For something most of us have either done or plan to do someday, getting married sure comes with a lot of myths. We can credit old-school mindsets and princesses living “happily ever after” for most of them. Here are six of the biggest things most women get wrong about marriage. You’ll be thrilled about some. Others, not so much.
1. Half of All Marriages End in Divorce
Flip a coin: Heads you get divorced. Tails you don’t. Sounds pretty bleak, right? Luckily, it’s also false. The 50/50 stat came from a 1970s projection after courts legalized no-fault divorce and people started getting them left and right. In the mid '80s, the divorce rate actually peaked around 66 percent, says Terri Orbuch, Ph.D., research professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research and author of 5 Simple Steps to Take Your Marriage From Good to Great. And it’s much lower now. According to 2009 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 30.8 percent of all marriages ever have ended in divorce, and research shows that in 2011, just 3.6 people got divorced out of every 1,000 adults.
2. Happy Couples Don’t Argue
“A lack of conflict means you aren’t dealing with things that matter,” says Orbuch, who has followed more than 350 couples for 28 years and found that, yes, happy pairs fight. What’s more, research from the University of Tennessee shows that couples who recognize that there’ll be rough patches in their relationship are more satisfied over the long haul. “What makes happy marriages different from unhappy ones is that the spouses learn how to deal with conflict and disagreements in a healthy, productive manner,” says Orbuch.
