From “MarriageWorks” a video course for married couples 2001 page 166. Family Life Programs - a division of OAC Ministries. By Jim and Grace Vine.
Basically it is saying that marriage satisfaction falls from about 75% to about 25% in the first five years, then stays there for about the first 30 years of marriage then increases over the following decades until it almost reaches 100% sometime after 60 years of marriage.
Anyway I found it interesting… though I’m not sure how much hard evidence supports it.
The debate is about whether or not the diagram would have some factual basis.
It just says “following is a graph of an all-too-common marriage pattern”. I’m guessing that it might be based on their experiences with people doing their courses/counselling rather than based on surveys.
I would expect that “satisfaction” would decrease from near 100% (most people aren’t forced to get married) shortly after marriage as the honeymoon period wore off. But then it would rise after a few years as the couple learns to live together. But then after 7-10 years it would fall again as routine and complacency set in.
Besides divorce there is also when the kids have moved out.
I don’t know of any data either but it makes sense to me. Going from the idealized romance and passion to the reality of the work of marriage and adapting to each other, and then adapting to the changes in the relationship and the stresses of parenting … that’s hard. Satisfying, meaningful, but hard and stressful. Kids out, life more settled in a course, careers established or winding down, less stress … more satisfaction.
I certainly don’t think people are 100% satisfied (or 100% of people are satisfied) when they get married. This somewhat informal “study” suggests that 30% of divorced women knew they were making a mistake - and got married anyway:
I don’t know what the exact figure is, but that graph doesn’t seem way off to me (on that part).
However - as of course others have pointed out - the obvious reason why those married for 60 years are happy - is at least in part due to attrition.
Something that probably accelerates after all the kids are out of the house.
I was trying to find some correlation with life events, like kids being born and kids moving out. None I can see. And why does it bounce around near 25%?
I have only one hypothesis. Let’s assume that since this is based on people who go to “Family Life Programs - a division of OAC Ministries” they are Christian, and good Christians who don’t have pre-marital sex. So, the moment they get married and start, the satisfaction level plummets, only returning to a high level around 40 years in when sex drive diminishes.
So, about what I’d expect given the source - totally worthless.
That graph proposes that couples who became quickly disillousioned with marriage and were subsequently never more than 25% satisfied with their marriage over a period of decades, nevertheless stayed married 30+ years. That don’t make no sense.
Look around you. Do you honestly see numerous married couples who are dissatisfied 75%-90% of the time and still intend to stay married?
To sum it up, since the creators of this chart are selling marriage counseling services, it shows a crisis which is the moral equivalent of the great toenail fungus epidemic we seem to be experiencing, based on radio ads.
In all seriousness, yes, plenty of them if not the majority. They have lots of different reasons for it: some are scared of the financial and social implications of divorce, some don’t want to be separated from their children and some have religious views that say that you must stay married unless something extraordinarily bad is happening.
According to that graph, I’m about at the nadir, which is pretty surprising. If it only get better from here, that’s all good.
Or the graph could be total BS.
It was from a video series that some churches have that isn’t selling many copies. Near the diagram it talked about people being fast or slow learners with respect to the zig-zagging of satisfaction (involving 2 to 50 years). It didn’t say anything in that section about the need for counselling. Even if they did have counselling the section didn’t say that there is any way to help satisfaction much.
