Ross Eshleman of 17 developed nations found that "married persons have a significantly higher level of happiness than persons who are not married," even after controlling for gender, age, education, children, church attendance, financial satisfaction, and self-reported health.
Further, "the strength of the association between being married and being happy is remarkably consistent across nations. But being married conferred a happiness advantage over and above its power to improve the pocketbook and the health chart.
Cohabitation, by contrast, did not increase financial satisfaction or perceived health, and the boost to happiness from having a live-in lover was only about a quarter of that of being married.
Another large study, of , Norwegians, found that, with both men and women, "the married have the highest level of subjective well-being, followed by the widowed. Divorce weakens the bonds between parents and children over the long run. Adult children of divorce describe relationships with both their mother and their father less positively, on average, and they are about 40 percent less likely than adults from intact marriages to say they see either parent at least several times a week.
Despite the lurid Sex in the City marketing that promises singles erotic joys untold, both husbands and wives are more likely to report that they have an extremely satisfying sex life than are singles or cohabitors.
Divorced women were the least likely to have a sex life they found extremely satisfying emotionally. For one thing, married people are more likely to have a sex life.
Single men are 20 times more likely, and single women ten times more likely, not to have had sex even once in the past year than the married. Almost a quarter of single guys and 30 percent of single women lead sexless lives.
Married people are also the most likely to report a highly satisfying sex life. Wives, for example, are almost twice as likely as divorced and never-married women to have a sex life that a exists and b is extremely satisfying emotionally. Contrary to popular lore, for men, having a wife beats shacking up by a wide margin: 50 percent of husbands say sex with their partner is extremely satisfying physically, compared with 39 percent of cohabiting men.
H ow can a piece of paper work such miracles? For surprisingly, the piece of paper, and not just the personal relationship, matters a great deal.
People who live together, for the most part, don't reap the same kinds of benefits that men and women who marry do. Something about marriage as a social institution—a shared aspiration and a public, legal vow—gives wedlock the power to change individuals' lives. By increasing confidence that this partnership will last, marriage allows men and women to specialize—to take on those parts of life's tasks, from developing an interesting social life to getting money out of insurance companies, that one person does better or enjoys more than the other.
Though this specialization is often along traditional gender lines, it doesn't have to be. Even childless married couples benefit from splitting up the work. Married households have twice the talent, twice the time, and twice the labor pool of singles. Over time, as spouses specialize, each actually produces more in both market and non-market goods than singles who have to shoulder all of life's tasks on their own.
But because marriage is a partnership in the whole of life, backed up by family, community, and religious values, marriage can do what economic partnerships don't: give a greater sense of meaning and purpose to life a reason to exercise or cut back on booze, work harder, and to keep plugging even in the middle of those times when the marriage may not feel gratifying at all. Married people are both responsible for and responsible to another human being, and both halves of that dynamic lead the married to live more responsible, fruitful, and satisfying lives.
Marriage is a transformative act, changing the way two people look at each other, at the future, and at their roles in society. And it changes the way significant others—from family to congregation to insurance companies and the IRS—look at and treat that same couple. Sexual fidelity, an economic union, a parenting alliance, the promise of care that transcends day-to-day emotions: all these are what give a few words mumbled before a clergyman or judge the power to change lives.
What proportion of unhappily married couples who stick it out stay miserable? The latest data show that within five years, just 12 percent of very unhappily married couples who stick it out are still unhappy; 70 percent of the unhappiest couples now describe their marriage as "very" or "quite" happy.
Just as good marriages go bad, bad marriages go good. And they have a better chance of doing so in a society that recognizes the value of marriage than one that sings the statistically dubious joys of divorce. Send a question or comment using the form below. This message may be routed through support staff. More detailed message would go here to provide context for the user and how to proceed.
City Journal search. City Journal is a publication of Manhattan Institute. Search search. Experts Hea ther Mac Donald. Topics Hea lth Care. Close Nav Search Close Search search. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? I got fewer invitations for after-work beers. Even my own parents seemed to call less often. When invitations did arrive, they were addressed to us both. When I thought about getting married, I imagined it would only isolate us further.
Marriage has social and institutional power that cohabitation does not; it confers more prestige, and it prescribes more powerful norms. Sarkisian and Gerstel point out that modern marriage comes with a cultural presumption of self-sufficiency. This is reflected in how young adults in the U.
This idea of self-sufficiency is also reflected in weddings themselves, which tend to emphasize the individuals getting married rather than the larger community they belong to. On the website TheKnot. Just a few generations ago, the ideal marriage was defined by love, cooperation, and a sense of belonging to a family and community.
A marriage is supposed to help the individuals within it become the best versions of themselves. This means that more and more, Americans turn to their spouses for needs they once expected an entire community to fulfill. Read more: The wedding-industry bonanza, on full display. One way to think outside the monolith of the American marriage is to imagine a world without it. Implicit in the self-sufficiency of the American ideology of marriage is the assumption that care—everything from health care to financial support to self-development and career coaching—falls primarily to one person.
In his book The Marriage-Go-Round , Andrew Cherlin describes the marriage-based family as equivalent to a tall tree: Care and support pass up and down between generations, but more rarely do people branch out to give help or get it from their siblings, aunts and uncles, or cousins. And in different-sex relationships, especially once children are involved , the work of this care falls disproportionately to women.
Without marriage, this care and support could be redistributed across networks of extended family, neighbors, and friends. Given the frequency of divorce and remarriage or cohabitation, marriage provides only temporary stability for many families. If stability is what matters for kids, then stability, not marriage, should be the primary goal. Of course, some would argue that, regardless of divorce statistics, marriage is a stabilizing force for relationships, that the commitment itself helps couples stay together when they otherwise might not.
A further problem is that social norms surrounding marriage, divorce, and cohabitation have changed rapidly in the past few decades, so getting a reliable longitudinal data set is hard. The stigma attached to divorce or single life can make it difficult to end an unhealthy marriage or choose not to marry at all.
DePaulo thinks people are hungry for a different story. She argues that an emphasis on marriage means people often overlook other meaningful relationships: deep friendships, roommates, chosen families, and wider networks of kin. These relationships are often important sources of intimacy and support.
In her book Families We Choose , the anthropologist Kath Weston wrote about the prominence of these sorts of chosen families in queer communities. These relationships, which were not shaped by legal or biological definitions of kinship, played a central role in queer lives, especially during the AIDS crisis. Importantly, the people Weston interviewed turned to alternative forms of family-making not simply because they were denied access to legal marriage, but also because many had been rejected by their families of origin.
It is too early to tell how the legalization of same-sex marriage will affect queer communities in the generations to come. These are the small things that become big things over time. I think that all of us, if you catch us at the right moment, can be good or bad. Most of us just want to stay connected, and we really do want to love people and be loved ourselves. I think that we sell people a bill of goods about what love is supposed to look like. Love is a verb. Love is so quick. You put on weight slowly and you lose weight slowly.
You very slowly gain weight, but sure enough, it happens. I think you fall in love really fast, then fall out of love slowly. And if you want to keep your love alive, you have to be attentive to all the little things that go wrong along the way, and constantly course-correct.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Shutterstock If you want to know why marriages break apart, and what it looks like when they do, talk to a divorce lawyer. Luckily for you, that book exists, and I decided to interview the author. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing What are the most common reasons people end up in your office? Sexton They come in for big reasons like infidelity or financial improprieties. Sexton Take it seriously. Next Up In Conversations. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy.
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