The Keys to a Successful Marriage

September 21, 2008 | 1 Comment

Extract from: E-Course given by Save My Marriage Today.

According to Michael P. Johnson, professor of sociology at Penn State, there are three things that keep a person in a marriage: people want to stay, they feel they ought to stay, and/or they have to stay. This combination of personal, moral, and structural commitment serves to keep people in marriages.

Notice that commitment keeps people in marriage–not happiness. Dr. Ted Huston of the University of Texas Austin studied couples from courtship to marriage. His ten-year-plus study exploded many popular misconceptions about love. For example, he found that many recently wed couples did not experience newlywed bliss; in fact, couples whose marriages began with “Hollywood romance” intensity soon burned out. A couple expecting wedded bliss every day of their lives was actually more likely to divorce than a couple with a less exciting relationship, because they were more likely to consider divorce when those intense feelings subsided. Does that mean that less exciting, even lackluster relationships last? They do indeed, perhaps because they have less far to fall.

Research shows that unhappy periods in a marriage are not indicative of future unhappiness. In fact, one study showed that 86% of unhappily married couples who stayed with their marriage were happier five years later–three fifths of whom were “quite” or “very happy.”

According to the 2004 “State of Our Unions” report by the National Marriage Project, the percentage of married people 18 or older who said that their marriage was very happy has declined over the last quarter century, from about 69% in the mid 1970s to 64% for men and 60% for women today. That’s less than two-thirds of the married population who considers themselves very happy in their relationship. Clearly, you don’t have to be blissfully in love or very happy for your relationship to last. What do you need?

It’s not love and luck. It’s commitment and companionship. Commitment means that you have powerful personal, moral, and structural reasons to stay in the relationship. Companionship means that you and your partner form a unified team against whatever challenges life hands you. Team members may fight, disagree, and encounter stalemates, but they know that their happiness and satisfaction in life depends on the success of the team–not on their individual success.

If you want to get the whole e-course, get it FREE at Save My Marriage Today. When you arrived at the site, scroll down below the message from Amy to sign up for the e-course.