Premarital Relationship Length and Long-Term Marriage Success

Introduction: The Question of Courtship Length

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 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. First, a potential couple could assess themselves and their relationship using the criteria laid out by researchers and determine whether they more closely resemble those who have succeeded in marriage or those who have not. Second, a potential couple could examine the literature and determine whether there is anything that successful couples habitually do that they do not, and change their own behavior accordingly. In marriage, as in all other forms of human behavior, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel — or, in this case, the good form of communication.

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 fifty years while others are filing for divorce six weeks after the rehearsal dinner. There are, however, also meaningful similarities among those relationships that succeed and those that fail. This paper examines one of the factors believed to be key in assessing the probability that a marital relationship will succeed over the long term: the length of time a couple has been together 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 higher likelihood of marital failure compared to one that springs from a longer, more established relationship. It must be emphasized that this is not true in every case, and that both individual factors (such as emotional maturity and commitment) and larger factors (such as religious beliefs and cultural understandings of marriage) play an enormous role in determining how predictive a short premarital relationship actually is.

General Attributes Predictive of a Stable Marriage

There are a range of attributes suggestive of a stable marital relationship. It should be noted that while the phrase "marital relationship" is used throughout, the same statements can generally be made about other long-term committed relationships, such as same-sex civil commitments or same-sex marriages where they are legally recognized. Some of these attributes are true — or not — of individuals, and some are true — or not — of couples as a unit. Some are under the control of the individuals concerned, and some are not.

In general, people who are involved with each other for only a short period of time before they marry — defined here as three months or less — are less likely to stay married than those who have a longer relationship before marriage. There are some exceptions to this statement, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there are limitations to it. Marriage is as much a cultural enterprise as it is an individual one — arguably more so — and thus one's expectations of the nature of the marriage contract are heavily influenced by the culture or cultures in which one was raised.

A number of cultures today have either arranged or near-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, the lack of a long acquaintanceship before marriage is not necessarily predictive of a poor marital outcome. This should make intuitive sense: if one is raised with the expectation that one will marry someone whom one's family has ascertained to be an appropriate mate, and one knows that one is expected to remain in that marriage, then divorce is relatively unlikely. The marriage may also in fact be a relatively happy one. However, the focus of this paper is on American marriages, for which arranged or family-directed marriages are not the norm.

Some traits are generally predictive of a high chance of success for a long-term relationship independent of how long the premarital relationship lasted. However, traits that are helpful to the success of all long-term relationships are especially helpful — and potentially even necessary — for marriages that arise from a short premarital relationship. Marriages based on short premarital relationships are, in a sense, handicapped by that particular circumstance, making it essential that the couple have as many other positive factors as possible working in their favor. A short premarital period can, to some extent, be compensated for by factors such as high self-esteem in both partners, since self-esteem is largely independent of the length of the premarital relationship. Good communication skills can also compensate for a short courtship, though they are only partly independent of relationship length, since effective communication arises both from individual attributes and from the cumulative experience of building healthy communicative habits with another person over time.

Honeymoon Periods

One insight that emerged clearly during the research for this paper is that the relationship between premarital courtship length and marital success is, in many ways, a chicken-and-egg problem. Certain traits are associated with the ability to maintain a long-term relationship, and certain traits are also associated with the tendency to rush into marriage — and these two sets of traits are connected in complex ways.

One of the major values of research into predictors of successful long-term marriage is that by identifying what makes marriages last, one can help couples better assess their own chances of marital success (Larson, 2000, p. 27). There is, of course, no way to reduce the probability of marital success to a few cut-and-dried rules. No marriage preceded by a courtship of under three months will automatically fail; human relationships are simply not that predictable or that simple. However, there are good predictors of what allows many long-term relationships to succeed. Some of those predictors arise from relatively stable, unchanging aspects of a person's character — such as self-esteem — while others arise within the context of a particular relationship and therefore 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 probability of a successful long-term marriage. Those individuals most likely to idealize their partners are also most likely to be disappointed, and they also appear to be most likely to move quickly from first meeting to marriage. As Niehuis, Skogrand, and Huston (2006) summarize, drawing on Waller's earlier work:

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.

Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, it is interesting to note that Niehuis and colleagues found that both a very short and a very long courtship were generally predictive of a poor prospect for long-term marital happiness. Their explanation — one with which this paper agrees — is rooted in the feelings that arise during the premarital experience itself. Much of what determines a marriage's possible success comes to light, or is actively produced, during the premarital relationship. 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 the marriage (Larson, 2000, p. 37).

Niehuis and colleagues (2002) also found seemingly contradictory results: partners were likely to experience a steeper decline in affection during the first two years of marriage when the couple had dated for either a shorter or longer than average period (27 months) and when their courtship was driven by either extreme or very little passion. They explain two distinct courtship experiences that lead to this outcome. In the first, some premarital partners blindly rush into marriage because of very passionate but short courtships, and then experience a loss of affection early in marriage as they make discoveries about their partner and the quality of their relationship. A short premarital relationship is all too conducive to allowing people to ignore differences as they float along in the hormone-induced euphoria that attends the first months of a relationship.

Neurological research provides a compelling biological basis for this phenomenon. A study by Marazziti and Canale (2004) found measurable hormonal differences in individuals who had recently fallen in love compared to control subjects. Crucially, when participants were assessed again 12 to 18 months later — after they reported feeling calmer and no longer "obsessed" with their partner — their hormone levels were indistinguishable from those of the control group. The researchers concluded:

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, 2004, p. 294).

These findings accord with what many people have experienced in their own lives: the first few weeks and months of being in love feel dramatically different from ordinary life, and as such should not serve as the primary basis for making decisions about long-term relationships.

Conclusion: Take Your Time

Couples who spend longer than three months courting each other are, in general, more likely to have a successful long-term relationship. This is not universally true, as noted throughout this paper. If the individuals concerned come from a culture in which only a short courtship — or no courtship at all — is the norm, then the findings reported here are essentially irrelevant to their situation. It is also true that some couples succeed in long-term marriages despite having known each other only superficially before marrying (Showers & Zeigler-Hill, 2004, p. 1206).

But in general, one of the best predictors of a successful long-term marriage is a pair of people who know a fair amount about each other going into the marriage and have begun to create shared methods and tools for good communication (Showers & Zeigler-Hill, 2004, p. 1202). Knowing each other well — as was the case with traditional long engagements — helps couples begin to develop a realistic relationship with each other and to create a shared family culture that blends goals and strengths from both partners. In terms of choosing a good partner, a dose of reality can be a very good thing. As Niehuis and colleagues (2006) suggest:

The research presented here also suggests that professionals providing premarital education may want to pay particular attention to signs of idealization in the couples and to help those idealizing individuals examine their partner and their relationship more closely. While it may not be possible to change how deeply and passionately people feel about their partner, it is possible to help dating partners have a more realistic perception of one another and their relationship.

Waiting a year or so after meeting a potential partner has another important advantage: it helps one move past the remarkable rush of hormones that makes the early weeks of falling in love feel so extraordinary — and that literally alters one's perception and judgment. Such a physiological mechanism is evolutionarily useful for motivating two individuals to mate and pass along their genes, but it is not a reliable predictor of those who will spend their golden anniversary together. After all, the classic example of a couple with a short courtship is Romeo and Juliet. A great play, certainly — but, after all, a tragedy.

References

Flowers, B. (2007). The limits of a technical concept of a good marriage: Exploring the role of virtue in communication skills. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 27(3), 327–340.

Larson, J. H. (2000). Should we stay together? A scientifically proven method for evaluating your relationship and improving its chances for long-term success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Marazziti, D., & Canale, D. (2004). Hormonal changes when falling in love. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 29, 931–936.

Niehuis, S. (2006). Organization of partner knowledge, its effect on passion, and the mediating effect of idealization. North American Journal of Psychology, 8, 33–46.

Niehuis, S., Skogrand, L., & Huston, T. (2006, June). When marriages die: Premarital and early marriage precursors to divorce. The Forum, 11(1). Retrieved from

Showers, C. J., & Zeigler-Hill, V. (2004). Organization of partner knowledge: Relationship outcomes and longitudinal change. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1198–1210.