
What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2 - redknight666
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/11/06/what-makes-for-a-stable-marriage-part-2/
======
blisterpeanuts
He didn't address couples counseling and therapy as factors in keeping
marriages going. There's always been marriage counseling; today it's a
professional therapist you hire, but in the old days it was your
priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you
on how to get along.

Today in First World industrial societies, couples just try to wing it, moving
out from the parents' house as soon as economically possible, living in a tiny
nuclear household, sometimes very far away from the parents, and few humble
themselves enough to try counseling.

My wife and I have been getting couples counseling on and off since before we
were married, and it's helped a lot in learning how to communicate. Those
knock-down, drag out fights are today a distant memory and instead we try to
focus on communicating our needs, on expressing our feelings in a non-
confrontational manner, etc. I'm all for more couples counseling.

Kids help, too. My amateur theory is that fundamentally speaking a couple is
supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. Kids are inconvenient
and expensive and people mistakenly feel they'll have a happier life without
them, but in a certain sense it's an empty life.

Some people probably should not raise kids, but the majority probably should,
but also should learn better communication and then they will have a healthier
relationship with both their spouse and their children.

Just my humble opinions :)

~~~
john_b
> _" Kids are inconvenient and expensive and people mistakenly feel they'll
> have a happier life without them, but in a certain sense it's an empty
> life."_

s/kids/startups/ to see how ridiculous this sounds. Any kind of presumption
that other people should make certain major life decisions a certain way just
because you feel that will make them happy sounds extremely presumptuous.

~~~
ArtDev
Selfish jerks can benefit the most from having kids :) Unless your legit nuts
or completely broke, it is a good thing for all.

Having kids is like going to college. Its expensive, difficult and
challenging.. but in the end, you are sad to think of what would have happened
if you had not taken the plunge.

------
shittyanalogy
None of these things _make_ for a _stable_ marriage. They are statistics about
marriages studied. You don't get to draw the inverse conclusion. And besides
just because a marriage doesn't end in divorce doesn't mean it's stable.

~~~
humanrebar
FTA:

    
    
      Of course, it’s important for us to keep in mind
      that these are all correlations with marriage
      stability, and they could be telling us any
      number of things. For example, the “having kids
      with your spouse” correlation could go either
      way: Either people in stabler marriages are more
      likely to have kids in wedlock, or people in
      less stable (unhappy) marriages tend not to have
      kids. All of the explanations I wrote above are
      my own interpretations of the correlations, but
      keep an open mind when thinking about what could
      really be driving these correlations with
      marriage stability.

~~~
shittyanalogy
That disclaimer is not enough and doesn't justify a link bait title.

------
andyjohnson0
_" It’s particularly interesting to note that the education difference matters
more for women than men: Women are 50% more likely to end up divorced when
there is an education difference versus men at only 32% more likely."_

For heterosexual marriages, wouldn't the percentages be the same? If a given
number of divorces will always produce a equal number of male and female
divorcees.

Or is the author saying that the direction of difference is important? Eg, a
woman is more likely to divorce her husband if she is more highly educated
than him, but not vice versa.

Is there some missing information here, or am I being dense?

~~~
ptnapoleon
The author addresses this in the comments. He states that there are likely
more divorces for one gender than the other in his data set. Which implies to
me that individuals, rather than couples, are surveyed about their
marriages/divorces.

So if he surveyed 10 women and 10 men, those 10 women weren't married to those
10 men.

If that isn't the case, then I'm also not sure how that could be the case
given that he states all marriages examined were heterosexual in nature.

~~~
nck4222
I believe this is it. From the source paper:

"We excluded respondents who had a non-US IP address, reported having a same-
sex marriage, reported an age at marriage of less than 13 years old, or were
above age 60."

The paper used mTurk to get ~3000 responses to their survey. So it's basically
saying "the men who answered these questions ended up having this score, the
women who answered these questions ended up having a slightly different score"

EDIT: Link to paper,
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480)

~~~
andyjohnson0
Apart from the small sample size, if they collected data by mechnical turk
then I wonder what sort of biases that introduces? In the paper you linked,
Frances and Mialon state:

 _" Samples of mTurk workers have been found to be more representative of the
US population than in-person convenience samples, standard internet samples,
and typical college samples"_

I am somewhat sceptical of this, and there seems to be some evidence to back-
up my scepticism [1][2][3]. In particular, [2] states:

 _" In sum, the MTurk sample is younger, more male, poorer, and more highly
educated than Americans generally. This matches the image of who you might
think would be online doing computer tasks for a small amount of money."_

Which are some of the factors that the marriage study itself seeks to examine.
This looks like lazy data collection methodology to me.

[1] [http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/7/10/fooled-
twice...](http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/7/10/fooled-twice-shame-
on-who-problems-with-mechanical-turk-stud.html)

[2] [http://themonkeycage.org/2012/12/19/how-representative-
are-a...](http://themonkeycage.org/2012/12/19/how-representative-are-amazon-
mechanical-turk-workers/)

[3] [http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2010/03/new-
demographi...](http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2010/03/new-demographics-
of-mechanical-turk.html)

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
It merely says that it's more representative than the other groups, not that
it's particularly representative. For instance college samples are massively
unrepresentative (younger, smarter, probably wealthier than average).

Essentially it's just a more representative sample than these other horribly
unrepresentative samples he's listing.

------
barbudorojo
I like statistics, but I think here we have personal and cultural factors that
make statistics of no sense if you are trying to use probabilities for your
personal life.

What I think is a key factor in an stable marriage is the ability to
communicate, share and enjoy with your partner. I have been more than 20 years
married and my wife wonders why our marriage is so much alive, I don't know
the secret but we try to enjoy together and share ours life. The key factor is
real communication.

Edited: Grammar.

~~~
ddebernardy
Possibly more important than communication is the ability to pick your battles
and let go a bone when it's not worth fighting for.

Long term couples invariably survive because the two involved never wanted to
divorse at the same time.

~~~
barbudorojo
"Long term couples invariably survive because the two involved never wanted to
divorce at the same time"

If I may be allowed a little joke, statistics here are really of little use in
order to estimate a conditional probability (i.e, the probability that you
(yourself) get divorced). But your sentence, while true, seems to be produced
by a excessive rational mind an sounds like a pure truism, anyway, enhancing
that truism:

In other not to get divorced, when you want to divorce just let go the bone
and wait for the other one to change opinion. You will have a long lasting
marriage.

Unfortunately, that theorem doesn't guarantee a happy one. (Sorry HN for the
little reddit).

~~~
ddebernardy
It goes a little deeper though.

The quote about not wanting to divorse at the same time isn't mine and has
been attributed to many. Because it's funny, and (reportedly) inherently true
for anyone with a decade of wedlock to speak about.

The remark on picking your battles, in contrast, is in no way as simplistic as
you seem to suggest it is -- pardon if I misunderstood.

In essence, psychological studies back that idea, and researchers on the topic
are able to predict with relative reliability whether a young couple will
survive 5 or 10 years or not.

The gist of their criteria, as I understood it anyways, amounts to whether
either or both of the two have a giant ego trip or not.

So if you want a long-term marriage, which most people do when they say yes,
well... learn to give up on what's not so important in retrospect, and pick a
partner that does -- or will probably learn to do -- the same.

The less fighting, the less likely either of the two wants to divorse. And
that gets us back to the first point.

~~~
nevergetenglish
In my country, with loads of unemployment (23%) and people struggling to meet
ends, some people don't divorce because they can't afford it. Harsh but true.

Just a litte question, why using divorse and not divorce, just spelling or any
other reason?

------
Bill_Dimm
It's a shame the "being the same age" item didn't separate the data for men
being older from the data for women being older (for heterosexual marriages).
With society being somewhat more accepting of older men marrying younger women
rather than the other way around, it would be interesting to see if marriage
success agreed with that or not.

~~~
gmarx
I disagree that society is more accepting of older men marrying younger women.
There is a different reaction to it, a different set of assumed scenarios, but
in my limited experience people accept both until the age difference goes over
about a decade.

------
Steuard
These are neat comparisons, in both part 1 and part 2 (especially the
strikingly opposite effects of big weddings vs. expensive weddings near the
end of part 1). But boy, what I wouldn't give to see error bars on those
graphs!

~~~
rhiever
All of the differences highlighted are statistically significant (p < 0.05) in
the multivariate model. So there's that. :-)

The downside is that the paper only presents probabilities relative to a
reference point, but doesn't give raw probabilities.

~~~
Steuard
Even, say, the difference between "never attend church" and "sometimes attend
church" (which evidently makes divorce 10% more likely)? Or how about the
difference between household incomes of $85k and $110k (bars differ by 3% out
of about 40%)?

But I'm glad to know that these are all results with low p-values, anyway:
that adds some real confidence to these results. (Though I ought to ask: how
many of these significant p-values were between, say, 0.03 and 0.05? How many
different correlations were originally considered in the study before they
identified these significant ones?)

~~~
rhiever
Check out the paper (Table 3) for significance statements:
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480)

Some of the trends in Part 1 are not statistically significant (e.g., "never
attend church" vs. "sometimes attend church"), but I presented them regardless
because they have a pretty clear trend. I believe p-values are only presented
in comparison to the reference point.

~~~
Steuard
Oh, man, I _knew_ I was cruising for a "it's right there in the paper"
response. Well-deserved, I'll admit it: I'm being lazy. But then, that's why I
like error bars on my graphs.

Thanks for the nicely presented data, regardless!

------
skywhopper
These statistics are interesting, but they are useless for individuals looking
for a stable marriage, or couples attempting to foster one. Put simply, the
headline is wrong. It implies this is information you can use to _make_ a
stable marriage. But all it provides is a summary of traits of existing stable
marriages. Knowing those facts is unlikely to contribute to a stable marriage.

In fact, if anyone took them seriously as a guide to how to deal with their
own marriage situation, they would find these facts only add stress and
redirect blame in useless directions:

* "We _have_ to have a kid, otherwise the statistics say we'll get divorced!!"

* "I guess I should have known better than to marry someone without a Master's degree."

Do those attitudes seem like a recipe for success?

~~~
humanrebar

      [...] but they are useless for individuals looking for
      a stable marriage, or couples attempting to foster
      one.
    

I agree, as does the author if you read the bottom of his post.

That being said, I don't see these sorts of facts come up around here in
discussions about sociology, childhood development, poverty rates, etc.

These facts may not be useful to people in the middle of parenthood or
marriage, but they are useful to:

* young people that need some raw data to help them figure out what lifestyles might work best * people studying larger trends about society and how people are doing overall

It's true that the data doesn't point to a recipe for success, but it's still
important to be aware of the data because it's true. Figuring out how it's
useful is the next step.

------
redknight666
Part 1 is here: [http://www.randalolson.com/2014/10/10/what-makes-for-a-
stabl...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/10/10/what-makes-for-a-stable-
marriage/)

~~~
spindritf
And comments
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8442036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8442036)

------
ottorobotto
I find that the Gale–Shapley algorithm is generally a good solution to this
problem.

------
platz
Also a good read: [http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2014/11/06/7-ways-to-have-a-
go...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2014/11/06/7-ways-to-have-a-good-
marriage/)

------
Someone1234
If you enjoy this type of thing might I recommend OKCupid's blog "OkTrends." I
am married but yet I continue to read OkCupid's blog, just too fascinating:

[http://blog.okcupid.com/](http://blog.okcupid.com/)

Today they have something on race, but if you look at their historical stuff
they've looked at tons of other areas, most of which is pretty interesting.

As an example of a good one:

[http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-
woma...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-woman/)

------
crayola
"On the bright side, the longer your marriage lasts, the less likely you are
to divorce."

Emmm.. Not too surprising, is it? Divorces kind of tend to terminate marriages
early.

~~~
waqf
It's not surprising, but it's not logically inevitable.

Suppose every couple divorced exactly on their 50th anniversary if they were
both still alive. Then a couple that has been married 49 years is almost
certain to divorce, whereas a newly married couple has a reasonable chance of
dying first.

------
ArtDev
For a more in depth analysis check out "The Seven Principles of Making
Marriage Work", a book based on decades of research at the Seattle "Love Lab".
Dr Gottman has written other books, but this is the book on marriage research.
[http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Principles-Making-Marriage-
Work/...](http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Principles-Making-Marriage-
Work/dp/0609805797)

~~~
tjradcliffe
Gottman is selling just-so stories. His "predictors" aren't actually
predictors, but classifiers.

In machine learning terms, he gets his amazing results ("can predict which
couples will stay together in just five minutes!") only on the training set,
which as anyone with machine learning experience knows, is trivially easy: you
can get 91% accuracy on training data consisting of random numbers in many
cases.

Reference:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/03/can_y...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/03/can_you_really_predict_the_success_of_a_marriage_in_15_minutes.html)

------
thyrsus
I didn't see this addressed in the comments on Part 1: how is it possible that
expensive marriages had more effect on women's divorce rate than it had on
men's?

For multiple reasons it is not plausible that a strong correlation within
lesbian weddings skewed the results. Was the data self-reported, and this
reflects imperfect memory of the expense? Were they only looking at the
expense from that partner's side of the family?

------
PavlovsCat
Read Erich Fromm. All of it, or at least the stuff he wrote about psychology
and love. If you then feel you still have to add something, go for it.
Otherwise, just recommend Erich Fromm and not only will you save everybody
time, but also bad advice.

------
mfonda
Clicked on this link expecting it to be something about the Stable marriage
problem or Gale-Shapley algorithm. Still interesting data though.

------
DontBeADick
#hashtagsarestupid

------
qwerta
I have great advice howto improve your health and productivity tenfold: DO NOT
GET MARRIED! EVER! :-)

~~~
shabda
* Married men are more productive (Or at least earn more): [http://econ.ucdenver.edu/public/laura/Class/korenmanneumark....](http://econ.ucdenver.edu/public/laura/Class/korenmanneumark.pdf)

* married men live longer : [http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mens_Healt...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mens_Health_Watch/2010/July/marriage-and-mens-health)

~~~
qwerta
Correction: married men must earn more & non-divorced men live longer :-)

~~~
Danieru
Sorry, which study did you cite for this correction? Or are you just proposing
a potential confounding variable?

