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Are you and your significant other starting to use the “M” word? Are you asking questions like should we get married? Do you want to get married? When should we get married? Or what would your parents think if we got married?
There’s no question about the fact that marriage can be a wonderful thing. Your husband or wife can be your best friend, your partner, your confidant and, of course, your lover. These are the things your friends will emphasize if you’ve discussed marriage with them. “Oh, yes, marriage is great.” “Marriage is just the best thing we’ve ever done.” Or “you really should get married – it’s wonderful.”
But while your friends are telling you how great marriage is, there are things they’re just not telling you and if they did, you might give the idea of marriage a second or even third thought. Here are 10 of these nasty, little marriage secrets.
Marriage is going the way of the dodo bird
According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of American adults that have never been married has reached a new high. Two years ago, about 20% of American adults aged 25 and older (about 42 million people) had never been married. This compares with the 10% of those of that same age in 1960. There are several reasons for this. For one thing Americans are staying in school longer. They are also focusing more on their careers after they graduate and then getting married later in life. In fact, the median age for women getting married is now 27 and 29 for men, which is an increase from age 20 for women and 33 for man in 1960. But as you might guess there is one group of people where marriage is on the rise – same-sex couples. This has increased more than 50% to about 130,000 in 2012.
We’re into infidelity
Two years ago a research company affiliated with the University of Chicago found that some 12.3% of all married women and 19% of married men admitted that they’ve had extramarital affairs. While most Americans seem to favor monogamy, many of them would cheat if they thought they could get away with it. An interesting contradiction is that a survey done by the USA Network found that 82% of those that responded said they had “zero tolerance” for cheating but 81%, said they would cheat if they believed they wouldn’t get caught.
We planned our divorce before we planned our wedding
If you’re contemplating marriage have you thought about a prenuptial agreement? A recent survey done by the American Academy of Matrimonial lawyers found that about 63% of the attorneys queried said they have seen an increase in the number of people requesting prenuptial agreements. The major reason for this is probably the fact that so many people are marrying later in life and have amassed a significant amount of assets by the time they get married. This makes the idea of a prenup more attractive.
The more money spent on the wedding, the shorter the marriage
Another interesting fact is that the more money that is spent on a wedding the shorter will be the marriage – at least according to a study done recently by economics professors at Emory University. What they found in surveying 3000 couples is that those who spent $20,000 or more on their weddings were 46% more likely to get divorced than the average couple. In comparison, couples that spent between $1000 and $5000 were 18% less likely to split up.
Social media can kill a marriage
In the survey done recently by the USA Network, 86% of those that responded said that it’s much easier to cheat thanks to social networking and almost 33% said they had had an emotional or romantic relationship online. How can you prevent this? One thing you might try is setting time limits and boundaries on social media usage. For example, you might agree that each of you will spend no more than one hour an evening on Facebook, Twitter or whatever. But don’t start spying on your spouse’s use of social networking. This not only signals a lack of trust in your partner but if you’re caught could actually get you kicked out of the house.
Money keeps us together
According to the Emory study quoted above, the more money you make the more likely it is that you will stay together. Couples making more than $125,000 a year are 51% less likely to divorce than those that earn less than $25,000 a year. Of course, there is a strong correlation between earnings and education and people with better educations appear to be more likely to stay married. People with a high school diploma have a divorce rate of 42.8% by the time they reach middle age while only 26.5% of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher split the blanket.
You can’t be too old to get a divorce
While you might think that by the time married couples reach their 50s they would’ve gotten past the idea of divorce but this is not necessarily true. Adults that are 50 or older accounted for more than 25% of divorces in 2010, which is up from less than 10% in 1990. The good news is that the national divorce and annulment rate fell from four per 1000 people in 2000 to 3.6 per 1000 people in 2011. So more people are staying together and for longer.
The cost of our wedding left us broke
Do you know the average cost of a wedding? In 2014 it was $29,858 according to a survey that was done by TheKnot.com of 20,000 brides. This includes an average of nearly $13,000 for a venue (including the necessary food), more than $5500 for the engagement ring and $2400 for a photographer – and this excludes the cost of a honeymoon. Why is this? Couples that marry later are more likely to be spending their own money. This means they no longer have to stick to a budget set by mom and dad.
It was her idea to split up
Women initiate two thirds of divorces according to the Marriage Project. This is because, for one thing, divorce laws tend to favor women with regards to child custody. A less kind hearted explanation is that women are more likely to have unfaithful husbands than husbands are to have unfaithful wives. In addition, women have become stronger and more independent over the past 30 years, and are more confident that they can stand on their own. Many of them have well paying jobs so that the idea of being on their own doesn’t seem as frightening as it might have 30 years ago.
We sort of screwed our guests
Finally, as our economy has improved there has been an increase in destination weddings that have more lavish ceremonies. This means that the poor folks on the guest lists are spending more money accordingly. In fact, this year guests were projected to spend about $592 per couple on the average per wedding. Plus, they were dropping another $109 on gifts per wedding. One of the results of this is about 43% of us say that we have declined attending a wedding for financial reasons. This is based on a poll done by the nonprofit organization American Consumer Credit Counseling.
Love conquers all?
There is the old saying that love conquers all but this may not necessarily be true. What conquers all in marriage is usually a combination of hard work and compatibility. But then as Jenna McCarthy points out in the following video, for women the secret to staying married might be as simple as making sure you’re always thinner than your husband …
