For Better: Four Proven Ways To A Strong And Stable Marriage

Increasing knowledge about how to create a loving and lasting marriage is particularly important for the rising generation, as recent studies show that most teens and young adults continue to have plans to one day get married and have children. In fact, the MAST Center (or Marriage Strengthening Research & Dissemination Center) recently analyzed the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) and found that 95% of teens ages 15 to 19 still hope to get married when they get older. Unfortunately, some young adults are losing confidence that they can actually have the successful marriage they hope for. This is because they have not seen good models of marriage in their own families of origin and have not been taught how to make a marriage that will last. They do not understand that not all marriages are the same. We often do not distinguish between different types of marriages in our cultural narrative about couple relationships. But the truth is that different couples marry for different reasons, have different priorities, and have different patterns of interaction. There is a growing need to help young people understand that the true roots of enduring marriage are within their reach and that there are proactive ways that they can initiate and form an enduring union. Given young adults’ high desire for marriage, understanding the truth of how loving and lasting marriages are formed can help the rising generation have confidence in their own ability to pursue this path in their own lives. Helping young people achieve their life goals of marriage is deeply important because a happy marriage is one of the best predictors of life satisfaction for men and women. Accordingly, in this report from the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute, we sought to find the top attitudes and behaviors that were predictive of a high-quality and stable marriage in a recent survey of married men and women.