Making Connections

I recently put some pieces together in a way that I am surprised I haven't before.

People who marry young are more likely to divorce. That is a fact. Part of the difference has to do with associated factors- people who marry young are likely to be poorer and less well educated than those who wait a while longer, both of which are also contributing factors in divorce rates. But even when controlling for all other factors, age at marriage does make a difference.

Some people point to evidence that the brain keeps developing into the twenties as a possible explanation. They say that since you are still developing and changing so long, it only makes sense that you should wait to get married, to make sure you know who you really are before you marry. Well, that never sounded quite right to me. You don't stop loving your family because you are changing. I love my siblings and my cousins, and they love me. And they and I have been changing and developing all along. The way I see it, if you marry young, then your spouse is part of who you are becoming. Sort of like how my birth family is a part of me because they are the ones who influenced me as I grew up. And anyway, it's not as if once your brain is developed, you stop changing. My grandparents have been married for almost 60 years. I doubt they have stayed exactly the same that whole time. But they love each other.

So I thought that the difference must be related in some way to maturity and ability and willingness to put the other person first. Which reminds me of a portion of an article I saw in the Mormon Times a while ago about extended adolescence. I don't really want to go into an extended tangent right now, but I linked to the article and will put the relevant portion at the end of this post.

Anyway, that sounded reasonable to me. After all, we hear all the time about the problems with selfishness in the world. And ideally, people develop more maturity with age. But then, not quite a week ago, I remembered one of John Gottman's seven principles for making marriage work.

John Gottman is a marriage expert who wrote a book I read for one of my classes. He has researched happy marriages more than probably anybody else in the world and can predict with 91% accuracy whether a couple will stay happy together after observing them for five minutes. Beyond that, his marriage counseling is more successful than most. Nine months after therapy, the national relapse rate is 30-50 percent. His rate is only 20 percent. Because of the reliability of his methods, the large amount of data he collected, and the fact that what he says makes sense, I tend to put some value on what he has to say.

Well, one of those things he has to say is that in good marriages, spouses maintain what he calls active love maps. Basically, they keep up to date with what is going on in each other's lives. They know what they are doing day-to-day and who they are interacting with and what they are worrying about and what they are dreaming of and so on and so forth. So, basically, keep knowing your partner. Now, this takes some effort no matter who you are and how long you've known each other. But if you are still developing, you might be changing more quickly. And if you are both still developing and changing quickly, then maybe it is just harder to keep up-to-date. I'm not sure about this, but it sounds reasonable to me now.

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Nelson said he found in surveys he conducted that "what (LDS students) believe they need to acquire for adulthood looks different" than what those outside of the church think they need to acquire. While both young adults in and out of the church believe financial independence and accepting responsibility for their actions are hallmarks of adulthood, the BYU sample he surveyed also considered being in control of their emotions, developing concern for others and preparing for family relationships to be signs of maturity.

While Nelson's research is ongoing, he said it appears that those surveyed in the BYU sample group "are further along. They tend to be further along in their identity development. They just seem to be further along in the process than their peers to becoming adults."

"You can tell they're hearing both messages loud and clear," Nelson said. "The message of the world that this is the time period to focus on yourself and have fun, but at the same time they were hearing the message on Sunday that 'now you need to be focused on others and you need to prepare for family roles."