Happy endings are still possible

Published 12:00 am Monday, August 5, 2002

The best chance for an unhappily married couple to find happiness in marriage, I have said here previously, is to transform their unhappy marriage into a happy marriage. Now recent research documents it: "Unhappily married people are more likely to be happy in the future if they stay married."

I based my assertion on both casual observation of a great number of marriages, successful and unsuccessful, and on many extended interviews and counseling with couples and individuals of both healthy and unhealthy marriages. The more I have seen and the more I think about what I have seen, the more convinced I am.

My personal observations and somewhat subjective conclusions are now sustained by a Yale study released two weeks ago by the New York based Institute for American Values. Researchers traced for five years a total of 5,232 married adults who had initially reported to be unhappy with their marriages. At the end of the five-year period, researchers found that two-thirds of those who had chosen to stay together report they are now happy with and in their marriages.

Email newsletter signup

The Yale researchers also studied the five-year status of those who divorced. Only half of these feel they are now happy.

The difference between the still married who are now happy and the divorced who are now happy is not, admittedly, huge. It is sufficient large, however, to take seriously and be worth study.

More definitive data may yet emerge from a closer look at the study. I here comment on the report published in USA Today. I should like to learn how many of the still-married but yet unhappy (one-third) and the still-married and now happy (two-thirds) made reasonable efforts at correcting flaws in their marriages and rebuilding. My suspicion is that the bulk of those who became happy made such efforts and the bulk of those who are still unhappy did not.

Becoming happy within a marriage that had been unhappy is a quantitative measure. A qualitative measure would study effort extended. I don't think the research suggest that simply staying married is going to yield a two-third success. I say again: You have to work a marriage to make a marriage work.

I should also like to study the one-half of the divorced who report now being happy. My guess is that the bulk of these remained single and did not attempt yet another marriage. Many people divorce largely because they are unhappy but make no effort toward becoming happy. Then they remarry and bring the garbage of two marriages into a worse yet marriage.

Upon divorce or separation, the logical task is self-examination to learn what one contributed to the marriage dissolution. Having learned and healed, the most feasible course is to resume the marriage and this time work it.

Now, I predict that readers who react most violently to my suggestions are those who actually know they will fail in another marriage but fear to face the reality. They become angry, because I confront them with my observations and research findings.

On the other hand, after my earlier commentary on the matter, several couples who have worked through threatened marriages have strongly affirmed the validity of the concept. One woman told me: "My [newly married] daughter complains they can't communicate. It took [her husband] and me twenty years to learn." Another: "I'm so glad we toughed it through until we finally grew up and learned how to live together."

Typically, people in troubled marriages assume their alternatives are to stick with a bad marriage or split (into another bad marriage). In reality, the alternatives are either of these or: "…more likely to be happy in the future if they stay married" and work at their marriage.

Dr. Wallace Alcorn’s commentaries appear in the Herald on Mondays.