There's an interesting new study about the divorce rates of marriages based on the closeness of ages between husbands and wives. It turns out that if you are within a year of two of your spouse's age, your marriage has a 95% survival rate. The greater the difference in ages, the more the divorce rate increases until there is a 5% survival rate in marriages where there is a 25 year difference.
Common sense and other statistics through the years says that the more similarities there are between spouses, the greater chance the couple will be married for a lifetime. In addition to age, other factors include religion, whether or not the spouses' parents remained married, education, where you were raised, interests such as hobbies, race, political outlook, etc.
A factor I've never heard discussed, perhaps because it is a very difficult situation, is when a couple from two different cultures marry. My brother recently commented on this, "Kathleen and I came from two different cultures (Don: America, Kathleen: Ireland) and we had a few issues." They've been married over 30 years!
But consider when Americans marry Asian, or African, or even European spouses. In the case of an American man marrying an Asian woman, stereotypes suggest that the Asian women are extremely subservient and the husband would love this. I've met many couples that fit this profile that were married for many years. I've seen websites advertising dating between Asian women and American men but I wonder if there are any countries that wish to date and marry American women - except to gain citizenship?
How about an American woman marrying a man from almost any other country? We American women have the reputation for our extreme independence. This would not go well with men who expect from their wives silence and total, unquestioned compliance.
Even within our state, there are large differences among "country" people, "city" people, and "mountain" people. There's a cultural divide which must be bridged by tolerance and understanding, if a marriage from different cultures is to survive.
Yet I've seen many exceptions to all these statistics, with couples 25 years apart in ages having wonderful marriages, and all the other difficult situations. One thing I've noticed, though: both spouses in these surviving marriages were at least 25 years old at the time they married.
Probably all differences could be successfully bridged if both husband and wife in a marriage would try to understand the other's culture and negotiate a compromise. It would never be boring, that's for sure!
Dear Lord, our world seems to be shrinking more and more. Help us try to understand those who are different than we are, especially if we're married to one from a different culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment