Built to Last

[archerships]

Someone's got to have done this study, but I haven't ever seen a reference: survey couples who have been married for more than 50 years. What do such marriages have in common? How did they meet? How often do they fight? How many kids did they have? How often do they have sex?...etc, etc. Sort of a Built to Last for marriages.

Does anyone know of such a study?

Comments

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen a study of this type in particular, but check out John Gottman's work. He actually hooked up hundreds of married couples to monitoring devices and watched their physiological stress signs while they interacted, and followed couples over long periods. They got a very impressive rate of being able to predice whether a marriage would succeed.

He's written several popular books on marriage which are very interesting.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I know of Gottman's work, but I didn't think that he dealt in the really long term. I'll check his stuff out again.

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

I don't really know how long term he was looking, definitely not fifty years, but it was long term enough he felt he could make predictions.

[blueadept.livejournal.com]

I've seen some study/studies linked off MSN (so take it with a grain of salt) which hypothesized (and got data to support the hypothesis) that couples who are happy with their lives before marriage end up having a happier marriage, and that happiness is often linked to money. Also there have been studies that show money to be one of the primary causes of stress in relationships and marriages.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It seems plausible that money is the primary cause of stress in a relationship. It also seems plausible that people who are happier to start with will have happier relaitionships.

[new-iconoclast.livejournal.com]

Beh . . . I'd imagine the first thing you need is two people who manage to live into their 70s. That's rarer than you'd think.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Not only that, but who married in their twenties. But it shouldn't be _that_ hard to find a big enough sample size--those over age 65 make up 12% of the population or 35.6 million people.

[new-iconoclast.livejournal.com]

The sample size is fine - having both people in a married couple still alive (and married to each other!) may be more difficult. It would be interesting to know (and maybe your source tells you) what the gender breakdown is for those 35.6 million people.

Statistically, about 35% of all 30-year-olds will be dead by age 65, with half gone by 75. Half of the 30-year-old men will be dead by 73, with the women sticking around until 77 or so, according to current actuarial tables. That's what I was thinking about. The raw numbers, however, do make it likely that a good sample base is available.

[jette.livejournal.com]

I've been interested in this myself. Let me know what you find.

My SO and I are coming up on 16 years of cohabitation (we've only been married for the past three) so I have some ideas, and have been wondering what traits we share with other couples.

I have seen some women's magazine articles that discuss this but can't remember which ones and don't have time to google right now.

If I recall correctly, the common traits of sucessful long term couples are usually along the lines of communication, intimacy, and shared goals.