All You Need is Love is a Myth

Wednesday July 15, 2009

According to a recent study, if you want your marriage to last a long time, you need more than love. Love is certainly important, but factors such as your age difference, income, smoking habits, and being opposites can eventually hurt your marriage.

From 2001 through 2007, Australian researchers Dr. Rebecca Kippen, Professor Bruce Chapman, and Dr. Peng Yu tracked 2,482 couples. The study, What's love got to do with it? Homogamy and dyadic approaches to understanding marital instability, examines the "factors which currently determine marital longevity."

"We find the following factors are associated with higher risk of marital separation: large age difference between husband and wife, wife has a much stronger preference than her husband for a(nother) child, young age at marriage, separation of husband's parents, resident children born before marriage, dissatisfaction with the relationship, low household income, husband is unemployed, wife drinks more than her husband, and one spouse smokes where the other does not ... Perhaps surprisingly, we find that the following differences in variables between marriage partners are not associated with separation: education, country of birth, and religiosity."

We are not surprised by the results of the study. Other research on marriage and divorce had similar findings although the Australian study didn't link religious differences to divorce.

So what are you to do if your marriage has several negative factors listed in the study? Two thoughts:

First, don't panic and remember that your marriage is unique. Bob and I are about as opposite as we can be, have weathered some rough patches together, and we are approaching our 46th wedding anniversary. If you do sense that your marriage is in trouble, don't wait to get professional help.