So totally super exciting news! Blake and I are all set to move to our new place! Whoop whoop! We're going on Monday to officially sign the lease and then all we have to do is wait for them to finish cleaning it and we're going to do the big move!
Anyway, back to marriage and relationships and stuff.
In my Intercultural Communications class, we read a study about arranged marriages and how feelings evolve over time.
Just for some background, the participants were asked on a scale of 1-10 what their love rating was the day they got married and then on the day of the survey. (The average length of marriage was 19.4 years.) But the ratings shot up from 3.9 to 8.5! Talk about a drastic difference!
The two things that really stuck out: Commitment was deemed the most important factor in building love, and deliberateness was also found to be essential. So basically, the people who said "I'm in this and I'm going to not only make it work, but I'm going to keep making it better" fell more in love.
The whole study was super interesting, but I feel like if I just told you all the results this would look more like a scientific/statistical blog than wholly opinion. Mixed with a little fact :)
Makes sense, right? So let's contrast that to last week's post when we discussed that communication and sex are the two most important factors. I can see how those relate. Communicating effectively isn't always easy. It takes effort to learn how your partner communicates and interprets different verbal and nonverbal cues. If you're not committed and willing to work at it, it won't improve.
The study also talked about how in western culture, we believe that in order to get married, Love has to come first. Like that super cute little songy-thing "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage!" Well, it's different in arranged marriages. It's first comes marriage, then comes love.
Idk. We were talking about why arranged marriages aren't popular here, and that made me think of dating websites. I mean, there are like a million of them. Ones that boast that they use scientific tests to find your most compatible match. Having never signed up for a dating site, I can't judge whether the questions are the generic "what kind of music do you listen to" or the more important ones like "How many kids do you want to have? What religion are you?" or even "Boxers or briefs?" But I can only assume the questions are not actually scientifically based.
But then I read this study in the Huffington Post claiming that 33% of couples today meet online. They also have lower divorce rates and higher marriage satisfaction. Who funded this study? eHarmony. Curious.
Read report here: Huffington Post
So I wonder, why would we trust computer-generated surveys to match us with our forever partner, instead of the people who birthed and raised us?
But then again, I'm also not big into online dating.
Maybe there are some real success stories for online dating sites, but personally, I think Blake and I have a much cuter story than "oh we met on eHarmony!"
And despite the divorce statistics that have been thrown out at us, I think this one is forever <3
Have a question or suggestions? email us at: sparklinkittyblog@gmail.com!
PS- next week's post is going to be AH-MAZING. Trust me, you won't to miss it! Hear all about an experiment B and I tried for a week.. It's going to be juicy!
We've been married over 61 years now (an no plans for changing). I can't speak for her, but I love her more deeply now, but in a different way that I haven't the words to describe. Without hesitation, I would do it again.
ReplyDeleteWe got married after an extremely courtship. We were in love. Everyone said it wouldn't last. So far it's lasted almost 38 years. What we have now is a much deeper love than when we married. I guess what I'm saying is "lust" got us married, but mature love and friendship have made being married the adventure of eternity. I would also, without hesitation, do it again. Our family tends to have long term marriages. Your great grandparents were married for over 60 years, grandparents 61 years, your uncle Richard 50 years, your mom and dad over 30 years (can't remember how many over). So, you and Blake will be married for a very l-o-n-g time. Rejoice!
ReplyDeleteWhile I definitely grow closer to my lovely every day, I think our capacity to love changes over time. Honestly, if I were to rate how much I loved her when we got married, and again today, the numbers would be the same (somewhere just above the max). But just as with anything else we do, as we do longer and more, our capacity increases.
ReplyDeleteOn the eHarmony note, I doubt that an arranged marriage could easily match two key powers that are had by the computer: flexibility and magnitude. Where parents may know a few hundred people, or a few thousand, how many are eligible? Can parents easily shrug off a failed match after one date and simply give another? I'd be surprised if there weren't some rather detailed statistics being processed behind the scenes; for the money, it would easily be a worthy investment, if only to create strings of successful dates.
As a side note, if you have any references to the studies from your communications classes (sex & communication, arranged marriages), I'd be interested.