Findings On Love and Marriage

STEPHEN Covey reminds us: “While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.”

Indeed, we are free to choose our marriage partners; but we are not free to choose the consequences of that choice.

In November 2004, The National Marriage Project of the Rutgers University published a guideline entitled the “Ten Important Research Findings on Marriage and Choosing a Marriage Partner: Helpful Facts for Young Adults” in order to guide the youth on partner-selection issues. The 10 findings touched issues on marriage, divorce, and partner selection.

They came up with six partner-selection guidelines from these findings:

1. The prospective partner must be at least 20 years old. The older the partner, the better, of course. Studies from 1989 through 2002 indicate that marriages between teens (below age 20) are two to two times more likely to end in separation compared to those ageing 20 and above.

2. The prospective partner must be introduced through the family, friends or acquaintances. Social networks are important in bringing together individuals of similar interests and backgrounds, researchers Edward Laumann and colleagues found out in 1994.

3. The prospective partner shares your values, backgrounds, and life goals. Studies from 1986 through 1994 observed that people with more similarity in the abovementioned characteristics tend to live together harmoniously as married couples.

4. The prospective partner must be at least college educated. And so are you. Joshua Goldstein and Catharine Kenney reported in the American Sociological Review (2001) that college-educated couples are less likely to separate than people in lower educational levels.

5. The prospective partner has no multiple cohabiting relationships before marriage. Numerous studies since 1997 indicated that marriages with cohabiting partners are more likely to experience marital conflict and unhappiness and eventual separation than those who do not.

6. The prospective partner did not grow up in a family broken by separation. One study in 2004 found that when the wife alone had experienced a parental divorce, the odds of divorce increased by 59 percent. When both spouses came from broken homes, the odd almost tripled to 189 percent.

Henry David Thoreau put it plainly: “There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.”

Your choice of the right partner, and your life with that partner as an outcome of that choice, also depends on what you bring to the union.
What you are is as important as who your partner is.  Signs Of Herpes