Premarital Relationships: How Do They

¶ … Premarital Relationships: How Do They Fare?

Reading the divorce statistics today, one might almost think that a person has a better chance of winning the lottery than of staying married. This is true despite the fact that (at least one assumes this to be the case!) that nearly everyone who gets married at least hopes that the relationship will endure. Given the rate at which marriages fail and the competing desire for individuals to have their own marriages succeed, it is vital that there be accurate research about what helps certain relationships to be successful. Such research can be used in two distinct ways by people who are thinking of getting married. The first would be that a potential couple assess themselves and their relationship using the criteria laid out by researchers and determine if they more closely resemble those who have succeeded in terms of marriage and those who have not. A potential couple could also examine the literature and determine if there is anything that successful couples habitually do that they do not and so change their own behavior accordingly. In marriage, as in all other forms of human behavior, there is no reason to invent the wheel (or the good form of communication, etc.) again.

Of course, there are an infinite number of possible variations in terms of what allows one pair of people to live together in relative harmony for 50 years while others are filing for divorce six weeks after the rehearsal dinner. But I believe that there are also similarities among those relationships that succeed and those that fail. In this paper I will examine one of the factors that I believe to be key in terms of assessing the probability that a marital relationship will succeed over the long-term, which is the length that a couple has been in a relationship before marriage. In general, the literature on this subject suggests that a short premarital relationship (one lasting three months or less) is a predictor of a marital relationship that has a higher possibility of failing than one that springs forth from a relationship that is longer established. Again, I must emphasize that this is not true in every case and that both individual factors (the people's emotional maturity and commitment, for example) and larger factors such as the couple's religious beliefs and their cultural understanding of marriage play an enormous role in determining how good a predictor of long-term marital success a short-term premarital relationship is.

General Attributes Predictive of a Stable Marriage

There are a range of attributes that are suggestive of a stable marital relationship. (I should note that while I am using the phrase "marital relationship" I believe that the same statements can be made about other long-term committed relationships such as same-sex civil commitments or same-sex marriages where they are legal.) Some of these attributes are true (or not) of individuals and some are true (or not) of couples as a unit. And some are under the control of the individuals concerned and some are not. I will begin with a discussion of those attributes that are generally predictive of good chances for a long-term relationship that adhere (or not) in an individual before moving on to discuss those attributes that can be found at the level of a couple.

In general, my findings (based on the relevant literature -- as well as the anecdotal evidence of my own experience) are that people who are involved with each other for only a short period of time before they marry (a period that I am defining here as three months or less) are less likely to stay married than are those who have a longer relationship before they marry.

There are some exceptions to this statement, or perhaps it would be more accurate to note that there are limitations to this statement. Marriage is as much a cultural (indeed, I would argue that it is more so) than an individual enterprise and thus one's expectations of the nature of the marriage contract are heavily influenced by the culture(s) in which one was raised. (Thus the issue becomes increasingly complicated the more cultures there are involved.) A number of cultures today have either arranged or close-to-arranged marriages. In such cultural systems, the people getting married generally do not know each other for a long time or intimately before they marry. In such cases, this lack of a long acquaintanceship before marriage is not necessarily predictive of a poor outcome for the marriage.

This should make sense to us: If one is raised with the expectation that one will marry someone whom one's family has ascertained to be an appropriate mate and knows that one is expected to stay in that marriage, then divorce is relatively unlikely. It may also be that the marriage will in fact be a relatively happy one.

However, for the purposes of this paper I am not focusing on cultures and subcultures in which all (or nearly all) marriages are based on short acquaintanceship and family involvement in the choice of a mate since this is not the norm for American marriages, which is what I am focusing on here.

In the following discussion of the traits that are associated with the likelihood of successful long-term relationship I should note that some of these traits are generally predictive of a high chance of a success for a long-term relationship independent of how long-term the relationship had existed before marriage. I would, however, argue that while some traits are generally good for long-term relationships regardless of whether or not a marriage (or civil commitment) is preceded by a short-term or a long-term relationship. As such, an emphasis on these traits is an answer to the more general question of what helps any long-term relationship succeed. However, I argue that traits that are helpful to the success of all long-term relationships are especially helpful (and potentially even necessary) for the success of long-term marriages that arise from a short-term premarital relationship.

Marriages based on short-term premarital relationships are less likely to succeed than those relationships in which the two individuals concerned have a longer acquaintanceship with each other. Given that individuals in such a relationship can be seen as being handicapped in some sense by this particular facet of their relationship, it is essential that they have as many other, positive factors in their corner as possible. I am not, of course, arguing that it is impossible for marriages based on short-term premarital relationships to succeed; rather I am arguing that (based on the evidence) it is simply more difficult. But to some extent this greater difficulty can be compensated for with other factors such as both partners' having a high sense of self-esteem. Such a factor is independent of the length of the premarital relationship (or at least it is in most cases). Other factors can also be seen as compensating for a short premarital relationship period, such as good communication skills. However, such attributes are only partly independent of the length of the premarital relationship since good communication arises both from individual attributes (such as personality style and the rules concerning communication in one's family of origin) and from the length of time that one has been engaged in creating healthy and effective methods of communication with another person.

Honeymoon Periods

One thing that became clear to me as I researched this paper is that the question of the relationship between the length of premarital relationship and the success of a marriage and the question of specific personal traits and the potential for an individual to maintain a long-term direction is in many ways a chicken-and-egg question. By this I mean that certain traits are associated with the ability to maintain a long-term relationships. And certain traits are also associated with the tendency to plunge into marriage. And these two sets of traits are connected in complex ways.

One of the major values in research such as this, which looks at what are some of the predictors of a successful long-term marriage, is that by identifying what it is that is likely to make marriages last one can help couples better assess their own chances of marital success (Larson, 2000, p. 27). Of course, there is no way to reduce the probability of marital success to a few cut-and-dried rules. There is no way to say, for example, that no marriage preceded by a premarital relationship of under three months will automatically fail: Human relationships are simply not this predictable or this simple.

However, as should be clear from the research examined here, there are good predictors of what allow many long-term relationships to succeed. Some of those predictors arise from relatively stable, unchanging aspects of a person's character, such as a person's sense of self-esteem, an attribute that generally endures throughout a person's life. Other predictors arise within the context of a particular relationship and so change over a person's lifetime.

How much one tends to idealize one's partner is a trait that can have a substantial effect on the possibility of a successful long-term marriage. Those individuals who are most likely to idealize their partners are those who are also most likely to be disappointed. It also seems to be the case that those most likely to idealize their partners are those who are most likely to move quickly from engagement (or an equivalent but less formal relationship) to marriage. Such a quick trip from first date to the altar is often a very poor choice in the long run, as summarized below:

Waller... assumed that courting couples are generally blissful, optimistic lovers who, in order to sustain their romance, draw attention to their desirable qualities, suppress thoughts and behaviors that might weaken their romance, and try to see the best in the other person. After they are married, however, spouses may no longer be as motivated to "put their best foot forward" to impress their marriage partners; moreover, the intimacy of marriage makes sustaining such idealized images difficult. When idealized images give way to more realistic ones and the intense romance of early marriage weakens, as it usually does, marriage partners may be disappointed by the changes (Niehuis, Skogrand, & Huston, 2006, http://ncsu.edu/ffci/publications / )

Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, it is interesting to note that the authors cited above found that both a very short and a very long courtship was generally predictive of a poor prospect for a long-term happy marriage. The description of the reasons behind this bifurcated finding (this is the authors' speculation, one with which I agree) is based on the feelings that arise in the premarital experience. It is important to emphasize this fact, that much of what determines a marriage's possible success come to light (or are produced) during the premarital relationship. This is not surprising, or it should not be, but it is probably the case that too many people, when they fall in love, do not consider how what they are feeling and thinking in that moment will influence the possible success or failure of a marriage Larson, 2000, p. 37).

Niehuis and her colleague (2002) also found some seemingly contradictory findings. Partners were likely to experience a steeper decline in affection during the first two years of marriage when the couple dated for either a shorter or longer than average (27 months) period of time and when partners had a courtship driven forward by either extreme or little passion (assessed by how quickly partners fell in love with each other, how soon they had sexual relations, and how soon they were certain that they wanted to marry one another... These seemingly contradictory findings suggest that loss of affection early in marriage results from two different courtship experiences.

In Courtship Experience 1, some premarital partners may blindly rush into marriage, because they have very passionate but short courtships. These couples may experience loss of affection early in marriage because of discoveries about their partner and the quality of their relationship.

I have added the emphasis to the second paragraph because it is this experience that is relevant to this paper. A short premarital relationship is all-too-inducive to allowing people to ignore differences as they float along in the hormone-induced euphoria that attends the first months of a relationship.

A very dry way of summarizing this phenomenon follows. If we take these findings to be valid (and there is no reason not to), then we are being presented with sound neurological evidence that what happens in the first few months of a relationship is by no means a good basis for long-term marriage or commitment.

It is noteworthy that when we measured the cortisol, testosterone and FSH levels for a second time, 12 -- 18

months later, in those 16 (out of the total of 24) subjects who had maintained the same relationship but were no longer in the same mental state to which they had referred during the first assessment and now reported feeling calmer and no longer "obsessed" with the partner, the hormone levels were no different from those of the control group. This finding would suggest that the hormonal changes which we observed are reversible, state-dependent and probably related to some physical and/or psychological features typically associated with falling in love.

In conclusion, our study would suggest that falling in love represents a "physiological" and transient condition which is characterized (or underlaid) by peculiar hormonal patterns (Marazziti & Canale, 2003, p. 294).

These findings accord with what many of us have experienced in our own lives: The first few weeks and months of being in love feel dramatically different from "real life" and so should not serve as a basis for making decisions about long-term relationships.

I'm Okay, We're Okay

Among the most important traits that are predictive of the possibility of a healthy long-term relationship is high self-esteem. This might seem counter-intuitive -- that thinking well of oneself is conducive to having a healthy relationship with someone else. But it is important to be aware of the distinction between feeling good about oneself and feeling that one is superior. But the more that one thinks about this, the clearer it becomes that such a trait is indeed good for relationships, for being secure in oneself makes it far easier not to be critical of other people. Having a high level of self-esteem allows one (in general) to be more tolerant and generous of others as well as to be supportive of one's partner (Larson, 2000, p. 119).

We might think about this in terms of physics: If one is trying to balance or stabilize an object that is off-kilter and about to tip over, then one should connect it to something that is absolutely stable, not something that is itself unstable. Of course, as with all of the principles that I will be discussing here, moderation is an important attribute. High self-esteem is a good thing, but there is a point at which high self-esteem becomes arrogance, and thus becomes destructive of the relationship.

I believe that the level of self-esteem that one has is to some extent independent of the relationships that one is in presently or has been in during the past. But as with all of the factors discussed here, it impossible to segregate traits into attributes that one has intrinsically and those that arise from within the context of a relationship since our personality is constantly being shaped throughout our lives both from within and without.

Another key aspect of personality that is highly predictive of a stable, long-term relationship is flexibility (Niehuis, 2006, p. 42). This trait makes intuitive sense, I believe, for most of us have a substantial amount of experience in our own relationships that tells us that when either we or our partner becomes rigid about a subject then there is likely to be conflict. Rigidity in interpersonal relationships can be seen to be a sign of lack of respect for the other person, an excessive privileging of one's own preferences and desires over that of one's partner.

Twinned with the trait of flexibility is that of assertiveness. These are not polar opposites, lying not on the same pole but on adjacent ones (Niehuis, 2006, p. 44). To be assertive is to value one's own choices and beliefs; to be flexible is to value one's partner's choices and beliefs. To be inflexible is to devalue that which is important to one's partner while to lack an appropriate amount of assertiveness (that midpoint between wimpy and belligerent) is to devalue oneself. Balancing one's values, beliefs, habits, etc. with those of one's partner is an essential skill in a relationship. All too often such a balance is barely imaginable to the participants in a couple in which one person's desires and preferences exclude the other's. Such a relationship -- like the objects in that hypothetical physics problem above -- are fundamentally unbalanced. Not only are they likely to topple over themselves but they (the person or our hypothetical physical object) will pull over everything else as well.

A final key trait that the individual likely to succeed in long-term relationships has is that of sociability. Again, this accords with commonsense assumptions about what allows people to get along with each other. Having a relatively high level of sociability is important to many relationships. If one simply does not like being around other people or engaging in non-solitary activities then one will probably find the companionship of a long-term relationship to be wearing rather than comforting. There is a possible exception to this: Two people who are relatively un-social (not anti-social, but rather introspective) may find themselves highly compatible in terms of a long-term relationship. In this case, each person is quite likely to have just the amount of solitude that he or she needs joined with just the right amount of company to avoid feeling isolated.

Skills Key to the Couple

I have been describing those traits that are most useful to the individual in terms of her or his ability to be successful in a long-term relationship. But there are also traits that exist not in one partner or the other but within the relationship itself. The most important of these is good communicational skills. Arguably being able to communicate well is a trait that an individual may possess on his or her own, but on one's own being able to communicate well is a fairly abstract trait. Communication occurs at the minimum in a dyad. For a relationship to succeed, both individuals in it must have basic good communication skills but even more importantly they must be able to communicate well with each other. In other words, their communication styles must mesh with each other (Showers & Zeigler-Hill, 2004, p. 1208).

Communication skills and style are to some extent, of course, individualistic: We think and talk and converse the way that we do because of factors that are specific to ourselves and our personality. But there are also important cultural elements to communication. These cultural "rules" are learned at a very young age and are so internalized by the time that we begin to contemplate marriage that we may not be consciously aware of how much our communication style may be influenced by our culture. As a result, when an individual enters into a relationship with a person from a different cultural background, each person (guided by her or his internalized cultural queues and rules) may find it extremely difficult to communicate. It is as if these two people were paying entirely different games (not to trivialize the issue but rather to provide a possible useful analogy) and wondering why each feels that s/he is losing.

Thus one predictor of a healthy long-term relationship is the sharing of rules for communication. Having rules in common for communication is an easier state to achieve if one has been in a relationship for longer than three months. This is especially true if the two individuals concerned are from different cultures, since people from different cultures in most cases have farther to travel (linguistically and psychologically as well as emotionally) to create and agree to a common set of communication rules.

Individuals who want to craft a common set of rules for talking to (and listening to) each other who come from different cultures should be especially attentive to the following aspects of communication. It is important to note that people from different subcultures can also have different communication skills so that while two individuals may both be American (or Bolivian or Nigerian, for that matter) this does not ensure that they have the same cultural communication styles. For example, in my own family I have an aunt who was raised in Alabama to be a good (albeit modern) Southern belle and an uncle who was raised in a very rough neighborhood in Boston. The two of them nearly divorced after a few months of marriage because they were always at cross-purposes with each in terms of trying to understand what the other was saying. They have told me that the reason that they ended up staying married (for the last 22 years at this point) is that they saw a marriage counselor who had them actually write down the rules that they wanted to use in talking to each other.

The Rules of Communication

Among the issues that have to be agreed to in general in terms of clear communication are the following. Agreement over these issues tends to create a sound basis for a long-term relationship. (The following summary is based on Flowers, 2007):

Who gets to begin or end a conversation. This can be an especial problem when partners come from cultures that designate the power to start or end a conversation to one gender or the other in different ways. If one partner believes that men and women have equal rights in terms of starting or ending a conversation and the other believes that only men get to do so then there will be significant communication problems.

Turn-taking in conversation. This too is often an aspect of gender in terms of communication, with those from more egalitarian cultures setting conversational "rules" that allow each person a turn before the other person gets to speak. In other cultures, those with more power in the relationship (usually the man) is allowed to take more turns than the person with less power. If one person gets to have more turns in a conversation, the other person is likely to feel (literally) silenced, which will in all likelihood create a poor prognosis for the relationship.