Happy Marriage: Find a Man 5+ Years Older

[qspeechc]

Read this article, and don't shoot the messenger!

The secret of a happy marriage? ... find a man 5 years older who hasn’t been hitched before

For many, a successful marriage can be put down to attraction, devotion, patience – and true love. But one group of statisticians begs to differ.

They have developed a distinctly unromantic formula to predict how compatible a couple are based on their ages, education and previous divorces.

The experts claim their theory can tell in advance that some couples are up to five times more likely to end up getting divorced than others.

According to the study, the couples with the best chance are those where a woman with a superior education marries a man who is five or more years older than herself.

Neither should be a divorcee.

By comparison, a marriage where a woman partners an equally poorly educated male divorcee who is five or more years her junior is up to five times more likely to fail.

The study is good news for David Cameron, 43, and wife Samantha, 38. Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama, 48, and wife Michelle, 45, may have only a three-year difference in age but have been married for 17 years.

But the study may not be welcomed by Michael Douglas, 65, and his 40-year-old wife Catherine Zeta-Jones – the research suggests a marriage is more likely to fail if only one partner has been previously divorced, and Douglas was married once before.

The research, called Optimising The Marriage Market, appeared in the European Journal Of Operational Research, which usually analyses business decisions.

Academics including Dr Emmanuel Fragnière of the University of Bath studied interviews with 1,534 Swiss couples who were either married or in a serious relationship. Five years later they followed up 1,074 of the couples to see which had separated.

The research suggests a marriage is more likely to fail if only one partner has been previously divorced. Michael Douglas, pictured with wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, was married once before



Using the data collected about their age, education, nationality and previous relationships, they found the factors that many of those who broke up had in common.

Psychologists then analysed the importance of each factor to build up profiles of an ideal marriage and a nightmare couple. With age, they found that if the wife is five or more years older than her husband, they are more than three times as likely to divorce than if they were the same age.

Couples where the wife is five or more years younger than the husband are the least likely to hit trouble, with their divorce rate six times less.

With education, couples in which neither partner has studied much are the most likely to break up. Those where both are well educated are half as likely to divorce.

If the woman is better educated than the man, they are eight times as likely to stay together than the uneducated couple, and three times more secure than if the husband were more of a bookworm than the wife. Analysis of the data showed that the most stable couples were – unsurprisingly – those who had never divorced. But couples who have both previously been through a break-up are only marginally less secure.

The most unstable are where only one has had a divorce. The report concluded: ‘It appears men and women “choose” their mates on the basis of love, physical attraction, similarity of tastes, beliefs and attitudes, and shared values.

‘However, the longevity of marriages also depends on objective factors. Matching individuals according to a small number of objective criteria such as age, education and cultural origin may help reduce divorce.’

From here:
http://worldmysteries9.blogspot.com/2009/10/secret-of-happy-marriage.html

Original paper here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCT-4WJHB57-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1068496220&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6d73b924249c9960714a17289ccdce92

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I heard the ideal marriage was between a blind woman and a deaf man. Let's see, I have a masters while my wife has a bachelors, one point against. I am ten years older than her, two points against. I'm an American of Eastern European descent while she is Chinese, unclear. Neither of us has ever been married before, one point in favor. That's 2 against 1, We've been married 20 years.

I note that the study was done on a mixture of cohabiting and married couples. With no study to back me up, I still feel safe in saying that these two populations have different separation footprints. My reasoning is that unmarried couples experience all of the centrifugal forces that married couples do, but lack one crucial centripetal force. I wonder why they grouped them together.

 

[Astronuc]

Read this article, and don't shoot the messenger!

Those examples are anecdotal. My wife was married once before - briefly. She was looking for stability. She's 6.5 years older than me and we've been together nearly 30 years, and married 27+ years.

 

[waht]

The study doesn't say why the divorce rate increased in the last 50 years.

 

[Office_Shredder]

I heard the ideal marriage was between a blind woman and a deaf man. Let's see, I have a masters while my wife has a bachelors, one point against. I am ten years older than her, two points against. I'm an American of Eastern European descent while she is Chinese, unclear. Neither of us has ever been married before, one point in favor. That's 2 against 1, We've been married 20 years.

You're ten years older than her, that's a point for isn't it?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

You're ten years older than her, that's a point for isn't it?

Perhaps I took the words too literally. I thought 5 years was best, but they might have meant 5 or more.

 

[Office_Shredder]

According to the study, the couples with the best chance are those where a woman with a superior education marries a man who is five or more years older than herself.

I think it's pretty clear cut

 

[Evo]

They could have easily searched the census for information, but they would find the results would change drastically from generation to generation. Truth is, there is no "formula". Marriage is based on beliefs (some religions don't allow divorce), money, kids, social values & stigmas, personal preferences, dependency issues, self esteem (or lack of), etc...

In other words, it's a totally useless study, IMO.

 

[lisab]

The first line of the abstract, emphasis mine:

Research shows that the success of marriages and other intimate partnerships depends on objective attributes such as differences in age, cultural background, and educational level.

This can't be true, that a true cause-and-effect been proven. When it comes to predicting human behavior (such as couples' tendency to stay together), the best you could do is show a correlation.

 

[Moonbear]

I think it's hilarious that they even thought it worth reporting that couples who have not been previously divorced are more successful in marriage. Yeah, usually divorce is a good indicator that someone has had problems with marriage.

From the abstract of the original article:

This article proposes a mathematical approach to optimizing marriage by allocating spouses in such a way as to reduce the likelihood of divorce or separation.

Um, okay, now I know why they were doing a study on allocating spouses...with this sort of view of marriage, the authors probably have no idea how to find and keep spouses otherwise.

Edit: Though, maybe we now have the "definitive" reference to send people to when they post those girl trouble threads.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I think it's pretty clear cut

Nice catch.