Preparing a Wedding Party

February 3, 2010 · Filed Under The Other · Comment 

Most couple will be nervous when they have to prepare their wedding. Everything seems to be so confusing and tiring. Sometimes these couples have some conflict because they are too nervous with their wedding and their new incoming status.

However, don’t let your wedding preparation gone bad just because you both are too nervous. You need to calm down and think about your love. You need some wedding ideas and you can use the internet for it.

Watching beautiful wedding photo gallery will help you to choose what type of wedding party you both want. Some wedding decorations are also available for you online. If you need a professional assistance, then you can visit this site and call them. They will help you to create the best wedding party you will never forget.

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Marriage Relationship Advice – Keep Your Love Strong Through Effort

December 27, 2009 · Filed Under Dating · Comment 

is a sacred union, and it can take a lot of work to keep that union. Unfortunately a lot of marriages end because the effort that’s needed in order to stay together happily. That’s why couples visiting marriage counselors for marriage relationship advice is so common these days.

You don’t have to pay money for a counselor to resolve your marriage problems, though. If both you and your spouse would look at each other yourselves and examine how you’ve been handling each other, you just may be able to come out from the rough spots happier than you ever were before.

Learn to compromise with your spouse on whatever you possibly can and try not to start arguments. You may have met them halfway on a lot of things before, but sometimes you need to go further than halfway to meet their cooperation. You may not think it’s fair, but consider if you’ve ever made them meet you more than halfway before. Marriage is more about sacrifice than just being in a relationship is and both sides need to understand that they’re in it for both of them, not just themselves. But some things are worse than just a lack of effort.

If your spouse did something awful like cheat on you, you need to seriously weigh your options. Is staying with them worth the hurt of that kind of betrayal? You need to seriously consider whether that kind of pain is worth the bits of happiness. Don’t stay with your cheating spouse because you love them — how could their love even compare with yours if they’re lying and betraying your trust by cheating on you?

If you are the cheating spouse, you need to consider whether you really want to stay with your husband or wife or not. A cheating spouse hears this type of marriage relationship advice all the time, but its sound to ask yourself: Why did I do this? If your spouse is not making you feel loved enough or is not satisfying your sexual needs, it is probably better that you break it off than drag it out and continue to strain and hurt you both.

There are lots of things to consider before getting married, and if you’re thinking about it take this bit of marriage relationship advice to heart: If you’re not willing to work for the well being of two people instead of one, maybe marriage isn’t the right thing for you right now. The divorce rate is at an all time high because people get married before actually thinking about what marriage really is: A team effort. Whether you’re married right now or are thinking about popping the question, keep in mind that it’s not the walk in the park that movies and TV make it seem like.

For more top-notch marriage relationship advice and other helpful resources then visit the #1 relationship & dating advice spot on the net: http://Relationships-Advice.net

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The Myth Of The High Rate Of Divorce

December 25, 2009 · Filed Under marriage tips · Comment 

This past year my wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary. It is the second marriage for both of us and the relationship has only grown stronger over the years, teaching me more about love and trust and dependence then I ever imagined. Reaching this special “silver moment” spurred me to look around and think about the number of friends we have who also have great second marriages and led me to question the alleged statistic that 60+% of second marriages end in divorce. I also thought about how many friends we have who are still in their original marriages and appear to be very happy. Thus, I decided it was time to do some research on divorce rates.

In the process of preparing for this article, I learned what I had long suspected. The commonly quoted numbers are overstated myths, the more accurate numbers reflect complex factors, and that our society really has two very separate divorce rates, a lower rate (by half) for college-educated women who marry after the age of 25 and a much higher rate for poor, primarily minority women who marry before the age of 25 and do not have a college degree (most of the research focused on women; the little I read about men suggested similar outcomes).

The Statistics:

A false conclusion in the 1970s that half of all first marriages ended in divorce was based on the simple but completely wrong analysis of the marriage and divorce rates per 1000 people in the U.S. A similar abuse of statistical analysis led to the conclusion that 60% of all second marriages ended in divorce. These errors have had a profound impact on attitudes about marriage in our society and it is a terrible injustice that there wasn’t more of an effort to get accurate data (essentially only obtainable by following a significant number of couples over time and measure the outcomes) or that newer, more accurate and optimistic data isn’t being heavily reported in the media.

It is now clear that the divorce rate in first marriages probably peaked at about 40% for first marriages around 1980 and has been declining since to about 30% in the early 2000s. This is a dramatic difference. Rather than view marriage as a 50-50 shot in the dark it can be viewed as a having 70% likelihood of succeeding. But even to use that kind of generalization, i.e., one simple statistic for all marriages, grossly distorts what is actually going on.

The key is that the research shows that starting in the 1980s education, specifically a college degree for women, began to create a substantial divergence in marital outcomes, with the divorce rate for college-educated women dropping to about 20%, half the rate for non-college-educated women. Even this is more complex, since the non-college educated women marry younger and are poorer than their college grad peers. These two factors, age at marriage and income level, have strong relationships to divorce rates; the older the partners and the higher the income, the more likely the couple stays married. Obviously, getting a college degree is reflected in both these factors.

Thus, we reach an even more dramatic conclusion: That for college educated women who marry after the age of 25 and have established an independent source of income, the divorce rate is only 20%!

Of course, this has its flip side, that the women who marry younger and divorce more frequently are predominately Black and Hispanic women from poorer environments. The highest divorce rate, exceeding 50%, is for Black women in high poverty areas. These women clearly face extraordinary challenges and society would do well to find ways to reduce not just teen pregnancies but early marriages among the poor and develop programs that train and educate the poor, which will not only delay marriage but provide the educational and financial foundation that is required to increase the probability of a marriage being successful. Early marriage, early pregnancy, early divorce is a cycle of broken families that contributes significantly to maintaining poverty. The cost to our society is enormous.

Here is some additional data about divorce in first marriages before moving on to the limited data available about second marriages. Divorce rates are cumulative statistics, i.e., they don’t occur at a single moment in time but add up over the years of marriage and do so at different rates. After reviewing numerous sources, it appears that about 10% of all marriages end in divorce during the first five years and another 10% by the tenth year. Thus, half of all divorces are within the first ten years. (Keep in mind this is mixing the disparate college-non-college group rates.) The 30% divorce rate is not reached until the 18th year of marriage and the 40% rate is not reached until the 50th year of marriage! Thus, not only is the rate of divorce much lower than previously thought but at least half of all divorces occur within the first ten years and then the rate of divorce slows dramatically. Since the divorce rate for women married by 18 is 48% in the first ten years and that group, once again, is primarily poor, minority women, the rate for educated couples is much less during those first ten years.

No wonder the divorce rate in Massachusetts is the lowest in the country. We have the highest percentage of college graduates. That explains why I have so many first marriage friends!

Finding meaningful data about the divorce rates for second marriages was difficult. But knowing that the rate for first marriages has been grossly overstated and poorly understood for decades suggested a likely similar outcome for the data on second marriages. One report indicated that the divorce rate for remarried, white women is 15% after three years and 25% after five years. This ongoing study indicated a definite slowing of the rate over time but did not have enough years measured to draw more long-term conclusions. However, it did indicate that the same factors with first divorces were at play here. Age, education, and income levels were also highly correlated with the outcomes of second marriages. For example, women who remarried before the age of 25 had a very high divorce rate of 47%, while women who remarried over the age of 25 only had a divorce rate of 34%. The latter is actually about the same for first marriages and likely also would prove to be an average of different rates based socioeconomic factors. Thus, my take on this limited amount of data is that divorce rates for second marriages may not be very different than those for first marriages. So my small sample of friends, who remarried older, had college degrees, and joint incomes, is probably not a distorted view of the success rate of second marriages.

Cohabitation:

In the course of gathering information about divorce rates, I came across a few articles describing the growing frequency of couples choosing cohabitation over marriage. I don’t have any figures that I consider accurate enough to report on the percentage of cohabitating couples but a July 24, 2007 Boston Globe article on cohabitating parents sheds some light and raises some serious concerns about this trend.

I must admit a bias here. From my professional experience, I believe cohabitating couples are afraid of the commitment that marriage requires. Certainly a piece of this is what I stated at the beginning of this article, that the myth of the divorce rate has placed a dark cloud over the institution of marriage. The reason for my concern is the following data reported in the Globe article. There is a marked increase in births to cohabitating couples, up from 29% in the early 1980s to 53% in the late 1990s. When you compare what has happened to those relationships when the child is two years old, 30% of the cohabitating couples are no longer together while only 6% of the married couples are divorced. This is another serious societal problem as it contributes to the U.S. having the lowest rate of all Western countries, 63%, of children being raised by both biological parents.

In addition, the general data suggests that
cohabitating couples break up at twice the rate of married couples. Of course, this kind of simple statistic hides many complex factors with regard to who actually constitutes the population of cohabitating couples and the likelihood that many choose to live together with no real intention of permanence. However, my main point here is the concern that many couples may be choosing cohabitation over marriage because they actually believe that the institution of marriage is unhealthy and too risky, a conclusion that my review of divorce rates strongly disputes.

Conclusion:

The historical belief that 50% of all marriages end in divorce and that over 60% of all second marriages end in divorce appears to be grossly overstated myths. Not only is the general divorce rate most likely to have never exceeded 40% but the current rate is probably closer to 30%. A closer look at even these lower rates indicate that there are really two separate groups with very different rates: a woman who is over 25, has a college degree, and an independent income have only a 20% probability of her marriage ending in divorce; a woman who marries younger than 25, without a college degree and lacking an independent income has a 40% probability of her marriage ending in divorce.

Thus, factors of age, education, and income appear to play a significant role in influencing the outcome of marriages and that for the older, more educated woman, getting married is not a crap shoot but, in fact, it is highly likely to produce a stable, lifelong relationship.

Dr. Heller is a clinical psychologist, now retired, who specialized in providing services to children, families, and couples since 1968. He has written over 150 columns about parenting and marriage which are available on his website, http://www.drheller.com.

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Good Marriage Advice Can Prevent Good Divorce Questions

December 25, 2009 · Filed Under marriage tips · Comment 

My daughter and I were walking on the beach today (sorry to you folks living in the Snow Belt) when we saw an elderly couple walking towards us hand in hand. I almost told my daughter that they must have read my Lessons For A Happy Marriage but it would not have been true. There are people who “get it” and live their lives in marital bliss; just not many from our part of the world. The couple coming toward us was clearly from Asia. In other cultures where marriage is not romanticized or psychoanalyzed there is a reliance on tradition that obviously works. In our society the rules for a good marriage are hardly anywhere to be found. Our culture is pretty mixed up. On one hand everyone knows the value of family, yet we seem to focus our efforts on individualism, creating quite a dilemma.

The Universal Principles for a Happy Marriage are Simple

Who is a candidate for a happy marriage? Isn’t that a stupid question? It’s like asking who is a candidate for becoming part of a family. The only answer that makes sense is: everyone! Then why do we have a divorce rate of around 60% and a happy marriage rate of (I’m guessing here) 5 to 10%? It’s because good marriage advice is hard to come by and good divorce questions are easily answered. It should be the other way around!

When I began my mediation practice I wanted to be among those who made divorce a simple process. But I discovered what I thought was amazing: nobody really wanted a divorce, they just didn’t know what else to do. My clients were suffering terribly and saw no way out. I made up my mind to get to the bottom of this paradox and stepped back to see if I could help. I looked everywhere for the answers and rejected the false cures proposed by western psychologists who practiced marriage counseling. They didn’t know any more than anyone else or they would not have the same rate of divorce as everyone else.

When I thought I knew what would work I switched my practice altogether to saving marriages by teaching what I discovered. And guess what? It worked so fast and so completely that I had to warn couples the “new way” was real and not to doubt it, but enjoy it. I told them it was like having a car with a stick shift, but never learning how to drive it. Then somebody shows them how to work the clutch and shifter, and driving goes from total stress to as fun as can be.

A Happy Marriage Doesn’t Take a PhD

All you need is the information I have discovered; it isn’t hard to understand and it is less hard to implement; it’s all very intuitive (and not like some computer program that is described as intuitive!). My clients ranged from very simple folk referred by the county to Hollywood big names who heard about my results. I am happy to say even the stars were able to save their marriages with my lessons.

Don’t put off your happiness. My desire is to help out. I’m pretty sure you will not find fault with my Lessons For A Happy Marriage; you will find great relief. Go ahead, challenge me :) !

I wrote Lessons For A Happy Marriage to help people save their troubled marriage and end the marriage crisis in our country; it’s about saving children. Let’s stop divorce. The problems go beyond the failures of marriage counselors. My life’s mission is to eradicate the need for divorce through focused education. If you’re married, tell your soul mate, "I love you."

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