Why You Should Get Married

As I get closer and closer to marriage, I’ve found myself reading and researching more so I’m well prepared. I don’t want to get married and realize I should have spent more time understanding the different needs of both sexes. Moreover, I think it’s imperative to understand the toughest issues facing newly weds. I started reading a book yesterday called The Most Important Year in a Man’s Life by Robert Wolgemuth & Mark Devries. My parents gave it to me for Christmas.

The basic idea so far is that couples must take time to “invest” in each other and in the marriage, and they must do this diligently for the first year. Here is a list of some great statistics for those pondering marriage:

1. People with satisfying marriages live longer, enjoy better health, and report a much higher level of satisfaction about life in general.

2. Married men report a deeper satisfaction about life in general than do single men. Forty percent of married couples say they are very happy, compared to 18 percent of those divorced and 22 percent of those never married or of unmarried couples living together.

3. Despite the myths about single life, married men enjoy much more frequent sex (almost twice as often) than single men.

4. Even if you are a bottom-line kind of guy who likes to think in dollars and cents, check this out: Recent statistics show that the average married couple in their fifties has a net worth nearly five times that of the average divorced or single person.

5. Divorce dramatically increases the likelihood of early death from strokes, hypertension, respiratory cancer, and intestinal cancer. Astonishingly, being a divorced nonsmoker is only slightly less dangerous than smoking a pack (or more) of cigarettes a day and staying married!

“Research guarantees it: A satisfying marriage can bring you more happiness, more money, less sickness, and better sex. I think we’ve just redefined a no-brainer!”

All this is fine and dandy, but statistics also show that 1/2 of all marriages fail. Tell me again how you can statistically prove in a variety of ways that it is better to get married and stay married, and yet marriage classes are not a mandatory subject in public schools?

More to come on this topic…