House of Eratosthenes

Living happily ever after needn’t only be for fairy tales. Australian researchers have identified what it takes to keep a couple together, and it’s a lot more than just being in love.

A couple’s age, previous relationships and even whether they smoke or not are factors that influence whether their marriage is going to last, according to a study by researchers from the Australian National University.

The study, entitled “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” tracked nearly 2,500 couples — married or living together — from 2001 to 2007 to identify factors associated with those who remained together compared with those who divorced or separated.

It found that a husband who is nine or more years older than his wife is twice as likely to get divorced, as are husbands who get married before they turn 25.

Children also influence the longevity of a marriage or relationship, with one-fifth of couples who have kids before marriage — either from a previous relationship or in the same relationship — having separated compared to just nine percent of couples without children born before marriage.
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Not surprisingly, money also plays a role, with up to 16 percent of respondents who indicated they were poor or where the husband — not the wife — was unemployed saying they had separated, compared with only nine percent of couples with healthy finances.

Yeah dudes, I think you need to take another look at that money thing. Nine to sixteen? The differential’s probably much larger than that.

It’s too bad there’s no scientific way to measure dipshittery.

From what I have seen, with my experience limited just like any other mortal’s, and my lifetime success probably somewhat lower than the average — it really has to do with just-plain living-life. You get married, and for the present day the “commitment” is all ceremonial. It has to do with the future. So a lack of awareness of the passage of time, on the part of one spouse or both, is the big killer.

A positive pregnancy test…the purchase of a new home…a new winch for the jeep…just bringing home a puppy dog. These are commitments for the future that make a deeper impression, in the moment. By which I mean you can be a somewhat thick dimwit type, but you can still feel down to the marrow of your bones that life, from here on out, has changed. That’s the quality a wedding ceremony is supposed to have, and wedding ceremonies no longer achieve this. A wedding is a chance to show off, to see your great-uncles and aunts again, to eat cake, and pour the pork at the Honeymoon suite as if you haven’t been doing that all along.

If you weren’t spending just shitloads of money in the here-and-now, perhaps the wedding would get you to thinking about the future. Like it’s supposed to.

But no. As a social custom, the wedding ceremony has endured so much abuse that it has failed to stick to its traditional underpinnings. It is no longer a harbinger, pleasant or otherwise, of what is to come. Most spouses think much more about the future during a routine squabble about a parking ticket, or a department store charge card purchase, than they do when they get married.

You have to be headed somewhat in the same direction in life, you have to be somewhat flexible, and you have to be ready for challenges. This whole thing about Nirvana, some magical situation in which everything that happens twenty-four-seven is all peace and love and happiness, possess a quirky characteristic: If you chase it, you can’t have it and you don’t deserve it. If you don’t, it’s yours. The folks who’ve been through it know exactly what I’m talking about with that one…and the ones who haven’t, are bound to go “Huh-wha??” But it’s true.

Trouble with marriage nowadays, is it just takes the individuality out of it. If one spouse has a need to learn this lesson, it falls on the other one to go through the education as well, along with the associated unpleasantness. Even if s/he learned about it before already.

Marriage, I think, endured a “stroke” of sorts when people started making money off other peoples’ divorces. Since then, she’s been stretched out on a deathbed, unable to move half of her body, speaking in gutteral sounds, one side of her face atrophied. Those who love her and cherish her the most, are incapable of facing the sobering truth that she will not be going home from this hospital room, and she is no longer what she used to be. She’s changed. She will never see a day, from here on, where she’s stronger on that day than the day before; she’s on a terminal decline.

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It Takes More Than Love to Keep a Marriage GoingMonday, August 3rd, 2009

It Takes More Than Love to Keep a Marriage Going
Monday, August 3rd, 2009