How to Predict a Successful Marriage Before Tying the Knot.
According to thousands of studies conducted around the world– around 50% of marriages end in divorce. It can be nerve wracking to leave a life defining decision up to a coin toss. There is good news that can be found deep in the data of researchers which can help you predict if a marriage will last a lifetime.
Marriage and Divorce
It’s important to first acknowledge that you can never be 100% certain in predicting a successful marriage. Life circumstances, family systems, evolving personalities, value shifts, and a litany of other variables can influence the trajectory of a partnership. It’s also important to note that divorce should not be unilaterally labeled a “failure” or a bad thing to have happen. I have helped many couples post-divorce go on to find greater levels of happiness and self-efficacy as a consequence of leaving behind a past relationship. Simply put, not all divorces are created equal. To speak plainly, I think we all know at least one couple who we think would be better off if they divorced, but they choose not to out of social pressures, abuse, religious influence, financial fears, and/or other non-relational motivations. From a decision-making perspective, divorce should be viewed more neutrally than how society traditionally negatively frames it. All that said, ideally we want to find someone we can partner with till “death-do-us-part.” Let’s look at what you can identify to be able to predict a successful marriage.
Identifying Red Flags that Could Lead to Divorce
Researcher Hannah Williamson conducted a study in 2016 that tried to determine if variables exist prior to a marriage that could contribute to an eventual divorce. Williamson’s team found that there are problems that you can identify prior to marriage that increase the chance of divorce. The most prevalent were:
Infidelity, substance abuse, and poor communication are somewhat self-explanatory (we will dive into communication problems in another post), so let’s concentrate on the first and last predictors.
Incompatibility
Incompatibility is legally defined as the persistent and unresolvable differences or irreconcilable conflicts between two parties that make it impossible to continue a relationship. That’s a broad definition, so let’s drill down a bit. The quickest way to identify incompatibility is to sit down with your partner and have an exploratory discussion about your values. Don’t just list out what’s important– compatibility is tested on the prioritization or order of those values. Check out this clinical values exploration activity by Dr. Gregg Henriques. Make sure you do this activity independently before comparing answers. You don’t have to be 100% aligned, but if you find that your values are prioritized further apart than close together– it’s a strong indication that you will experience incompatibility in your relationship.
The second way to test for incompatibility is to dissect your most common and/or recent arguments. All couples disagree at times, but how disagreeable you and your partner are may indicate incompatibility. Do you or your partner refuse to change your stance on an issue? Do the arguments end in a stalemate more often than a collaborative resolution? Are you or your partner willing to alter your behavior or language in order to accommodate one another? If not, and if this happens frequently, it’s a good indicator of incompatibility.
It’s important to note as well that compatibility isn’t a set scale. Pre-marital therapy and relationship counseling can help couples become more compatible over time if both partners are willing and participating. However, if there isn’t a lot of willingness to grow and change for the relationship, it’s likely the marriage will end in divorce due to incompatibility.
Growing Apart
Growing Apart goes hand in hand with compatibility and can be conceptualized as the movement of incompatibility over time. However, this may not always be the case. Let’s say you complete the values activity with you and your partner. You find that you are 99% aligned from a values perspective. This does not give you and your partner a 99% chance of a compatible marriage. This is because over the course of life these values often change. A study conducted in 2015 of 36,000 individuals showed that the participants values had a linear and curvilinear pattern of change based on age related variables. Simplified, it’s a very normal occurrence for our values to change as we get older. The two most common time periods of divorce are during the first two years of marriage and between the 5th-8th year of marriage. This makes sense then that if incompatible couples divorce in the first two years, then those whose values changed in opposing directions over time would divorce during the major life changes that happen via careers, parenthood, etc. So how do you predict if you are going to grow apart from your partner before getting married?
This is the trickiest of the five predictors. How can you possibly know what you will want five years from now if you can’t predict what will happen within that time? How then can you predict that for your partner? The best you can do is layout a five year, ten year, and twenty year life plan. This is much harder to do for couples who are marrying during college years or younger. If both partners have graduated or are established in their career paths, mapping this out can be a lot easier. If your values and life plans are parallel, then you increase the odds of having a more compatible marriage.
Conclusion
These five predictors can help you know if your relationship is more likely to end in divorce. That said, you can’t predict with 100% certainty the outcome of any relationship. You can’t control the future, but you can control your choices in the present. Research has shown that there are key relationship skills that can be even stronger predictors of a successful marriage. You can choose to develop these relationship skills to improve the chances of a life-long partnership. These skills are often the foundation of pre-marital therapy and relationship counseling.
If you’d like help building these foundational relationship skills with your partner– couples therapy is a great way to get started. I love helping couples build stronger, more connected, and long-lasting relationships in couples therapy.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, and stories in the comments!
