You one-upped me there, for sure.Well, my wife also had a big dog, and red hair, but she also had a diploma from FSU.
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Her diploma does have some advantages though. When we take her car somewhere, I always tell her to hang it from the rear view mirror so people can see it and be jealous. Then I park in handicapped spots with no problems.Well, my wife also had a big dog, and red hair, but she also had a diploma from FSU.
Damn, sorry I missed this. Yes, there is a correlation, but it's complicated. The more powerful models include location/setting as a coefficient in multiple regression equations or multilevel analyses. Generally, the more the setting includes either an external expectation of success, e.g., church or an arranged marriage, or more intensive/persistent proximity, e.g., workplaces, school, etc., the longer the relationship tends to last.
Oh, and my second serious relationship was with a woman with red hair, two large dogs, and a diploma (in Southern Studies) from Ole Miss.
Yep. She almost convinced me to go to Oxford instead of Tallahassee. Her brother ended up being my roommate in Los Angeles.
Intriguing plot twist. Is she now your sister in law?
Ah the halcyon days of our youth, and the road not taken.
I’m sure she had her way with you, an innocent young lad from Alabama.
😎😜
She is not. I am not sure what she is up to these days; I believe she is a stay-at-home mother still living in Alabama.
My sister-in-law has black hair, no dog, and a few degrees from Cal State and the UC.
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She certainly did, as the older and, as she would have told you with a great degree of pride, much more worldly of the two of us. Yet, I looked down that road as far as I could and <sigh> chose the other. And that has made all the difference…
Sexual satisfaction is a mixed, weak predictor of relationship persistence. In my couples therapy work, I describe it as the barometer of the relationship, as it tends to be an early, sensitive indicator of communication and intimacy problems. Succinctly, bad sex can definitely ruin a relationship, but good sex can not save one.
If 40% of marriages end in divorce, what percentage of marriages are successful?
Is it possible to answer that question?
Interesting and very likely spot on.
I do think there is a difference between older couples versus younger marrieds.
I’ve read that there’s been an enormous uptick in “silver divorce” in the last few years and from what I hear and see among my age group it seems to be true.
Boomers got married and had a family, were very busy parenting and having careers and as empty nesters are home alone for the first time in decades sharing a life and a home with a person who is no longer the person they married thirty five years ago. I think that is an enormous adjustment and couples need to be cognizant of that and willing to talk frankly to the person they’ve shared their life with.
It depends on how we define "successful," but I think we can say that roughly half of marriages are generally successful.
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There are definitely differences between younger couples and older couples in the data. One interesting trend: if a younger couple can make it 8+ years with relatively stable marital satisfaction, then they have a great chance of staying together forever. The top three predictors of marital satisfaction are each person's commitment to making the marriage work, their communication skills, and their sense of cohesion and flexibility; in that order.
To your point: empty nesting and, especially, retirement are pinch points at which even long marriages often fail. The modeling of phase of life/raising families on marital outcomes is extraordinarily complex, and at this point in my career, I just ask my colleagues who study those things full-time to tell me what I need to know to do therapy, rather than trying to stay current on the statistics, myself.
Regardless, I completely agree with your perspective that couples approaching retirement have got to be aware of the tremendous change that they are going to experience and that they have to communicate about it. Silver divorces are up 50% over the last twenty years, I believe, and the trend seems to be that wives are just getting sick of their husbands' rigidity, lack of communication, and general disengagement. Men also just seem to suffer and decline more severely and rapidly in retirement, overall, which tends to cause marriages to deteriorate. With the increase of financially self-supporting women, the motivation to stay in unsatisfying marriages is diminishing.
Generally, I strongly encourage individuals and couples approaching retirement to consider a course of psychotherapy to plan and process. Personally, that is some of my favorite work to do. I love seeing my retiring clients starting to become excited and empowered over the course of the process.
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Thanks. I figured if 40% of marriages end in divorce, maybe half the remaining are successful meaning mostly happy for life.
I'd estimate 30% of marriages are successful using that definition.
So true. I tell my wife all the time she needs to lose 30 pounds.
Why am I not at all surprised?
Are you the same weight you were on your wedding day? How about after you had a few kids?
