I caught an interesting segment on Today this morning. They’re examining why people get married or decide to stay single. This morning they started with why people get married.
Why Get Married?
I’ve often wondered this. I know why little girls get married. Part of it has to do with the Cinderella effect. Marriage is glamorized early on in a little girl’s life.
But why do men marry? This has never made sense to me. Maybe it’s because of something Tristi pointed out in a comment on another blog: how the media belittles men.
Tristi said she’s noticed it recently in respect to the media portraying men as idiots. But if I think on it, I believe I’ve been influenced to see men as philanderers at heart ready to spring at the first skirt that sashays by. With so many women to chase, why would they bother limiting themselves to just one?
That’s how I used to think. Thankfully I’ve come to realize most men are more complex than this. They do actually have emotions, feel love, and want to be wanted.
And that’s what one of the doctors in the segment said. (Sadly I didn’t catch his name). We have a drive to be attached to somebody.
So we marry.
But it’s different for men than women. Judith Sills, a clinical psychologist that weighed in on all this, said men marry once they get bored of the single scene. Women get married when they’ve found their guy.
“But in the end we get married because we want to be attached,” Dr. Sills agreed.
Why Stay Married?
That was the next question. My initial response was: Why not stay married? Why get divorced?
But, people do get divorced, because as that one doctor whose name I didn’t catch said, “We have illusions about life…life is hard.” Some people forget that love won’t always be perfect. Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you’re suddenly immune from hard times, serious illnesses, or other traumas.
As one of the wives of one of the couples interviewed said, “Love isn’t enough. Love fluctuates. You get angry at the other person. But underlying respect is what gets you through.”
Then her husband made a wonderful analogy: “Just like any house, you build a foundation, and you’re not sure what kind of a structure is going on top of that foundation, but as it develops you make changes in it, and modify it, and you like it better.”
That’s just it. Rule number 3. Expect change. Embrace change. Especially if something’s not working. It doesn’t have to stay bad. You can make it better. (Keeping in mind you can’t change the other person. But you can change your responses, outlook, and behaviors, which can in turn influence their actions.)
That’s how to stay married. But people stay married because they enjoy the companionship and the foundation they’ve built with their spouse. They like the views from those windows.
Statistics
The following were statistics they included in the segment:
1. 73% say companionship is reason they’ve stayed married.
2. Average age of first marriage: For Men 26.9; for women 25.3.
3. 56% say they would marry same person again.
4. Only 5% of couples reach their 50th anniversary.
5. 44% of women have contemplated leaving their husbands.
6. 31% of men have thought of leaving their wives.
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