

Conversely, most people perceive marriage as a sanctuary, satisfying the needs of both partners involved. It is one of the most important institutions affecting people’s health and well-being. Firstly, a strong marriage has a dramatic effect on the partners’

The purpose of this research is to establish if there is a positive or negative correlation between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marriage dissolution. An extensive literature review was conducted as means to find data from which a conclusion would be drawn. The literature review began with a quantitative study was analyzed for its use at being the most effective method for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data on multiple subjects within one study. A qualitative study was also analyzed due to the fact that information regarding relationships is often classified as being unable to be generalizable due to the personal nature of relationships. Drawing a conclusion is heavily dependent on a meta-analysis, which is why the last step in the data collecting process leaned toward analyzing a meta-analysis. The most common conclusion in all of the studies indicated that premarital cohabitation has a negative effect on marital quality. Premarital cohabitation is a risk factor that can lead to a subsequent marital dissolution.