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The Keystone of
Society is Seriously Dating Newly Married Couples |
Seriously Dating
According to the US Census Bureau over 90% of Americans are projected to marry. Regardless of whether or not you end up marrying the person you are currently dating we feel fairly confident that you will someday marry and when you do you will want it to be a happy, healthy life long marriage. Unfortunately the odds that you will form and sustain a healthy marriage are less than 50%. We want to help you increase your chances of achieving your dream marriage. Researchers have found that the following suggestions will help you do that. 1) Do not rush to get married. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 59% of first marriages between couples who are 18 years of age or younger end in divorce within the first fifteen years. However only 35% of marriages between couples who get married at the age of 25 or older end in a divorce within that same time period. 2) Take things slow and easy. If he or she really is "The One" for you, there is absolutely no need to rush things. Get to know each other well and in a variety of situations before making a lifelong commitment. Relationships that begin with a foundation of friendship are usually much more stable in the long run than those that "rush to euphoria", only to later crash and burn. The wisdom of this type of approach was highlighted in an article published in the L.A. Times on December 16th, 2002 entitled "The Brain in Love". The article discussed a long-term study being conducted by the University of Texas in Austin which "identified three paths through early courtship: fast and passionate, slow and rocky, and in-between. The fast-track group, about 25% of the total, usually were interdependent within weeks, tended to ignore or forget their initial problems and were committed to marriage within several months. By contrast, the slow-motion group took an average of two years to reach a commitment, spending up to six painstaking months in each stage. Yet when it came to success at the 13-year mark, the tortoises won out. According to Ted Houston, the study's lead investigator, "The more boring and deliberate the courtship, the better the prospects for a long marriage, I'm afraid. People who had very intense, Hollywood-type romances at the beginning were likely to have a big drop-off later on, and this often changed their view of the other's character". So, slow and steady tends to win the race. 3) Become educated about healthy relationships. If you really want a healthy relationship then logically you should learn all you can about how to form and sustain one. How? The first step is to learn by reading. While there are a number of very good books about this topic, we recommend the book entitled "Relationships", written by Les and Leslie Parrott, as an excellent place to start. 4) Develop healthy communications skills and conflict resolution skills. Dr. John Gottman of the University of Washington is able to predict with a 91% accuracy level whether a couple's marriage will succeed or fail by observing them interacting with each other for as little as five minutes. Five minutes! And it's not a matter of whether the couple argues or not that is key, but rather HOW they argue - and how they treat each other when they argue - that turns out to be the most important factor in a couple's long-term success together. Each couple develops their own particular "pattern of interaction" in a relationship. While a "positive pattern of interaction" will build each person and the relationship, up, a "negative pattern of interaction" will usually tear each person and the relationship down. The good news is that positive patterns of interactions can be learned. However, the earlier in a relationship that healthy communications and conflict resolution skills are learned and put into place, the easier it is to make changes - before "bad habits" get too heavily ingrained. A number of resources exist to teach healthy communication and conflict resolution skills, several of which are contained in various places on this web site. Sections on this web site that contain this information are the section for Engaged Couples and Recommended Reading under the Marriage Enrichment section. It's never too early to start learning these skills. If you had only watched golf on TV, would you wait to take your first golf lessons an hour before your first tournament started? 5) Avoid living together before marriage. Recent research by the University of Wisconsin indicates that 40% of cohabitants break up before getting married. Cohabitants who do end up marrying each other after living together experience a 50% higher divorce rate than couples who had not lived together. So instead of experiencing a 50% divorce rate, these couples experience a 75% divorce rate. Overall what they find is that only 15% of couples who live together before getting married end up in a lasting marriage. The majority of couples think that they will be in the 15% group but the reality is that only 15 couples out of a hundred cohabitors actually make it. The bottom line is that if you want to increase your odds of achieving your dream of a happy, healthy life long marriage, do not cohabitate; it just doesn't work in the majority of cases. 6) If it looks like this relationship may be getting serious enough that the two of you think that it could lead to marriage some day, we strongly suggest that you take a premarital inventory such as FOCCUS, PREPARE, or RELATE well before you actually get engaged. These inventories have not been designed to tell you whether or not your marriage will succeed or fail. Instead they are designed to find out how you feel on hundreds of topics that will come up when you get married and then compare those answers with your boyfriend or girlfriend. This will decrease the number of surprises that you encounter after you get married and will give you an opportunity to work through differences of opinions before you get married. A good place to start is by taking the online Relate Inventory at https://www.relate-institute.org. The cost at the website is $20.00 per couple but we have arranged a special price of $15.00 per couple. If you are interested in receiving the reduced rate send us an email. 7) If the two of you do decide to get married, participate in the most rigorous Marriage Preparation Program you can find. Go above and beyond any "required" classes the person who is performing the ceremony may require you to take - this is your marriage, not theirs. This is your future happiness at stake - not theirs. You will find that the time you spend in these types of courses will definitely pay off. Studies conducted by the University of Denver show that those couples who participate in a true "World Class" Marriage Preparation program reduce their probabilities of divorce within the first five years by two-thirds. And it makes sense, doesn't it? We take classes before getting our driver's license. We take classes before becoming an architect, teacher, nurse, doctor, or engineer. Why shouldn't we take classes before entering into a much more permanent "line of work" - marriage? Being married is a "skilled profession", and the good news is that the necessary skills and knowledge for marital success can be taught and learned. The "Engaged Couples" section of this web site will show you a number of resources available for you to customize your own Marriage Preparation Program. If you want to fulfill your dream of a happy, healthy lifelong marriage, then do not skimp in this area. The time you spend preparing for your marriage will have a much greater impact on your life than the time you spend preparing for your wedding. Remember - a wedding is just a day of happiness but a marriage can be a lifetime of happiness. 8) Once you are married, continue to invest in the relationship. Good marriages do not "just happen". They are built. You wouldn't plant a garden and then never water it, would you? Or buy a car and never change the oil? We all understand that neglecting our gardens or our cars will cause them to die. The same is true with our relationships - especially our marriage relationships. If we do not continue to invest in our marriages then they will die, just like anything else in the world. We strongly suggest that you participate in at least one structured Marriage Enrichment event each and every year of your marriage. These include Married Couples Retreats, or a class series on Marriage. This web site's sections for Newly Married Couples and Marriage Enrichment are full of those types of resources. 9) If your marriage ever starts to experience problems, get help right away. The sooner the problems are addressed, the easier they are to fix. A recent study found that only 10% of couples who got divorced sought help from a professional counselor before filing for divorce. Couples who did seek help had been experiencing problems in their marriages for average of seven years before they sought help. If you broke your leg skiing, would you wait seven years before you went to the doctor? Don't treat your marriage any worse than you would treat your body. Commit to each other before you get married that if either one of you want professional outside assistance that you both will go in for help together. 10) Once your relationship gets serious and you begin to talk about marriage, print this page out and go over it with your significant other. Focus especially on the paragraphs numbered seven, eight and nine. Ask probing questions such as: "If we got engaged, would you be willing to take the time to participate in as thorough a Marriage Preparation Process as we could find?" "If we got married, would you be willing to participate with me in at least one structured Marriage Enrichment activity each and every year of our lives together?" "Would you be willing to agree, up front, that if we did get married that one of the "rules" of our marriage would be that we would both be willing to participate in marriage counseling at any time that either of us requested it?" This is a very important discussion to have. This discussion will give each of you an indication of the other s level of commitment and dedication to a future marriage. This discussion will also help you set guidelines that will help you both fulfill your dreams of a happy, healthy lifelong marriage. The following programs have been designed to help you to develop a healthy relationship. Many of the skills and knowledge that you learn in these workshops will also help you to form and sustain a healthy marriage if you later decide to marry. We highly recommend you become an informed consumer before you sign up for one of these programs. Possible questions you might ask include: 1. What is your experience and training in this program? 2. Is this program based on research and can you supply me with the references for the research articles it is based on? 3. What is the total cost for attending this program and how long does it last? 4. What are the specific relationship skills and knowledge taught in this program? 5. What are your expectations of us as participants? 6. Will any participant ever be asked or expected to share personal experiences in a group setting? If you have a program for couples in a serious dating relationship and would like it listed please send us an email.
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