
What makes for a stable marriage? - rhiever
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/10/10/what-makes-for-a-stable-marriage/
======
disallusioned42
This is a fascinating topic to me. I read it with great interest, and I might
even go and do a bunch of my own analysis of the data. But I can't help but
think that in a way the whole thing deeply misses the point. My skepticism
started when I got to the third point: "How often you go to church". The
results seem obvious to me. In general, churches frown on divorce, so of
course church goers are going to have lower divorce rates! But that's
irrelevant if the result is that a bunch of people are miserable because
they're staying in marriages that make them unhappy. I used to be a regular
church goer and I absolutely saw this. People would stay in miserable
marriages because they thought it was the right thing to do.

So I hypothesize that what really matters is not divorce rate, but happy
marriage rate. Unfortunately that data is not in this study. And furthermore,
if it was, I would suspect significant bias. In the church world that I was a
part of there was significant pressure to keep up appearances. So I don't
think you would be able to trust either the married persons' self assessment
of happiness nor the external assessment of the people who know them.

With this new metric in mind, I went back and re-thought the logic in each of
the OP's significant predictors. First stop, "How much money you make". IMO
this one falls flat on its face. It's easy to imagine situations where someone
would stay in an unhappy marriage just because their partner has money. It's
also easy to imagine situations where someone makes a lot of money, but stays
in an unhappy marriage because their partner would get half of it in a
divorce. Another factor that I think is suspect is "How many people attended
the wedding". When a lot of people saw you get married it seems like there
might be more pressure to stay in an unhappy marriage to save face to all the
people who attended your wedding. I'm a little bit less confident about the
reasoning here, but it still seems plausible.

The rest of the predictors seem reasonable to me, especially "How long you
were dating". This one stands up under the happiness test and just seems to
make sense, provided that the extended dating years were as similar as
possible to the married years, minus the marriage license.

~~~
linguafranca
From my experience, the happiest marriages are of people who don't just "go"
to church, but actually try to "live" their church's teachings in all areas of
their lives. Churches usually promote selflessness, sacrifice, honesty,
gentleness, and sincere love. So it's a recipe for happiness inside or out of
marriage, but especially inside marriage.

~~~
gus_massa
YMMV. Other churches promote killing everyone that don't believe in the same
god, or believe in the same god but have a method to pray, or has other social
habits.

I think that it's not a problem of a specific religion. Most religion has
peaceful periods but 300 years later the "same" religion has a violent period
and 300 year later the "same" religion is peaceful again, ...

And sometimes, some members of the same church are peaceful and some are
violent. It's more complicated.

~~~
scott_karana
Churches/religions can condone violence to others _while still promoting
healthy marriage_ , so your point doesn't necessarily mean anything about the
topic at hand.

(Obviously, your point _is_ important in a larger context. :)

------
cm2012
Another interesting statistic to add to this: divorce risk increases
significantly the more sexual partners you've had before marriage:
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00444.x/abstract).

However, cohabitation and sex with your eventual spouse before marriage helps
your chances.

This is all correlation, of course.

~~~
carsongross
Note that the previous sexual partner correlation with divorce is for
_females_ only.

Look away! Look away!

~~~
rhiever
I was very worried until I noticed that. Damn my young adventurous years!

------
themartorana
A couple of subjective thoughts - the only two points that don't jive for me
are that spending huge amounts on a wedding significantly increase the
likelihood of divorce, while having 200+ people at your wedding severely
decreases it. It seems likely to me that the amount of people who attend the
wedding is insignificant, but it can be a good indicator of the importance of
close family and community of friends.

The only other thought is how church comes in to play. This is a touch of a
sore spot, because my parents stayed in a bad marriage for probably a decade
longer than necessary due to religious stigma. As it is, my mother still won't
acknowledge her divorce to the church because she would be denied certain
things that are important to her, personally.

So I'm not sure that religion makes a marriage stronger, it just places a
higher degree of shame and stigma on divorce.

But again, these are just my personal observations, from someone happily
married for a decade who has a big family, spent less than $10k on a wedding
with less than 50 people, and is (and whose partner is) agnostic.

~~~
smoyer
"So I'm not sure that religion makes a marriage stronger, it just places a
higher degree of shame and stigma on divorce."

But perhaps any social pressure that encourages marriage would do the same
thing? I've got quite a few friends that have had arranged marriages - they
marry strangers and work to build a happy marriage from it because their
families expect it.

On the other hand, "staying in a bad marriage" is a misnomer - there's not
really such a thing as a bad marriage so much as selfish participants. When
one more both of the partners refuse to work towards a better marriage, it's
practically impossible to make that marriage last.

~~~
themartorana
> there's not really such a thing as a bad marriage so much as selfish
> participants

This is absurd. It's constructed of a series of suppositions, only a few of
which I'll address.

First is that people are static. This simply isn't true. We all know that we
all change - not just in age, wisdom, and so on, but in tastes, politics,
religious dedication, and the lines we draw between wrong and right, just to
name a few.

In just these ways, people can grow apart. The distance between these changes
can, in fact, cause "irreconcilable differences."

Sometimes these changes are brought about by dramatic stress events, from the
death of a child to major swings in financial stability. The way in which
these events change the unwilling participants can again lead to
incompatibility where once there was compatibility.

But worst is the idea that if people just "work on it" they can overcome
anything. Sometimes overcoming growing apart - be it over time or rather
quickly - is best done by removing yourself from a situation that is no longer
positive, and has little ability to become positive again.

This is where I find religion quite often inserts itself negatively. While I
agree with a poster above that regular attendance at religious gatherings does
often help a couple share a support network, share common beliefs and similar
circles of friends, etc., religion often tells you only divorce or failed
marriage is an abomination, and a personal failure requiring lifetime penance.
It then follows by labeling that person as an outcast, no longer worthy of the
community they had once belonged to.

These are just a few reasons (not to mention physical/substance abuse, and so
on) that marriages can fail without it being personal failure. Your assertion
does nothing but pile on further stigma to those who have gone through
divorce. No one wants their marriage to fail, but when it does, it isn't
always personal failure that requires additional shaming from outsiders.

~~~
jasonparker
Gotta disagree with you: marriage is a contract, forsaking all others, so long
as you both shall live. Divorce means your word is worthless, and that your
own wants are more important than your word.

It IS a personal failure, but go ahead, rationalize all you want.

~~~
king_jester
> marriage is a contract, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live

Not everyone views marriage as a contract or as something that cannot be
broken ever. The legal status of marriage in a jurisdiction != how people feel
about and treat marriage.

> Divorce means your word is worthless, and that your own wants are more
> important than your word.

Giving your word on something isn't a clause that requires you to give up your
own wants and needs. For example, if you married someone and one day they
become abusive, you are not obligated to stay and take said abuse.

> It IS a personal failure, but go ahead, rationalize all you want.

This attitude is so unhelpful and smacks of a superiority complex.

------
vijayboyapati
I find studies produced by the Gottman institute far more compelling because
they're much more prescriptive. In particular they analyze the "four horsemen"
of conflict in a marriage and how these undermine marriage stability:
[http://www.gottmanblog.com/2013/04/the-four-horsemen-
recogni...](http://www.gottmanblog.com/2013/04/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-
criticism.html?m=1)

The long term presence of these "four horsemen" is a strong predictor of
divorce, and the recognition of their presence is a good sign that a marriage
needs help.

------
Wintamute
Slightly off topic, but I'm genuinely curious why forward-thinking secular
people in the west still want to get married. Historically, and still in many
parts of the world, its arguably an incredibly sexist tradition that has its
roots in religious and patriarchal control. In many ways it has been
completely re-defined, at least in the west, and doesn't have any/many of
those connotations any more - but it begs the question, why actually bother
now? Why not just partner up with the person you love? Create your own private
culture of love and respect between each other. How many couples stay in
unhappy situations, and raise children in sad/angry environments, because of
the stigma of divorce? Seems like this statistical fretting and min-maxing
doesn't help that either.

~~~
genwin
There are gov't benefits to being married. For example, when one spouse dies
the joint assets don't need to go through probate.

------
billyhoffman
Anyone who thinks the number of guest at your wedding is one of the "7 biggest
factors" of a successful marriage has either never been married, is unfamiliar
with the different between causality and correlation, or both.

This article is irritating in its language to the extreme:

"What struck me about this study is that it basically laid out what makes for
a stable marriage in the U.S. I’ve highlighted 7 of the biggest factors
below."

No you haven't. You cherry picked 7 metrics and mapped them against divorce
rates.

"Clearly, this shows us that having a large group of family and friends who
support the marriage is critically important to long-term marital stability"

No, it "clearly" doesn't show that at all. I could argue instead that it
"clearly means" that most people are highly malleable to peer pressure, and
don't want to look stupid/ashamed/embarrassed that they can't make their
marriage work, so they stay married (Note, I don't think divorce is about an
inability to make a marriage "work", I'm simply pointing out a reasonable
reaction for married people to have).

The "goes to church" factor is also very open to interpretation. Are people
with strong united faith more likely to stay together? That is probable.
Equally likely are that many faiths frown upon or outright forbid the concept
of divorce. As my grandmother told me years ago, "Catholics, Billy, do not get
divorced."

I appreciate studies that try to collect this information, but these aren't
direct factors. They are, at best, secondary metrics that help reveal
information about the traits and values of the people getting married. This
still valuable, you just need to frame it in the right light.

Married after dating for a month? Hmmm, Sounds like people who aren't thinking
things through and considering the long term consequences of their actions.

Lots of family at a wedding? The bride/groom is probably someone who has lots
of experience dealing with people they love, but who can be difficult, and
where leaving isn't really an option because they are family. Sounds like a
good trait to help resolve the issues that will come up in a marriage.

People who aren't superficial about money or looks? Yeah, those are mature
people with reasonable expectations in life. Bet they are going to do much
better than someone who wants a trophy wife or a gold digger.

Really, this is all just absurd to paint these as "factors" in your marriage.

------
Xcelerate
As someone who only sometimes attends church, I wonder why that has a higher
risk of divorce than never attending or always attending. Maybe lack of
commitment?

It's sad how much of a difference money makes. Ideally, money would have no
bearing on love or marriage. I'd like to think that if I was well-off (or if
my spouse was) and then something disastrous happened, that we would still
support each other throughout.

Also, the "looks" thing is kind of surprising. Attractiveness is a binary
prerequisite for dating (at least for me) but once married it wouldn't matter
to me, in terms of keeping the relationship stable. What if one of you gets in
an accident and is horribly disfigured or gains or loses a bunch of weight?

Lots of interesting data -- there are many other correlates I'd like to see.
How do personality characteristics (BPD, narcissism, extraversion) correlate?
How does constancy of morals/values correlate (someone whose values remain the
same over many years vs someone who is always changing their values)?

What would be even more intriguing would be to find the subset of the
population that describes themselves as having near-perfect, long-lasting
marriages and compare those people to the general population. I would _really_
love to see that.

My opinion is that most marriages dissolve when one (or both) people lose the
ability (or never had it to begin with) to be empathetic toward the other
person.

~~~
cryowaffle
>> It's sad how much of a difference money makes. Ideally, money would have no
bearing on love or marriage. I'd like to think that if I was well-off (or if
my spouse was) and then something disastrous happened, that we would still
support each other throughout.

Marriage are bonded over factors more than love and people in love get
divorces. The money aspect of the study is simply showing that the more money
a couple has the less likely non-love factors are able to break up a marriage.
Seems completely reasonable to me.

------
pcunite
The book "The Five Love Languages" really helped my marriage.

------
stadeschuldt
Secret of a stable marriage: Invite 200+ attendees to your wedding while
keeping the budget below 1000 USD.

~~~
cm2012
Pretty funny. Potluck wedding?

~~~
lotharbot
You might be surprised, but it happens pretty regularly. Sure, there are some
parts of American culture where you're expected to throw a huge fancy ceremony
with a $15,000 dress and a limo and a 7-course meal. But there are parts of
American culture where the expected wedding reception is cake and punch,
buying a dress on clearance is a mark of pride, and you either drive your own
car or borrow a friend's car if yours is well below median crapitude.

Our total wedding expenses weren't quite that low -- 200+ people came in at
around $4k, including brunch (it was a mid-morning wedding,) a dress hand-made
by the mother of the bride, and rental of a horse-drawn Amish buggy from the
farmer next door to the church.

Of course, both "lots of people at the wedding" and "spend little money"
signify something -- lots of people signifies a lot of social support, and
friends and family who think this is a good idea; spending little money is an
indicator that the important part is the life you're making together, without
too much emphasis on the initial celebration. (I have read studies to this
effect, though it's been a long time and I couldn't now tell you where they
were published.)

------
nathan_long
I wonder how many of these factors are causation vs correlation. My guess is
that, for example, that eloping doesn't ruin your marriage and having a big
wedding doesn't improve it; it's just that people who elope are reflecting the
reality that their attitude is "we're in this alone", and people who have a
big wedding are reflecting their confidence and their sense that friends' and
families' support is important.

~~~
jpp
As someone who dabbles in psychology research (mostly Big Five stuff), I had
this same reaction: this is great correlation stuff, but I hardly expect it's
casual. This is my grip with books like "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People" \-- picking up those habits won't make you necessarily effective.

~~~
kbutler
The 7 Habits title emphasizes correlation. The actual habits and content of
the book is much more causal.

------
chaostheory
Here's the paper from Emory that the post was based on

[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480&u...](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480&utm_content=buffer734c1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer)

The only thing that was contradictory was the parts about the wedding. How can
you not spend 20k or more when there are 200 or more guests?

~~~
phamilton
I had almost 400 guests at my wedding and it cost < $10k.

Venue: grandparent's backyard. Had that not been available a local church's
community center would have worked (usually free or "free" with a donation of
like $500).

Food: simple catered food. The wedding had a picnic theme (summer wedding) so
we went w/ sliders and other finger foods. $8/head

Chairs and tables: Rented, but set up ourselves.

Photographer: Flew in someone from out of state. Much cheaper than a local LA
photographer.

Dance Floor: Rented ($800) DJ: iPod with a playlist

Decorations: made our own decorations, borrowed strands of lights, etc.

It was a great wedding, wasn't terribly expensive and had a lot of guests.

~~~
BruceIV
I have a similar experience; my wife and I spent about $4000 on our
wedding,and had about 150 guests, and it was a perfectly lovely (if not
particularly fancy) ceremony. We got sandwichs, cheese & crackers, and fruit
trays (plus some baked goods my wife and some friends made) for the meal, it
worked out to about $2 a person, and no one left hungry. The reception was in
the church hall, my wife got her dress off Kijiji (think Canadian Craigslist),
and I just wore the suit I already owned (why waste enough money to buy a new
suit on renting a tux? I looked sharp, and no one cares how the groom's
dressed anyway). We bought flowers for the bouquets, but none for decoration
(again, why? where does it make the experience better?) Photography was
probably our biggest single expense, and we got that cheaply because my wife
knew a woman who was just getting her business started and wanted to build a
portfolio (our wedding photos are great, and we have digital copies of all of
them we can make as many prints of as we want).

The short version is we planned our wedding with a mindset of "we want as many
of the people we care about to be able to share this day with us as possible,
and since we have a limited budget we're only going to spend it on things that
make a positive difference in the day".

------
tzaman
I think that marriage itself is completely irrelevant - it's the relationship
that matters; Although we're getting married next year (we joke about _sealing
the deal_ , since we both agree it's just a nice-to-have) after 7 years and 4
kids of a relationship. We've had ups and downs which we're all connected to
our financial situation. While I was bootstrapping my startup
([https://codeable.io](https://codeable.io)), things at some point started to
look really bad and we had to borrow money - which brought a lot of stress to
the table, which led to a lot of arguments (although I can't say we were
anywhere near the breaking point). After we closed our first investment,
things got much easier (financially speaking) and I was able to spend more
time with my family and bonded with them more. So the pillars of a good
_relationship_ are mutual respect and support, lots of love, some financial
stability (yes, it matters) and compromises. And spending quality time
together, you can't bond if you're not around.

------
jostylr
I would suggest that if you want a good and wonderful marriage, then respect
is key. Have someone observe the couple and watch the dynamic. I wonder how
much of the various graphs could correlate with likelihood of respecting the
other.

I am surprised by the length to proposal. My opinion is that once you meet
someone that really clicks, then it works out quickly and well. I wonder if
there is another dynamic that correlates with the religious as well, one that
perhaps is more in the vein of arranged marriages, so to speak.

~~~
pinkyand
> My opinion is that once you meet someone that really clicks, then it works
> out quickly and well.

Usually that feeling of "click" passes after 2 years and transforms into a
mellower , longer lastin kind of love. So if you stay longer, you see how you
both fit together under this new kind of love.

------
ScottBurson
_About a decade ago, the gossip on everyone’s lips was that “1 /2 of all
marriages in the U.S. end in divorce.” That factoid was later disproven[0]_

Whoa, not so fast. If you follow the link, you'll see that it wasn't disproven
at all. Rather, the linked article attempts to _supplant_ this statistic with
a different one: the fraction of _people_ who get married who ever divorce.

The difference between the two statistics comes, of course, from the existence
of serial divorcers. It's reasonable to offer a different statistic that
filters those people out. But the original statistic is actually correct as
stated: about half of all _marriages_ end in divorce.

[0]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html)

~~~
PhantomGremlin
An even more cynical view is:

    
    
       50% of marriages end in divorce,
       the other 50% end in death.
       Mazel tov.
    

I just had to post that, one of my favorite quips. I'm in my 20th year of
marriage.

------
bendtheblock
I'm a bit surprised to see the conclusions on this post getting so much love
on HN.

Let's assume it's tongue in cheek that the author says the best marriage is
when "you've been dating at least 3 years before getting engaged, making a
combined $125k salary, go to church together regularly, and don’t worry about
your partner’s wealth nor looks".

All the data says is that those happen to be some attributes of long lasting
marriages and not necessarily when combined together.

How can we know what about the pressures of a marriage where the the couple
can't afford to go away on a Honeymoon? What social pressures could there be
on a couple that spend over $20k on a wedding? How can we know about the
stigma of ending a religious marriage when you go to church every week and
invite 200 people to your wedding?

Most importantly - there's zero information about the quality of the
marriage...

The site is responding intermittently but as rhiever says you can get it here
[https://i.imgur.com/rABtgo9.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/rABtgo9.jpg)

edit: I hate to write so negatively so I'd like to say that it's great that
there's so much useful and honest marriage advice on here as a result of this
discussion.

------
conistonwater
Warren Buffett once expressed his opinion on this here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a9Lx9J8uSs#t=2147](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a9Lx9J8uSs#t=2147)

It's actually really good advice for many other things too.

------
rhiever
Here is a rehost of the web page since it went down:
[https://i.imgur.com/rABtgo9.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/rABtgo9.jpg)

------
sreitshamer
When I told my father I wanted to get married he just asked, "Do you get
along?" I think that's the most important question if you're expecting to stay
married for the rest of your life.

Many of the things cited in TFA are symptoms of not getting along.

Also, I recommend always assuming you're the one who's wrong when there's a
disagreement. You probably are, and if you're not it still works out better :)

~~~
tjradcliffe
"Getting along" is a key aspect of robustness in a relationship:
[http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1021](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1021)

Robustness is under-rated in the romantic ideals people are sold (and I do
mean "sold"), which emphasize "perfection" under various guises.

The romantic ideal is someone who is not just a perfect match for you, but is
a unique match for you, not because of your history and shared experiences but
because of some supposedly inherent qualities.

The robust ideal is someone you get along with, who you agree with on a few
fundamentals--which are mostly about attitude--who you've got enough history
with to trust and understand and accept, and who you can negotiate with when
you disagree. There could be a million people out there like that if the
accidents of history were different, and at least half of those properties are
in the relationship, not the person.

Another way I put this is, "You should marry someone you could go through a
divorce with and still love them when you're done." I've seen friends with
fragile relationships go through horrific divorces, whereas ones with robust
relationships, while still unpleasant, generally still love each other when
the dust has settled.

------
Mz
_Couples who elope are 12.5x more likely to end up divorced than couples who
get married at a wedding with 200+ people._

So this article is conflating elopement with not having wedding guests. They
aren't the same thing. I eloped -- got married in secret. No, there were no
wedding guests. That does not mean the two things are identical.

Though, Wikipedia
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elopement_(marriage)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elopement_\(marriage\))
says:

 _To elope, most literally, merely means to run away and to not come back to
the point of origination.[1] More specifically, elopement is often used to
refer to a marriage conducted in sudden and secretive fashion, usually
involving hurried flight away from one 's place of residence together with
one's beloved with the intention of getting married.

Today the term "elopement" is colloquially used for any marriage performed in
haste, with a limited public engagement period or without a public engagement
period. Some couples elope because they dislike or cannot afford an expensive
wedding ceremony, or wish to avoid objections from parents, or religious
obligations._

Which gives me pause because, on the one hand, I married in secret. On the
other hand, I did not actually go anywhere and our circle of mutual friends
all knew our intentions to marry for like a year or more beforehand.

We did end up divorced but we were married for more than 2 decades and the
divorce was amicable. I think it lasted as long as it did and fared as well as
it did in part because we handled our marriage as a very private matter. I
don't think you will ever get me in front of 200+ people to marry. If I ever
remarry, I expect it to be a good marriage that lasts for many years.

------
lucb1e
Interesting! I'm confused though: if you have 200+ people attending your
wedding, you're over 90 percent less likely to divorce. However if you spend
only $1k on the wedding, you're also much less likely to divorce. How does
that add up? The most successful marriages somehow have lots of people on a
marriage for almost no money at all?

~~~
jacinda
I'd be interested to know if the amount spent on the wedding is the amount the
couple personally spent on the wedding or if it's the total amount that was
spent on the wedding.

If it's the former, that means couples whose parents paid the full (or most)
of the cost of the wedding could fall into the 200+ attendees while personally
paying nothing.

~~~
Natsu
Those pretty much have to be correlates for something, but I wonder what?

------
vlarson
As the co-author of "The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists
and Rebels" (Seal Press, Sept. 28) I find the post and the following comments
intriguing. Correlation is not causation, and sociologist Philip Cohen has
done a fine job of pointing out the difference with similar findings reported
by the National Marriage Project
([http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/my-
rejectio...](http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/my-rejection-of-
the-national-marriage-projects-before-i-do/)).

I love what Scott Burson says, "Your marriage will be what you make it." Amen!
A marriage license doesn't dictate how you set up your marriage. It doesn't
require that the couples live together, have kids or not, be monogamous, etc.
That is up to the couple to decide and in truth, we don't all marry for the
same reasons. The license grants you more than 1,000 government perks (and why
the government gives those out based on a person's love life is a curious
thing) and marriage still matters to many of us, otherwise you wouldn't see
the push by same-sex couples to be treated equally.

Our book offers seven alt models that couples have already chosen to break
free of the one-size-fits-all, until death-do-us-part traditional model, which
doesn't work anymore. We no longer marry for the same reasons that marriage
was created. Time for new models that set up couples for success by how they
define success, not just longevity. Please check out what we're doing:
[http://sealpress.com/books/the-new-i-do/](http://sealpress.com/books/the-new-
i-do/)

------
edw519
Lots of data, graphs, and interesting thinking, but what sticks out the most:

881 words about "What makes for a stable marriage" and not one of them is
"love".

This piece demonstrates two of the most common memes that continue to
perpetuate hn:

1\. correlation != causation

2\. academia != real life

I wonder if OP is married and how the joys and challenges of maintaining a
stable marriage for many years would have affected this post.

~~~
emotionalcode
Of all the things you can objectively measure in the world, I am sure a
significant majority would disagree that you can measure love.

It is possible to love someone deeply and still separate. The cause of
separation might be out of love.

------
maurits
One critical note to

 _" The particularly scary part here is that the average cost of a wedding in
the U.S. is well over $30,000, which doesn’t bode well for the future of
American marriages."_

Since wedding costs are not Gaussian (quick guess exponential), the mean is
not very informative. Even misleading.

------
basman
This is a misleading article in the following sense: the implication is "here
are these seven surprising factors that are correlated with successful
marriages". Except, in recent decades US divorce rates have bifurcated into
two groups — well educated, affluent people who get married later and have
lower divorce rates, and less well-off people who have a higher divorce rate.
Given this one fact, most of the factors in the article are completely
unsurprising. For example, it would be surprising if going on a honeymoon was
_not_ correlated positively with a successful marriage given that it is
positively correlated with income.

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FiddlerClamp
I wonder how this correlates to gay marriage.

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MichaelGG
I can't help but feel that there must be some other underlying variables and
the ones they measured are just reflections. For instance, the culture -- I'd
imagine Mormons tend to not get divorced, have lots of attendees without
spending a lot of money, and they seem to really be into marriage, so perhaps
some of this could reduce to just "be Mormon".

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linguafranca
Anyone else drawn the connection to [http://xkcd.com/55/](http://xkcd.com/55/)
yet?

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linguafranca
Funny how we feel the need to do statistics and draw charts to figure out what
makes a good marriage, when all that's really needed is a little common sense.

1\. Communicate your feelings instead of bottling them up.

2\. Be selfless and stop focusing so much on getting your wants and desires,
and trust that your needs will be met.

3\. Be realistic, expect that you won't always get your way, things will go
wrong sometimes, and you just have to do your best.

4\. If you make a vow that your marriage is going to be forever, try sticking
to that instead of thinking divorce is even an option.

5\. Stop focusing so much on pleasure. Even Plato got this one right. Life
isn't about maximizing your pleasure and minimizing pain, it's about doing
what's right. Obsessing over getting pleasure KILLS marriages. It's what gave
men the stereotype of being sex-driven and what gave women the stereotype of
lying there in bed just waiting for it to be over.

6\. Stop believing the media. They completely get marriage and sex wrong, in
every sense, in every place. Turn off your TVs and think for yourselves about
what it should look like and be. Sex is a wonderful way to celebrate the most
intimate union of your marriage, but it's not this amazing thing everyone
should obsess about getting all the time.

~~~
wglb
Oh if it were simply _at 's really needed is a little common sense_

None of this really bears out.

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xtester
Despite good intentions, I think the article would be better off with a title
like spurious correlations.

Please see [http://tylervigen.com/](http://tylervigen.com/) for more
intriguing, though meaningless correlations.

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xarien
Communication.

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jjsz
For the majority: real integration with the family.

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platz
I think the folk who cry "how is this topic relevant to hn" are silent when
the topic is interesting to them, and then will speak up if they get bored.

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patricklorio
That there are no rogue couples.

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ourmandave
Separate bathrooms.

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jokoon
regular sex

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dschiptsov
Ability of _each_ to continuously change/evolve/learn - not to get stuck as
some "set in stone" personality, to be always attractive as a "new"
personality.

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venomsnake
The way I read that graphs - people in upper middle and high class tend to
avoid divorce (probably for saving face). It says nothing about stability of
the marriage.

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thisjepisje
Two horses.

