This is an amazing study from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Family and Households.

They followed 645 couples who were extremely unhappy. Five years later they re-interviewed. What they uncovered was amazing.

AmericanValues.org, in its executive summary of this study, lists the following three conclusions that shocked so many.

1. Unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married. Even unhappy spouses who had divorced and remarried were no happier, on average, than unhappy spouses who stayed married. This was true even after controlling for race, age, gender, and income.

2. Divorce did not reduce symptoms of depression for unhappily married adults, raise their self-esteem, or increase their sense of mastery, on average, compared to unhappy spouses who stayed married. This was true even after controlling for race, age, gender, and income.

Here’s the best part…

3. About two-thirds of unhappy spouses who avoided divorce ended up happily married five years later. The unhappiest marriages experienced the most dramatic turnarounds: 78% of adults who said their marriages were very unhappy and who avoided divorce ended up happily married five years later.

These findings are very surprising in a culture that teaches us divorce is an easy way to end your problems quickly.

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Interesting site – http://liberalslikechrist.org/politicalmenu.htm (215 hits)

I certainly don’t subscribe to many of the views, but it does challenge one’s thinking.

The part that was really interesting was the divorce stats.

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Google analytics is an awesome tool. It shows me who is viewing this site, what are the most popular articles, and where people are viewing the site from.

It looks like the folks visiting this site are largely from Texas, the east coast and California. I guess those folks from Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Canada, and Sudan either don’t have Internet connections, don’t try to save their marriages, or just never have these kind of problems in the first place.

What are the folks in Canada doing right that we can’t seem to figure out in Texas? Better marriage laws or crappy internet connections? Who knows – just made me wonder about it a bit. Kind of random, but have you ever wondered why credit card companies seem to be based in South Dakota quite a bit? It has something to do with laws that are more attractive to that type of business if I recall correctly.

I’ll have to do a study of what the laws are in each state and publish the results some day.

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One of the key things that you may be able to tell your spouse is just how much a divorce will hurt the both of you. Removing the emotion – it will be a mess for both of you. You can present the information, but remember to let her make her own decisions right now. You can’t make her do anything.
I started searching Google using “prevent divorce”. Most of the stuff that is out there is a bit theoretical with limited practical application. However, I did find a site (318 hits) that seems to be somewhat similar to the objectives of this site.

It also had some interesting facts and shocking stats about the subject.

The site didn’t have the source for the data, but interesting none the less. There were also some interesting articles here (209 hits) as well.

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The goal is to take what I’ve learned and hopefully give someone at least one piece of information that may help save their marriage. Send me a post card or email the site admins if something works. If you’re rich send a big fat donation! To help promote the site, I posted some ads on Google to try and “lure” people this way.

What is interesting is that on Google, since I started running my key word based ads on Oct 31, there has been a tie between “get him back” and “get her back”.

However, “win her back” is beating the tar out of “win him back”. I guess we guys just keep messing up or we like the word “win” better as though she is some kind of prize.

Is she your prize? You had better believe it and you better treat her like she is the most important human prize in your life.

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