MOMENT - The Ultimate Guide To Predicting Marriage Happiness!

Are you curious about what makes a marriage truly happy? In this video, we dive deep into the key factors that can predict marital happiness and overall life satisfaction. Our expert guest explores extensive research, revealing the surprising elements that contribute to a joyful and fulfilling marriage.

📊 Research Highlights:

 • Various surveys, including Gallup, General Social Survey, and the American Family Survey.
 • How good marriage surpasses education, money, work, and even sexual frequency in predicting happiness.

💡 Key Predictors of Marital Happiness:

 • Regular date nights and emotional engagement.
 • Strong sense of commitment and shared religious activities.
 • The protective nature of a spouse, particularly significant for women.

💔 Marriage Myths Debunked:

 • The “Soulmate Myth” and its impact on marital expectations.
 • Understanding that marriage is about more than just intense romantic or emotional connections.
 • Appreciating the broader goods realized in marriage, such as financial security, family, and support.

📈 Challenges and Realism:

 • Young adults’ high expectations and the fear of not having all their ducks in a row.
 • The importance of maturity and realistic views on marriage and parenthood.
 • The benefits of marrying in your 20s, including higher happiness rates and less emotional baggage.

Join us as we unravel the secrets to a happy marriage and debunk common myths that might be holding you back. Whether you’re married, engaged, or just curious about what makes a lasting and joyful union, this guide will provide valuable insights and practical advice.

🔔 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more insights on creating a happy and fulfilling marriage!

🎧 Listen to the full episode here!
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Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships


Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.

🔗 Website: https://itstartswithattraction.com
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I wanted to go back to what you said earlier as well about happiness. So there's kind of this happiness story that occurs within marriage that's fruitful to people who do experience marriage. Can you define what happiness means and why being married or getting married helps people to be more happy?

Speaker 2: 0:27

to be more happy. So what I see in this research basically is that we just, you know, we we have kind of we measure happiness and satisfaction with words, like you know, how satisfied are you, how happy are you? We look at a number of different surveys. You know some of our colleagues look at Gallup. I looked at the general social survey from the University of Chicago. There's another survey called the American Family Survey that's done by BYU.

Speaker 2: 0:47

So you know, they all kind of use somewhat different wording here, but they're often kind of giving people a scale of one to five or one to three basically to sort of, you know, assess their level of happiness or satisfaction with their lives and with their marriages.

Speaker 2: 1:02

And so that's what I've done for this book is use those kinds of outcomes and what I find is that the most powerful predictor of general happiness, being very happy with your life in general is a good marriage.

Speaker 2: 1:18

So it far surpasses a lot of things that tend to preoccupy young adults and social media and the media today, things like education, money, fun, work also is more important than sexual frequency or attendance.

Speaker 2: 1:36

So just having a good marriage, it just that kind of blows every other factor out of the model when we look at Americans' overall sense of happiness with their lives, and then when it comes to sort of predicting happiness in marriage, what I find is that things like you know, that sense of communion through regular date nights, a sense that your husband or your wife is emotionally engaged, a strong sense of commitment, shared religious activity, faith, and also a sense that your spouse is protected, particularly for women and we just gave that word, I don't know exactly how they're interpreting it, but was also highly predictive of marital happiness as well. So those are some of the things that we would sort of when you also highly predictive of marital happiness as well. So those are some of the things that we would sort of when you look beyond, kind of what predicts a happy marriage. Those are some of the things that kind of leapt out at us in our analyses of this survey we did with YouGov for the book.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Yeah, what would you say are some top marriage myths?

Speaker 2: 2:41

So one myth that I talk about is the soulmate myth, and it's kind of this idea that marriage is about kind of an intense romantic or emotional connection. Marriage is about just kind of the feelings, or love is about feelings, and what I would say is that people kind of have this view are more likely to have difficulty. You know, whether it's six months into the marriage, a year or two into marriage, because you know every marriage sees kind of those butterflies that people kind of flying away. You know the butterflies that you get when you first meet someone and spend you know time with them. There's a lot of novelty, a lot of hormones, you know, kind of racing through your body. But then gradually we get used to the other person and some of those hormones go away and so you've got to kind of make the transition away from that intense romantic and erotic connection to a more companionated or more friendship-based connection with that person.

Speaker 2: 3:34

It doesn't mean that romance doesn't come back, that erotic connection doesn't come back, but it's just not the only basis for sustaining marriage. So what I would contend is that Americans who appreciate how much marriage is about a number of goods besides just romance, it's about, you know, often the kids. It's about financial security. It's about having someone in your corner when times are tough. It's about kind of establishing a whole way of life together as a family, often extending to you know, in-laws and parents, and then eventually to grandkids, if you have kind of this richer and more, in a sense, diverse view about lots of goods being realized in marriage. So it's not just the case that your marriage is going to be more stable, but also, I think, more happy, because you're not kind of just looking at one good, that is, this romantic connection as the foundation for your marriage.

Speaker 1: 4:31

What scares you about the future of marriage?

Speaker 2: 4:35

Well, I think what we're seeing right now is there are a lot of young adults today who really think that marriage and parenthood require a lot of sacrifices and require them to have all their ducks in a row.

Speaker 2: 4:46

They have to have, like, the perfect degree and the perfect job and the perfect amount of money saved, you know, before they either get married or have their first child, and they have to find the perfect person or the person who is like, you know this, that kind of like exceptional soulmate, um.

Speaker 2: 5:04

And I think there's just a lack of realism about kind of you know, um, the challenges of marriage and parenthood, but also the way in which, kind of just getting into a marriage and becoming a parent, you know in which kind of just getting into a marriage and becoming a parent, you know, ends up being so meaningful and joyful for, you know, most of us not all the time, obviously, but much of the time. So we're kind of in a weird place where people have, I think, too high expectations about where they should be professionally and how intense maybe their emotional romantic connection should be with someone before they go ahead and get married and not, at the same time, kind of seeing how much it would be good to be married and good to be a parent, you know, in their twenties or in their early thirties.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Yeah, I mean I'm trying to. So I've been married. How long have I been married? I think we just celebrated 13 years. I got married when I had just turned 21. So I was young. Both me and my husband were, and I can, and so I'm trying to think back to if I was 25 years old, not married, and hearing something like well, you're more likely to stay married If both of you are well-educated, if you're both religious, if you're both affluent um, like hearing all these things, it can feel kind of like oh well, then I do have to find this right person. And do you think that some of that stifles people and may and and allows them to be fearful of getting into it, because they don't want to experience the divorce that they may have experienced their parents have, and so then they kind of have analysis or paralysis by analysis they don't know what to do, so they don't get married.

Speaker 2: 6:54

Yes, that's right. I mean people think that they have to have all these ducks in a row, right, I mean people think that they have to have all these you know ducks in a row. And it is true that you know steady income and you know a decent job and a college degree are all helpful things, but you know, in terms of like the college degree, I think for most of us that comes by age 21 or 22 or 23. So it's where I'm not like basically saying you have to wait until you're 28. And a lot of my students at UVA kind of think either for themselves or they've been told by their parents they've got to wait until they're basically 28, 29, 30 to put a ring on it. And I'm like, no, you can be, you know, in your early 20s and college, educated and getting started in your career and get married. And then in terms of I think it is important that boys obviously tend to mature more slowly than girls and so if you are dating someone just to kind of be aware of you know her but especially his maturity, so I wouldn't encourage people to get married if one partner isn't that mature. But on the plus side though, for kind of 20 something marriages and I was married at age 24, what we see is the couples who do get married in their twenties tend to be happier than couples who get married in their 20s, tend to be happier than couples who get married in their 30s, and so I think it's about establishing a common life together, figuring out new routines, new traditions, kind of figuring out work and family as a package deal. You can have more kids. Obviously. You're more likely to be on the same page religiously and ideologically if you get married in your 20s and I think also, too, there's not as much baggage that you're bringing into the marriage, you know.

Speaker 2: 8:28

What we do know is that in most things in life, kimberly, more experience is good. So more experience teaching tends to make you a better teacher. More experience playing tennis you know the same thing. More experience playing the piano makes you a better pianist. When it comes to marriage, that's not true. Lots of relationships I'm talking about serious relationships prior to marriage, you know, intense ones set you up for, you know, a greater risk of marital failure, both of those being less happy in your marriage and more likely to end up in divorce court. So it could be the case to the people who have, you know, a lot of serious relationships in their, in their twenties for instance, or you know two or three are more likely to have difficulty kind of transitioning because they're probably comparing their spouse, you know, in ways that aren't necessarily all that fair to the better parts of their previous partners, or they've just had experience in breaking up and that's not necessarily the best experience to have as you head into marriage.