10 ms·

What do premarital experiences have to do with marital quality? (2014)

36 points by jameslk 3y ago

mensetmanusman 3y ago
FOMO The more experiences, the more one might become addicted to the feelings of first love, which tautologically puts downward pressure on long-term relationships. This probably account for divorce correlating with more prior partners.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Or maybe you just learn that you don't have to put up with being miserable your entire adult life instead of being naive and blind to what life has to offer you. I know plenty of couples who are around or near their 50th wedding anniversaries, most with their high school sweethearts. None of them are what I'd call "in love" with each other. They all go through the motions and they all pretty much live separate lives aside from doctor's visits and chores. They've all been miserable together for years.
  - bad_user 3y ago
    I can't speak for the couples you know, although you're trying a generalization that seems wrong, so it's worth saying that having a spouse to call family, to share your life with, in its fullness, transcends any short term hormonal reactions and pleasure. I'm 40, and it's interesting to me that culture evolved such that younger generations prefer pleasure as a life purpose; and yet younger generations seem to be pretty sad, many still childless and living alone or with their parents well into their 30s. I think this is a serious cultural issue. Pleasure does not give you purpose or long term happiness for that matter. Growing a family does give you purpose. I am not saying that people shouldn't get divorced, which can be wonderful. People shouldn't feel miserable in their home. But if you divorce 2 or 3 times, maybe it's time to consider that you're to blame and change behavior before it's too late.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Married 33 years, still in love. Not in the honeymoon, first-love stage, but not just going through the motions and living separate lives, either. Definitely not miserable together. Some low-level unhappiness around the edges, but not miserable.
- jdthedisciple 3y ago
  > The more experiences, the more one might become addicted to the feelings of first love Precisely! This is exactly why the modern dating "culture" has ruined marriage - as in, both existing marriages as well as the tendency to get married in the first place!
- bena 3y ago
  People chase happiness instead of contentment. And we've also been conditioned to think that love does not require work. That it will "just be". So if there's friction, well, obviously it's not meant to be. Because if it was, we wouldn't have this friction. But everything is work. Nothing ever ends. We are in a constant state of change. Marriage isn't the end of relationships, it's a commitment to doing the work with someone. So obviously, I don't subscribe to the school of thought that relationships should be easy. And my frustrations with my partner are sometimes things I need to confront about myself. Things I need to change about how I interact with the world. And of course, there are things they should work on. And things we should work on together. I think that's part of how kids can cement marriages. Kids are obviously work. Sometimes so much so there's just not enough time or energy to care about the friction that would have collapsed a relationship previously. So you learn to be content with things. And you learn to work at relationships. Because you'll finally meet someone who is way more intractable than you are. Because you can't really punt a kid to the street. You have to make this work.
jawns 3y ago
I know that a lot of the debate around this topic has to do with premarital cohabitation or number of past partners, but this study points out that there's another important factor in successful marriages: premarital preparation. I'll admit, I'm biased about this. My own religion requires couples to participate in a formal marriage preparation program before getting married. My wife and I found that program so beneficial that we volunteered to become presenters after we got married. (Note that although this preparation program was required by my religion, the program itself wasn't primarily focused on the religious aspects of marriage, but on the practical stuff: communication strategies, finances, decisions about children, etc.) To me, it's a no-brainer that couples who confront these topics before getting married are going to fare better, but I've been surprised at how many of my peers were not interested in any type of marriage prep program when they were planning their own weddings. Perhaps they see marriage as something that's so unique to the couple that outside counsel isn't helpful?
- asolove 3y ago
  +1 to this. I no longer even associate with the religion that required us to do preparation, but still look back with appreciation on this event. And while I would not be in favor of any state or religious requirement, I still wish it were just more widely done. Call it a marriage mindfulness weekend, make it a social norm as strong as sending "save-the-dates". It was wild to go to a marriage prep event and see couples right next to us start yelling at each other "what do you mean you want kids?" or "why would I quit my job?" I don't know how you get engaged without knowing these things already. For us, it led to some really good, deep conversations on what we wanted the future to be like. We were already largely aligned on practical things, but learned even more about some of our deepest dreams. And the style of conversation we practiced is still routinely useful when we get misaligned and need to talk about our hopes before we even start debating some concrete decision.
  - bscphil 3y ago
    > It was wild to go to a marriage prep event and see couples right next to us start yelling at each other "what do you mean you want kids?" or "why would I quit my job?" I don't know how you get engaged without knowing these things already. Put marriage aside, I don't know how couples avoid talking about this in general. I've been with my partner over a decade, not married, and obviously we talked about our feelings about children in the first two years. I don't see how it's possible to have a serious relationship and not do that. The same goes for virtually every other issue. We've had combined finances for most of our relationship now, for example. If it's awkward or uncomfortable to talk about things like this with your (potential) life partner, that's a feeling it's absolutely vital to work through very early. You don't want to go through life with someone feeling that you can't broach any serious topic.
willcipriano 3y ago
A experiment for men who are considering marriage. Write up the pros and cons. Most people are aware of the major possible downsides, loss of assets and lifetime alimony payments that comes with a failed marriage (the majority of marriages), but the men I talk to struggle to articulate a benefit, let alone a benefit that would warrant the risk. If you can't find the benefit to you, reconsider, don't just do it beacuse you are "supposed to".
- CalRobert 3y ago
  It can make getting shared custody of a child easier. It can be useful for visas if you want to move abroad. There are some tax benefits. It really depends on your country though as best I can tell. This advice is good for both men and women though!
  - konschubert 3y ago
    It also provides a form of economic guarantee for your wife, who may, if you have kids, accept a huge loss of lifetime income by postponing career advancement.
    - CalRobert 3y ago
      Sure, though you can have kids and be unmarried, or be married to one person and have kids with another, for that matter.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    > It can make getting shared custody of a child easier Not in PA. I've never seen a law that gives preferential treatment to married fathers vs unmarried fathers. On the other hand, keeping hold of your assets and not assuming your partners debt puts you in a way better position to hire a lawyer and prove to the court that you have the means to provide for them. > It can be useful for visas if you want to move abroad. If you are in India and want to marry a US citizen for citizenship, that's a pretty big pro, however women rarely marry "down" like that so it won't apply to most men. > There are some tax benefits. Absolutely you can save a few percent on tax, in return for a fifty percent chance you lose half your assets.
johnfn 3y ago
The result that living together before marriage leads to worse marriages is a really surprising one. The justification is that it leads to "sliding" into a marriage which you may not otherwise have chosen because once you've cohabitated, a breakup is significantly more logistically challenging: breaking a lease, dealing with pets, etc. That does make a lot of sense, when you think about it!
- not2b 3y ago
  You are saying "leads to" but the data just say "is correlated with". As the article points out, assuming causality can't really be justified, because of selection effects. For example, it may be that having lots of different sex partners before marriage doesn't "lead to" a worse marriage, rather perhaps those who tend to have lots of different partners may just be less happy with an exclusive arrangement.
  - atomicnumber3 3y ago
    Correlation doesn't imply causation but all causal relationships will yield correlated variables. So ... correlation is a good place to dig in more to try to identify and then demonstrate a causal relationship.
    - itsoktocry 3y ago
      There's a certain type of "correlation isn't causation" person who believes the phrase means correlation is useless,as opposed to interesting, but incomplete.
    - wholinator2 3y ago
      It's also research done by an institution with the stated principles of faith and patriotism so take everything with a grain of salt. I bet if their data pointed to lawless polygamy they wouldn't be advertising this. Anyone can lie with statistics, even to themselves.
      - hackeraccount 3y ago
kelseyfrog 3y ago
Nothing? This is worse than nutrition studies in terms of being able to draw conclusions. An RCT(randomized controlled trial) is the minimum standard of evidence necessary in this domain to perform a Bayesian update. Unfortunately, and even worse than nutrition, everyone is more tempted to weigh in with anecdotes, conclusions from bias, and arm-chair sociology. At a minimum conclusions based on correlational studies like this should be disregarded. They're inconclusive at best and re-enforce already concluded preconceptions at worst.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > An RCT(randomized controlled trial) is the minimum standard of evidence necessary in this domain OK sure, I've randomly assigned you to have exactly 15 sexual partners before meeting your spouse at age 30, cohabiting for 3 years without having sex, then getting married with 100-150 guests at the wedding, having a child after 1 year of marriage and a second child 2 years after that. Also I'm going to need you to become Asian and devoutly Jewish, if you're not already. Please report back in 1-2 decades to let us know how your marriage quality is.
  - stoneman24 3y ago
    After you have attended the year long cultural workshop on defining “marriage quality” with your peer group and wider community. An extremely subjective topic with very controversial areas of discussion.
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    That's rather generous of you and also a great example of why some knowledge is ethically and practically unknowable. Rather than being ok with a rather uninformative conclusion though, we often see folks who cannot resist the part of their brain that desires clarity. For many different reasons, the discomfort of not being able to know, justifies reaching conclusions at the expense of them being accurate. So much so, even, that their accuracy is assumed rather than concluded.
    - mlrtime 3y ago
jameslk 3y ago
Here's a rebuttal article as well, to bring nuance to the conversation: My rejection of the National Marriage Project’s “Before ‘I Do'”: https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/my-rejection-of-the-national-marriage-projects-before-i-do/ https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/my-rejecti... I'd be interested if there has been follow up research since.
- dudeinjapan 3y ago
  Their strongest argument seems to be “correlation doesn’t equal causality”. But it’s somewhat of a moot point. Suppose I do a study that finds lower household wealth is correlated with time spent gambling in Vegas. Do gambling losses cause the lower wealth? Or is gambling more prevalent among lower income earners? If my goal is to choose a wealth advisor, maybe it doesn’t matter.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    That isn’t a good comparison. Vegas, regardless of 1000 other variables you might introduce, is a statistically solid system. You are likely to lose money, with the standard of deviation going down the more you gamble. Low income, education, whatever, don’t change the strong link of gambling to losses. And this is most definitely a causal effect. Verifiable by mathematics, any study you want to make trying testing counter vailing variables, the teleology that develops as economic systems adapt to create that causality to flourish, and the designs of gambling systems. So of course the other variables don’t matter to your financial advisor. — An exception is games where skill can tip odds in your favor, however slight. Such as poker. A financial advisor isn’t going to second guess a poker player with a long standing career of positive outcomes.
    - logicchains 3y ago
      A better example is drinking. Say a study clearly shows that low social economic status people drink twice as much alcohol as other people. This doesn't show that being low social economic status causes people to drink more. But regardless of that, if you wanted to date people who drank less alcohol, on average by dating only people of non-low SES you'd be dating people who drank half as much compared to if you only dated people of low SES. I.e. if A is a reliable predictor of B, it doesn't matter whether A caused B or both A and B are caused by some other factor; A is still a reliable predictor regardless.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mmmmmbop 3y ago
> We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be. This association was not statistically significant for men. This is interesting. It's the only factor in the article that only affects one gender. Are there any studies on why this only affects women?
- mlrtime 3y ago
  This doesn't answer your question but Male and Female are different. As much as we like to make them equal today, it is not possible. My guess is because woman carry the child. Men do not, so our sexual tendencies differ. Men have the ability (desire, motivation) to inseminate as many as they can. Women need to cohabitate with one to raise the child successfully.
  - frail_figure 3y ago
    Dropped your fedora there good sir.
FalconSensei 3y ago
From the institute that funded it: > ideals in which Mr. Simon believed – access to an excellent education, promoting strong families, and the importance of faith and patriotism. IDK, I will always be suspicious or this type of study being done with any ties to religion, since religion usually tends to want people to live separate and in abstinence before marriage. What if they found out that living together and having sex with multiple partners correlated with more happy marriages?
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Their conclusions are nearly identical to secular research on this topic.
  - n9 3y ago
    I don't think so. Here is the first sentance of a highly-cited (secular) piece on the same kind of data: "Premarital sex predicts divorce, but we do not know why." That last part makes all the difference in the world. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X231155673 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X231155673
- wooque 3y ago
  It's not the only study done on this topic.
n9 3y ago
causation? correllation? one will never know from reading this article.

36 points by jameslk 3y ago

FOMO The more experiences, the more one might become addicted to the feelings of first love, which tautologically puts downward pressure on long-term relationships. This probably account for divorce correlating with more prior partners.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago
Or maybe you just learn that you don't have to put up with being miserable your entire adult life instead of being naive and blind to what life has to offer you. I know plenty of couples who are around or near their 50th wedding anniversaries, most with their high school sweethearts. None of them are what I'd call "in love" with each other. They all go through the motions and they all pretty much live separate lives aside from doctor's visits and chores. They've all been miserable together for years.
- bad_user 3y ago
  I can't speak for the couples you know, although you're trying a generalization that seems wrong, so it's worth saying that having a spouse to call family, to share your life with, in its fullness, transcends any short term hormonal reactions and pleasure. I'm 40, and it's interesting to me that culture evolved such that younger generations prefer pleasure as a life purpose; and yet younger generations seem to be pretty sad, many still childless and living alone or with their parents well into their 30s. I think this is a serious cultural issue. Pleasure does not give you purpose or long term happiness for that matter. Growing a family does give you purpose. I am not saying that people shouldn't get divorced, which can be wonderful. People shouldn't feel miserable in their home. But if you divorce 2 or 3 times, maybe it's time to consider that you're to blame and change behavior before it's too late.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Married 33 years, still in love. Not in the honeymoon, first-love stage, but not just going through the motions and living separate lives, either. Definitely not miserable together. Some low-level unhappiness around the edges, but not miserable.
jdthedisciple 3y ago
> The more experiences, the more one might become addicted to the feelings of first love Precisely! This is exactly why the modern dating "culture" has ruined marriage - as in, both existing marriages as well as the tendency to get married in the first place!
bena 3y ago
People chase happiness instead of contentment. And we've also been conditioned to think that love does not require work. That it will "just be". So if there's friction, well, obviously it's not meant to be. Because if it was, we wouldn't have this friction. But everything is work. Nothing ever ends. We are in a constant state of change. Marriage isn't the end of relationships, it's a commitment to doing the work with someone. So obviously, I don't subscribe to the school of thought that relationships should be easy. And my frustrations with my partner are sometimes things I need to confront about myself. Things I need to change about how I interact with the world. And of course, there are things they should work on. And things we should work on together. I think that's part of how kids can cement marriages. Kids are obviously work. Sometimes so much so there's just not enough time or energy to care about the friction that would have collapsed a relationship previously. So you learn to be content with things. And you learn to work at relationships. Because you'll finally meet someone who is way more intractable than you are. Because you can't really punt a kid to the street. You have to make this work.

jawns 3y ago

I know that a lot of the debate around this topic has to do with premarital cohabitation or number of past partners, but this study points out that there's another important factor in successful marriages: premarital preparation. I'll admit, I'm biased about this. My own religion requires couples to participate in a formal marriage preparation program before getting married. My wife and I found that program so beneficial that we volunteered to become presenters after we got married. (Note that although this preparation program was required by my religion, the program itself wasn't primarily focused on the religious aspects of marriage, but on the practical stuff: communication strategies, finances, decisions about children, etc.) To me, it's a no-brainer that couples who confront these topics before getting married are going to fare better, but I've been surprised at how many of my peers were not interested in any type of marriage prep program when they were planning their own weddings. Perhaps they see marriage as something that's so unique to the couple that outside counsel isn't helpful?

asolove 3y ago
+1 to this. I no longer even associate with the religion that required us to do preparation, but still look back with appreciation on this event. And while I would not be in favor of any state or religious requirement, I still wish it were just more widely done. Call it a marriage mindfulness weekend, make it a social norm as strong as sending "save-the-dates". It was wild to go to a marriage prep event and see couples right next to us start yelling at each other "what do you mean you want kids?" or "why would I quit my job?" I don't know how you get engaged without knowing these things already. For us, it led to some really good, deep conversations on what we wanted the future to be like. We were already largely aligned on practical things, but learned even more about some of our deepest dreams. And the style of conversation we practiced is still routinely useful when we get misaligned and need to talk about our hopes before we even start debating some concrete decision.
- bscphil 3y ago
  > It was wild to go to a marriage prep event and see couples right next to us start yelling at each other "what do you mean you want kids?" or "why would I quit my job?" I don't know how you get engaged without knowing these things already. Put marriage aside, I don't know how couples avoid talking about this in general. I've been with my partner over a decade, not married, and obviously we talked about our feelings about children in the first two years. I don't see how it's possible to have a serious relationship and not do that. The same goes for virtually every other issue. We've had combined finances for most of our relationship now, for example. If it's awkward or uncomfortable to talk about things like this with your (potential) life partner, that's a feeling it's absolutely vital to work through very early. You don't want to go through life with someone feeling that you can't broach any serious topic.

willcipriano 3y ago

A experiment for men who are considering marriage. Write up the pros and cons. Most people are aware of the major possible downsides, loss of assets and lifetime alimony payments that comes with a failed marriage (the majority of marriages), but the men I talk to struggle to articulate a benefit, let alone a benefit that would warrant the risk. If you can't find the benefit to you, reconsider, don't just do it beacuse you are "supposed to".

CalRobert 3y ago
It can make getting shared custody of a child easier. It can be useful for visas if you want to move abroad. There are some tax benefits. It really depends on your country though as best I can tell. This advice is good for both men and women though!
- konschubert 3y ago
  It also provides a form of economic guarantee for your wife, who may, if you have kids, accept a huge loss of lifetime income by postponing career advancement.
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    Sure, though you can have kids and be unmarried, or be married to one person and have kids with another, for that matter.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  > It can make getting shared custody of a child easier Not in PA. I've never seen a law that gives preferential treatment to married fathers vs unmarried fathers. On the other hand, keeping hold of your assets and not assuming your partners debt puts you in a way better position to hire a lawyer and prove to the court that you have the means to provide for them. > It can be useful for visas if you want to move abroad. If you are in India and want to marry a US citizen for citizenship, that's a pretty big pro, however women rarely marry "down" like that so it won't apply to most men. > There are some tax benefits. Absolutely you can save a few percent on tax, in return for a fifty percent chance you lose half your assets.

johnfn 3y ago

The result that living together before marriage leads to worse marriages is a really surprising one. The justification is that it leads to "sliding" into a marriage which you may not otherwise have chosen because once you've cohabitated, a breakup is significantly more logistically challenging: breaking a lease, dealing with pets, etc. That does make a lot of sense, when you think about it!

not2b 3y ago
You are saying "leads to" but the data just say "is correlated with". As the article points out, assuming causality can't really be justified, because of selection effects. For example, it may be that having lots of different sex partners before marriage doesn't "lead to" a worse marriage, rather perhaps those who tend to have lots of different partners may just be less happy with an exclusive arrangement.
- atomicnumber3 3y ago
  Correlation doesn't imply causation but all causal relationships will yield correlated variables. So ... correlation is a good place to dig in more to try to identify and then demonstrate a causal relationship.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    There's a certain type of "correlation isn't causation" person who believes the phrase means correlation is useless,as opposed to interesting, but incomplete.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    It's also research done by an institution with the stated principles of faith and patriotism so take everything with a grain of salt. I bet if their data pointed to lawless polygamy they wouldn't be advertising this. Anyone can lie with statistics, even to themselves.
    - hackeraccount 3y ago

kelseyfrog 3y ago

Nothing? This is worse than nutrition studies in terms of being able to draw conclusions. An RCT(randomized controlled trial) is the minimum standard of evidence necessary in this domain to perform a Bayesian update. Unfortunately, and even worse than nutrition, everyone is more tempted to weigh in with anecdotes, conclusions from bias, and arm-chair sociology. At a minimum conclusions based on correlational studies like this should be disregarded. They're inconclusive at best and re-enforce already concluded preconceptions at worst.

michaelt 3y ago
> An RCT(randomized controlled trial) is the minimum standard of evidence necessary in this domain OK sure, I've randomly assigned you to have exactly 15 sexual partners before meeting your spouse at age 30, cohabiting for 3 years without having sex, then getting married with 100-150 guests at the wedding, having a child after 1 year of marriage and a second child 2 years after that. Also I'm going to need you to become Asian and devoutly Jewish, if you're not already. Please report back in 1-2 decades to let us know how your marriage quality is.
- stoneman24 3y ago
  After you have attended the year long cultural workshop on defining “marriage quality” with your peer group and wider community. An extremely subjective topic with very controversial areas of discussion.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  That's rather generous of you and also a great example of why some knowledge is ethically and practically unknowable. Rather than being ok with a rather uninformative conclusion though, we often see folks who cannot resist the part of their brain that desires clarity. For many different reasons, the discomfort of not being able to know, justifies reaching conclusions at the expense of them being accurate. So much so, even, that their accuracy is assumed rather than concluded.
  - mlrtime 3y ago

jameslk 3y ago

Here's a rebuttal article as well, to bring nuance to the conversation: My rejection of the National Marriage Project’s “Before ‘I Do'”: https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/my-rejection-of-the-national-marriage-projects-before-i-do/ https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/my-rejecti... I'd be interested if there has been follow up research since.

dudeinjapan 3y ago
Their strongest argument seems to be “correlation doesn’t equal causality”. But it’s somewhat of a moot point. Suppose I do a study that finds lower household wealth is correlated with time spent gambling in Vegas. Do gambling losses cause the lower wealth? Or is gambling more prevalent among lower income earners? If my goal is to choose a wealth advisor, maybe it doesn’t matter.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  That isn’t a good comparison. Vegas, regardless of 1000 other variables you might introduce, is a statistically solid system. You are likely to lose money, with the standard of deviation going down the more you gamble. Low income, education, whatever, don’t change the strong link of gambling to losses. And this is most definitely a causal effect. Verifiable by mathematics, any study you want to make trying testing counter vailing variables, the teleology that develops as economic systems adapt to create that causality to flourish, and the designs of gambling systems. So of course the other variables don’t matter to your financial advisor. — An exception is games where skill can tip odds in your favor, however slight. Such as poker. A financial advisor isn’t going to second guess a poker player with a long standing career of positive outcomes.
  - logicchains 3y ago
    A better example is drinking. Say a study clearly shows that low social economic status people drink twice as much alcohol as other people. This doesn't show that being low social economic status causes people to drink more. But regardless of that, if you wanted to date people who drank less alcohol, on average by dating only people of non-low SES you'd be dating people who drank half as much compared to if you only dated people of low SES. I.e. if A is a reliable predictor of B, it doesn't matter whether A caused B or both A and B are caused by some other factor; A is still a reliable predictor regardless.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mmmmmbop 3y ago

> We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be. This association was not statistically significant for men. This is interesting. It's the only factor in the article that only affects one gender. Are there any studies on why this only affects women?

mlrtime 3y ago
This doesn't answer your question but Male and Female are different. As much as we like to make them equal today, it is not possible. My guess is because woman carry the child. Men do not, so our sexual tendencies differ. Men have the ability (desire, motivation) to inseminate as many as they can. Women need to cohabitate with one to raise the child successfully.
- frail_figure 3y ago
  Dropped your fedora there good sir.

FalconSensei 3y ago

From the institute that funded it: > ideals in which Mr. Simon believed – access to an excellent education, promoting strong families, and the importance of faith and patriotism. IDK, I will always be suspicious or this type of study being done with any ties to religion, since religion usually tends to want people to live separate and in abstinence before marriage. What if they found out that living together and having sex with multiple partners correlated with more happy marriages?

mensetmanusman 3y ago
Their conclusions are nearly identical to secular research on this topic.
- n9 3y ago
  I don't think so. Here is the first sentance of a highly-cited (secular) piece on the same kind of data: "Premarital sex predicts divorce, but we do not know why." That last part makes all the difference in the world. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X231155673 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X231155673
wooque 3y ago
It's not the only study done on this topic.

n9 3y ago

causation? correllation? one will never know from reading this article.