Men’s health centre

Secrets to a happy marriage

Once it was simple. You got married, had kids, worked, fought, but stayed married through thick and thin. The concept of “a happy marriage” didn’t always come into it. If you had one, you knew it and knew your friends were quietly jealous.

That has changed over time as marriage has become more independent, says Steven Nock, author of Marriage in Men’s Lives and professor of sociology. “Couples don’t need each other for quite as many things as they once did". The times when you both relied on each other’s labour is over, now you rely on each other’s pay cheques and emotional stability - not to mention as someone to help with the children.

A marriage with children is becoming the exception rather than the norm. Sociologists are also saying that marriage is becoming associated with the elite and educated. A university education doesn’t mean you’ll get married, but if you’ve got one, you’re decidedly more likely to walk down the aisle. So, is it fair to say that a modern marriage is less Pot Noodle and more Heston Blumenthal? Not necessarily.

According to the Office of National Statistics, the overall divorce rates had been going down – but went up again last year for the first time in seven years. Money problems could be causing marital tensions. 119,589 couples got divorced in 2010, an increase of 4.9% since 2009.

However, marriage rates are also declining – to their lowest rate since records began. Some reasons are that couples get married later in life (men at 36 and women at 34) and since the stigma of living together is almost gone, many choose to live together and not marry.

Having a happy marriage today means thinking of reasons to be together

“From my perspective, the hardest thing is issues of commitment and trust”, says Nock, who has followed couples over time and conducted interviews with 6,000 married men since 1979. What does commitment mean to the modern husband? “I’m going to behave myself because I’m committed to this relationship”, is how Nock describes it. Because married people have now achieved a more equal footing, they need new reasons to stay together. 

“I have studied what people imagine would happen to them if their marriage were to end”, says Nock. “If you don’t think horrible things will happen, you are a different kind of spouse than if you think they will. In my work, it is a very strong predictor of divorce". In other words, if you can see yourself taking that next step and can visualise yourself as singleton, you are more likely to be the one leaving the marriage.