There is an interesting study called Diamonds are Forever and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship Between Wedding Expense and Marriage Duration.
The summary of graphs about it is easier to get my head around though. Seven attributes to longevity in marriage are both concise and fascinating.
Three
categories determined a fifty per cent drop in the likelihood of divorce. That is a hefty shift, and when they are combined, things could look particularly rosy. One is easy enough... go to church regularly. It seems that belonging to a community that is supportive of family and marriage does indeed make a difference.
Another surprised me... go on a honeymoon. I can come up with speculations about why this matters,
and maybe it is simply a reflection of the couple's investment in time together.
The third is a little more out of our immediate control. Make more than $125K. Finances take a toll on marriage and apparently that extra cushion shaves off twenty more points in the let's-not-get-divorced rating.
The number of people to attend your wedding had the most
significant bearing to show up in the study. The gap between couple only unions and those with two hundred guests was a whopping ninety two per cent. That's not easily dismissed. Maybe the impact of a cathedral full of all your friends and matronly aunts dressed in their most sparkly earrings and pointy shoes creates a layer of tangible support that helps a young couple weather the storms.
But at the same time the cash
spent on the ceremony was inversely proportional to longevity. A wedding for under a thousand meant you halved your chances of being divorced, while a wedding with a price tag of over twenty thousand actually doubled them. Paying too much attention to the caterer and bouquets apparently robs the bride and groom of energy to work on their commitment.
The final two points fly against most Disney movies and Shakespeare for
that matter. Date for more than three years, and don't pick your partner based on looks or money. I cannot name a single contemporary flick that follows those guidelines. The majority of them are based on love that emerges fully grown after twenty four hours. But I am collecting lists of children's books that do. When Jessie Came Across the Sea portrays a lovely relationship that matures slowly over time, as does
Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables. Movies are less common still, but they do exist.
When people sling around the dire Fifty Per Cent of Marriages Fail stats, they are lumping together all manner of
couples. Yet there is a measurable discrepancy between a thoughtful man and woman who have dated for three years, belong to a faith community, created an ungenerous wedding with a generous number of guests, who are marrying neither for money nor beauty ... and a Kardashian.
