Preparing For Marriage

If there was one idea that I hoped all of my closest family and friends understood it would be this: The main principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as applied to the family in the effort to build and maintain a satisfying family life,  are the same principles that social scientists claim to be the result of satisfying family life.

One of the theories regarding the development of relationships is described by John Van Epp in his Relationship Attachment Model.  (As seen below).
 

 

 What Epp suggests is that as we begin to develop a healthy relationship there ought to be a steady increase of these factors in left to right stage of importance.  The relationship begins to look more unhealthy, shaky, or empty when one of the factors to the right is higher than the one to the left.  An example could be seen if commitment is peaked and know is near the bottom.  It becomes dangerous when an individual is totally committed to another individual who they do not know very well.  If a relationship were to develop in this manner and the couple decided on marriage, think of the implications there would be if either spouse had something that the other did not expect, (ex. drug or alcohol addiction, etc.).  The ideal is to work your way from left to right in a relationship.  

In class this week we also discussed the implications to cohabiting couples.  What social scientists are seeing, and what they historically thought would help a marriage, is that cohabiting couples are generally more dissatisfied with their relationship than are married couples.  What they are also finding is that cohabiting couples are generally more prone to divorce.  Knowing this causes me a bit of confusion knowing that the number of cohabiting couples is increasing.  I feel this is an important issue to address.  If more single people in society knew the studies on cohabitation they would change their dating behaviors in an effort to not fall into this dangerous statistic.