• Relationships Overview
• Common Relationship Problems
• Growing Great Relationships
• Infidelity
• Intimacy
• Anger in Relationships
• Pre-marriage Counseling
• Facts About Marriage

Marriage…Did You Know?

• Married people live longer and healthier lives.*
• As a marriage improves over time, so does the reported health of the husband and wife.
• Married men and women report less depression, less anxiety and lower levels of other types of psychological distress than do those who are single, divorced or widowed.
• Married sex is better sex
• Married men’s wages rise faster than those of unmarried men of comparable age and skill.
• Permissive divorce attitudes do more than encourage divorce; they actually make happy marriages less likely.
• A couple’s decision to divorce creates health risks for their children that persist long into adulthood. One study followed the life course of a group of highly advantaged kids—white, middle class, with an IQ of at least 135—through their 70s and found that their parents’ divorce lowered the adult children’s life expectancy by four years.
• Even after researchers took economic hardship into account, adults from “broken families” were 70% more likely to have circulatory problems, 56% percent more likely to show signs of mental illness, 27% more likely to report chronic aches and pains and 26% more likely to rate their overall health as poor.
• Adult children of divorced families are less likely to be happily married and more likely to divorce than children whose parents stayed married.
• The effects of divorce on net worth are cumulative and long-lasting. One sociologist compared the assets of people in their 50s who had originally married in their 20s. Getting and staying married was by far the best strategy for accumulating assets. By contrast, having been divorced reduced wealth quite substantially, and early divorces had a bigger impact than late-life divorces. Each year spent unmarried decreased total wealth by 3.5 percent. Those who divorced young and did not remarry were particularly disadvantaged as they approached retirement.
• When it comes to building wealth or avoiding poverty, a stable marriage may be your most important asset.
• Research shows that unhappy couples wait six years, on average, before they seek outside help, that 50 to 60 percent of marriages end in divorce and that 90 percent of those who stay married claim to be “unhappy”.