Due to jobs, kids, TV, the Internet, hobbies, and home and family responsibilities,
the average married couple spends just four minutes a day alone together.
Over 75% of people who marry partners from an affair eventually divorce.
Traditionally, bridesmaids would be dressed in similar bride-like gowns
to confuse rival suitors, evil spirits, and robbers.
Marrying younger than age 25 dramatically raises the divorce risk. Also,
the divorce risk is higher when the woman is much older than the man, though
the reverse isn’t as a strong factor.
The average married couple has sex 58 times per year, or slightly more
than once a week.
At Italian weddings, it is not unusual for both the bride and groom to
break a glass. The number of shards will be equal to the number of happy
years the couple will have.
In three states—Arkansas, Utah, and Oklahoma—women tend to
marry younger, at an average age of 24. Men’s average age is 26. In
the northeastern states of New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, men
and women wait about four years longer to marry. The U.S. average age for
women is 25.6 and for men, 27.7.
A person’s level of education influences the age at which they marry.
Couples tend to marry later in states with higher numbers of college-educated
adults, while the opposite is true for states with lower education levels.
Nevada, Maine, and Oklahoma have the highest percentage of divorced adults.
Arkansas and Oklahoma have the highest rates of people who have been married
at least three times.
The probability of a first marriage ending in a divorce within 5 years
is 20%, but the probability of a premarital cohabitation breaking up within
5 years is 49%. After 10 years, the probability of a first marriage ending
is 33%, compared with 62% for cohabitations.
Washington, D.C., has the lowest marriage rate in the nation.
Approximately $6 billion in revenue is lost by American businesses as a
result of decreased worker productivity linked to marriage hardship. Employees
in a happy marriage, in contrast, tend to increase a company’s bottom
line.
CNN reports that the current economy is the biggest stress on married couples
in the past 60 years.
A New Woman’s Day and AOL Living poll found that
72% of women surveyed have considered leaving their husbands at some point.
Married couples tend to have fatter waistlines, which can lead to a decrease
in sexual attraction and general health. Additionally, a spouse’s chances
of becoming obese increase by 37% if his or her partner is obese.
A 2008 study found that marital satisfaction improves once children leave
home. However, if marital problems existed before, an empty nest often reveals
those otherwise masked issues.
People whose marriage has broken down at the time they are diagnosed with
cancer do not live as long as cancer patients who are widowed, have strong
marriages, or who have never been married.
A marriage ceremony typically ends with a kiss because in ancient Rome,
a kiss was a legal bond that sealed contracts, and marriage was seen as a
contract.
Adults who are childhood cancer survivors are 20-25% less likely to marry
compared with their siblings and the general American population.
Stress associated with divorce affects the body’s immune system and
its ability to fend off the disease. The health benefits of remarriage are
reduced the second and third times around.
Throughout most of history, marriage was not necessarily based on mutual
love, but an institution devoted to acquiring in-laws and property and to
provide the family additional labor forces (by having children).e
A white New Orleans man in the late nineteenth century transfused himself
with blood from a black woman he loved so he could overcome anti-discrimination
laws by claiming he was black and marry her.n
One nineteenth-century New York legislator insisted that letting married
women own their own property attacked both God and Nature.e
Just two years after marriage, an estimated 20% of couples make love fewer
than 10 times in a year.
One in three American marriages is “low sex” or “no
sex.”
The number of marriage therapists in the United States has increased 50-fold
between 1970 and 1990.
In the United States, over 50% of first marriages end in divorce, 67% of
second marriages end in divorce, and nearly 74% of third marriages end in
divorce.
Marriage does more to promote life satisfaction than money, sex, or even
children, say Wake Forest University psychologists.
Compared to singles, married people accumulate about four times more savings
and assets. Those who divorced had assets 77% lower than singles.
Married elderly people are more likely to maintain daily health-promoting
habits, such as exercising, not smoking, eating breakfast, and having regular
medical check-ups.
More than friendship, laughter, forgiveness, compatiblility, and sex, spouses
name trust as the element crucial for a happy marriage.
Eighty-one percent of happily married couples said their partner’s
friends and family rarely interfered with the relationship, compared to just
38% of unhappy couples.
Eighty-five percent of couples have had premarital sex.
Nearly 60% of married adults have had at least one affair.
The cost of an average wedding is $20,000. The cost of an average divorce
is $20,000.
Words form only 7% of our communication with anyone, including spouses.
Tone of voice accounts for 38% and body language is responsible for 55% of
the messages spouses receive from each other.
Women who report a fair division of housework were happier in their marriages
than women who thought their husbands didn’t do their fair share. Wives
also spent more quality time with their husbands when they thought the housework
was divided fairly.
A 15-year-long study found that a person’s happiness level before
marriage was the best predictor of happiness after marriage. In other words,
marriage won’t automatically make one happy.
Researchers found a huge decline in happiness four years into a marriage
with another decline in years seven to eight. In fact, half of
all divorces occur in the first seven years of marriage, which gives rise
to the popular term “the seven-year itch.”
More than two in five Catholics marry outside their church, twice as many
as in the 1960s. There are at least one million Jewish-Christian marriages
in the U.S. Two in five Muslims in America have chosen non-Muslim spouses.
Married people are twice as likely to go to church as unmarried people.
Half of emotional affairs become sexual affairs.
While couples with children are less likely to divorce than childless couples,
the arrival of a new baby is more likely to bring more stress and emotional
distance than new happiness. Nearly 90% of couples experienced decrease in
martial satisfaction after the birth of their first child.
Over 40% of married couples in the U.S. include at least one spouse who
has been married before. As many as 60% of divorced women and men will marry
again, many within just five years.
The highest divorce rates
are when an only child marries another only child.j
The number of men and women age 65 and older cohabiting outside of marriage
nearly doubled between 1990 and 2000.
For many centuries, the Catholic Church argued that contraception was a
sin and made the wife no better “than a harlot.” Up until 1930,
many Protestant churches agreed.
One seventeenth-century Massachusetts husband was put in stocks alongside
his adulterous wife and her lover because the community reasoned she wouldn’t
have strayed if her husband had been fulfilling is marital obligations.
Research points to certain characteristics that are most often linked to
infidelity, such as being raised in a family where having affairs is considered
normal, having a personality that values excitement and risk taking over
marital stability, having coworkers and friends who believe affairs are acceptable,
and feeling emotionally distant from one’s spouse.
No sex in a marriage has a much more powerful negative impact on a marriage
than good sex has a positive impact.
Modern Western marriage traditions have long been shaped by Roman, Hebrew,
and Germanic cultures as well as by doctrines and traditions of the Medieval
Christian church, the Protestant Reformation, and the Industrial Revolution.
Levirate marriage, where a man is obligated to marry his brother’s
widow if she had no sons to care for her, is sometimes required in the
Bible (as in Deuteronomy) and sometimes prohibited (as in Leviticus)
The first recorded mention of same-sex marriage occurs in Ancient Rome
and seems to have occurred without too much debate until Christianity became
the official religion. In 1989, Denmark was the first post-Christianity nation
to legally recognize same-sex marriage.
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