15.4: Combating Divorce

A positive outlook for your marriage as a rewarding and enjoyable relationship is a realistic outlook. Some couples worry about being labeled naïve if they express the joys and rewards their marriage brings to their lives. Be hopeful and positive on the quality and duration of your marriage, because the odds are still in your favor. You've probably seen commercials where online matchmaking websites strut their success in matching people to one another. There are websites, along with DVDs, CDs, self-help books, and seminars for marital enhancement available to couples who seek them. \({ }^6\)

Doomed, soaring divorce rates, spousal violence, husbands killing wives, decline of marriage, and other gloomy headlines are very common on electronic, TV, and print news stories. The media functions to disseminate information and its primary goal is to make money by selling advertising. The media never has claimed to be scientific in their stories. They don't really try to represent the entire society with every story. In fact, media is more accurately described as biased by the extremes, based on the nature of stories that are presented to us the viewers. Many media critics have made the argument for years that the news and other media use fear as a theme for most stories, so that we will consume them. Most in the U.S. choose marriage and most who are divorced will eventually marry again. True, marriage is not bliss, but it is a preferred lifestyle by most U.S. adults. From the Social Exchange perspective, assuming that people maximize their rewards while minimizing their losses, marriage is widely defined as desirable and rewarding. There are strategies individuals can use to minimize the risks of divorce (personal level actions). Table 3 lists ten of these actions.

Table \(\PageIndex{1}\) : Ten Actions Individuals Can Take to Minimize the Odds of Divorce

Actions Individuals Can Take
1. Wait until at least 20s to marry. Avoid marrying as a teenager
2. Don't marry out of duty to a child. Avoid marrying just because she got pregnant. Pregnancy is not mate-selection process we discussed in the pairing-off chapter.
3. Become proactive by maintaining your marriage with preventive efforts designed to avoid breakdowns. Find books, seminars, and a therapist to help you both work out the tough issues.
4. Never cohabit if you think you might marry.
5. Once married, leave the marriage market. Avoid keeping an eye open for a better spouse.
6. Remain committed to your marriage. Most couples have irreconcilable differences and most learn to live comfortably together in spite of them.
7. Keep a positive outlook. Avoid losing hope in you first 36 months. Those who get past the 3-year mark often see improvements in quality of marital relationships and the first 36 months have the most intense adjustments in them.
8. Take the media with a grain of salt. Avoid accepting evidences that your marriage is doomed. This means being careful not to let accurate or inaccurate statistics convince you that all is lost, especially before you even marry.
9. Do your homework when selecting a mate. Take your time and realize that marrying in our late 20s is common now and carefully identify someone who is homogamous to you, especially about wanting to be married.
10. Focus on the positive benefits found to be associated with being married in society while learning to overlook some of the downsides.

Decades of studies have indicated that those who ever have cohabited have a higher likelihood of divorce. Cohabitation has been studied especially in contrast between cohabiting and married couples. Clear findings consistently show that cohabiting and marriage are two different creatures. \({ }^7\) Those who cohabit tend to establish patterns of relationships that later inhibit marital duration. However, most agree this is due to individuals bringing their unmarried and cohabiting ideologies into their marriages. In other words, while people live together, but are not married, they might form the foundation of their relationship with idea that they can leave at any time, and sometimes these thoughts then translate into the marriage.

Cohabitation is more common in the U.S. today than ever before. Cohabiters are considered to be unique from those who marry in a variety of ways, yet the similarities between married and cohabiting spouses suggests that their lifestyles overlap. In both lifestyles, relationships are formed and often ended. Cohabiters have more than twice the risks of their relationship ending than do marrieds. \({ }^8\)

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Footnotes

6. see studies by Lawrence Ganong and Marilyn Coleman.

7. Cherlin, A. J. (2008). Multiple partnerships and children’s wellbeing. Austrian Institute of Family Studies, 89, 33-36.