I often hear that high-school sweethearts that get married stay so for longer than any other group of married people. College-relationships, or relationships formed in the workplace are more likely to end than those lovey-dovey heartsick teens.
However, according to this, people who are married younger (more in thier teens, as opposed to in thier mid-twenties) tend to be seperated quicker.
Although this does not necessarily include high school sweethearts (who can probably choose to get married much later), it makes me wonder.
How successful are different categories of relationships? For example, how more/less likely is a college relationship to succeed rather than a high school union? What about work-affiliated relationships?
At what stage of life is a relationship statistically more likely to succeed? Do we have any data on this stuff?
–Please note that I am looking for figures and statistics, and links would be useful.–
We can get data on what age people were when they married, but I don’t think there is a checkbox on a the marriage license to indicate that the couple were “high school sweethearts”, 'co-workers", etc. So any statistical data would be hard to find.
In addition, the definitions of those terms seem pretty vague. I know a friend who claims to have married his high school sweetheart, but less involved people (like me and a couple of other mutual friends) recall at least 3 prior girlfriends in high school, all of whom were referred to as his ‘sweetheart’ at the time.
I don’t think there is a certain set of criteria necessary for a good marriage. All I can say is that mine is great and it has nothing to do with low expectations.
As for being able to gather data for such a study, it should be fairly easy by simply conducting surveys. The study should end up rather objective depending on the quality of the population surveyed since the questions would essentially be how the couple met (HS or earlier, college, work), what time in life they got together/started dating, and how long their marriage lasted or is it still going?
ok… I should have read your link first, but I still don’t agree with the article concluding low expectations is key.
Basically this is telling me that couples with poor skills to work through problems become disappointed with each other. That should be blantantly obvious and has nothing to do with couples who do have good communication/relationship skills.
This concludes nothing about low expectations being necessary for a good marriage. It only shows that some people aren’t prepared to handle reality.