I recently ran across an article entitled “In love? It’s not enough to keep a marriage, study finds” on The Yahoo News website, which had picked it up from Reuters Life (datelined Sydney, Australia July 14, 2009).
That write-up, in turn, had been based on a study by researchers from the Australian National University entitled “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” which tracked nearly 2,500 couples — married or living together — from 2001 to 2007. They identified factors associated with those who remained together compared with those who divorced or separated.
I’ll set aside my reservations regarding how brief the time period studied (2001 to 2007) was. And I have no way of knowing the degree to which the sample selection had been properly representative of the population as a whole (for statistical validity in drawing conclusions).
Instead, let’s throw caution to the wind and just jump right into the fray. Most of the items noted in the write-up were factors that increased the likelihood of the couple separating or divorcing, so let’s look at several of those scenarios:
- Husbands who get married before they turn 25.
- Partners whose parents ever separated or divorced
- Partners who are on their second or third marriage
- Women who want children much more than their partners
- Couples who have kids before marriage (from a previous or the same partner)
- A husband who is nine or more years older than his wife
- Respondents who indicated they were poor
- Respondents where the husband — not the wife — was unemployed
First, a general comment needs to be made: most separations and divorces (somewhere around 70%) are instigated by the female partner.
So we would expect that factors likely to increase the separation or divorce rate would more frequently reflect factors which women consider important to their happiness.
That said…
Let’s look at the
specific factors mentioned
The first factor (“Husbands who get married before they turn 25”) is an easy one. Young guys (and even some not-so-young guys) are notorious for letting their “little head” do the thinking for them.
When a guy is in his teens or early twenties and he therefore has a circus going on in his pants, his brain turns to mush … he’ll say yes to almost anything (and anyone) who will put out. No surprise then that guys who are that young make such dreadful marital choices.
The next couple of items may in part reflect religious differences. For example, most people have the same religion that their parents had and some religions do frown on divorce. So if your parents didn’t get divorced for religious reasons, you’d be more likely to also not get divorced … and to not be on your second or third marriage already.
But even setting aside religion, most people I’ve known (me included) who married more than once had learned the wrong lesson from their first marriage and divorce. When the marriage goes down the tubes, they’re likely to believe that “I picked the wrong woman” (or “I picked the wrong man”, in the case of a woman).
The next time they marry, therefore…
They pick somebody totally different
from their first spouse
And very often they run into exactly the same kinds of problems with their new (and very different) spouse that they’d run into the first time around.
The lesson life had been trying to teach was (depending on your perspective) that either you’re not cut out for married life or that the institution of marriage is in itself seriously flawed. Or both.
And second time around, they’ll spot the warning signs more quickly and easily because they’ve been there before. They’ve seen them. And they know what it means.
And then there’s kids
The next couple of factors involve children.
If the woman wants children and the man doesn’t, she’ll leave him. There’s nothing unexpected about that one.
But having kids from a previous marriage creates special problems … major problems. If you’re the guy and you’re fighting over custody, visitation or money issues with your ex-spouse, that’s extraordinarily stressful for you and that has to also affect your relationship with your new wife.
And in a related vein, a hefty percentage of second wives I’ve known felt extraordinarily bitter about their husband having to send money to his ex-wife for alimony or for child support. Oddly enough, it seemed almost the same reaction as if hubby had a mistress on whom he was lavishing expensive gifts.
There’s something about women seeing “my man” spending “our money” on “that @#$%&!” that drives them up the wall.
The last three factors I believe all have to do with money, including #6 (a husband who is quite a few years older than his wife).
Most of the times I’ve seen a young woman marry a guy much older than herself, there was one thing all of those couples had in common: that “older guy” had money. Usually quite a bit of it.
Did those women marry the guy
in no small part because
he was so prosperous?
It’d be hard to imagine an alternative explanation that was plausible.
And the beauty of the way that marital (and divorce) law works nowadays, the trophy bride doesn’t have to stay with the prosperous older hubby “till death do us part”. Nope, she can bail out in a few years and get a very nice financial settlement.
If you’re a hopeless romantic, you may be offended by the notion about marriage being to a considerable extent about money, but once you’ve been through the divorce courts a time or two, you’ll learn.
Marriage (if you look past the pomp and ritual) is a business deal.
Most guys tend to be pretty naïve, but women do understand about the money. They’re “open for business”.
Stay tuned,
-Mack Doppler
