How can you have a happy, meaningful marriage?
Ron Deal and David Olson researched over 100,000 people to discover the qualities that best predict highly satisfying relationships and the roadblocks couples must overcome in order to beat the odds of divorce. Some of their findings will validate what you already know about successful relationships; others will surprise you.
Surprising Findings about Marriage:
- The number one relationship problem for stepcouples is dealing with complex stepfamily issues. Making the differences between first marriages and remarriages undeniable, our research reveals that an astonishing 7 of the top 12 stumbling blocks for remarriage couples are related to a past relationship breakup (e.g., divorce) or to the complications of being a stepfamily.
- The remarriage divorce rate is between 10-25% higher than first marriages. Why does that occur? Fear and jealousy account for a lot of it and predict with 93% accuracy whether couples have a close, intimate remarriage or a struggling, unhappy one.
- People marry because they fall in love with a person, but they often divorce because of the complications of the stepfamily. Eighty-eight percent of individuals expected difficulty related to having a stepfamily and 86% thought having children from previous relationships would add stress to their marriage–and they are right. It does.
Ron Deal, FamilyLife Blended director and stepfamily author, has teamed up with marriage and family expert David Olson, PhD, to offer help, hope, and healing to couples in stepfamilies. Their new book, The Smart Stepfamily Marriage The Smart Stepfamily Marriage (formally titled The Remarriage Checkup) and is backed by research from the largest remarried study ever conducted.
Boasting over 50,000 participating remarrying couples, the National Survey of Couples Creating Stepfamilies was commissioned by Olson, the founder of Life Innovations and the PREPARE/ENRICH program. |
