I’ve been asked what to look for when choosing a spouse. Which relationship is likely to last longer, one with someone similar to me (same race, culture, language, education, hobbies, lifestyle) or someone different? The answer has a lot to do with Expectations and how well you handle them. The more alike you two are, the more your expectations about marriage will turn out to be valid...
This weekend, I witnessed the spectacular end of a couple living together. She had been trying to make it through the end of the lease, despite knowing she was done with her overbearing, abusive boyfriend. Fortunately, she and her children left with only emotional scars. It made me think about this sea change since I was a teen. Back then, almost everyone got married within a few years of high...
There’s a new study out of UCLA making the media rounds. Doctoral candidate Justin Lavner and his psychology professor co-authors, Thomas Bradbury and Benjamin Karney, conclude that having doubts or hesitations about getting married increase the odds you will divorce within the first four years of marriage. They report that “wives who had doubts about getting married before their...
Yesterday, one of my Google alerts took me to this story about Usher’s divorce and child custody fight from WXIA 11 Alive News in Atlanta. It’s about an interview he did with Oprah Winfrey. I don’t have any other details of his life or his marriage, but several things in this interview cried out for comment. Why they married: “I impregnated this woman, we were in a...
As I read it in the second-hand press, Miley Cyrus is pretty sure she’ll be with Liam Hemsworth for a long time. I definitely hope so. But I don’t buy her reasoning. Her interview in Marie Claire is being widely quoted before it hits the newsstands. In it, she talks about her recent engagement to the man with whom she shares the house and bedroom her parents recently moved out of. She...
I am a widow who got it right the second time. I have been sharing here since February 14, 2006 what I learned from that experience and from positive psychology, marriage research, and my training as a marriage educator.
