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ISSUES: Marriage
Chapter 2: Divorce
Staying in an unhappy marriage
“is for the best”
People who stick with their spouse through unhappy times are better off in the long
run, the Marriage Foundation claims.
I
n new research, the campaign group insisted
that “unhappiness in a marriage is often just a
short-term and fixable problem”.
Although the Foundation admitted that some
parents are unhappy with their marriage following
the birth of their first child, they claimed that the
majority of those couples – seven out of every ten
– stayed together and 68 per cent of them were
happy ten years later. In fact, 27 per cent of those
who were unsatisfied when they became parents
had become “extremely happy” within a decade.
These figures were based on an analysis of
15,207 parents whose children were born in 2000
or 2001. This data was gathered as part of the
Millennium Cohort Study conducted by the Centre
for Longitudinal Studies, an economic research
organisation based at the University of London.
Marriage Foundation research director Harry
Benson said that despite popular belief “staying
in an unhappy marriage could be the best thing
you ever do”. Most married couples experience
moments of stress or strain at some point but “apart
from the fortunately extremely rare cases where
the relationship involves abuse, most couples can
work through the difficulties to be happy later on”
he claimed.
FormerHighCourtJudgeSirPaulColeridgefoundedtheMarriage
Foundation in 2012. He said one of the biggest problems facing
marriage was people’s misconceptions about what
goes into a relationship. He explained:
“They do not just happen. Just because each party
is passionate about the other at the start does not
automatically mean they will remain for ever at that
high octane level without effort and without periods
of unhappiness.”
In 2015, a YouGov poll found that as many as 61
per cent of Britons have stayed in an unhappy
relationship for much longer than they think they
should have. Only six per cent of the more than
2,000 people surveyed claimed they had broken up
with their partner soon after realising they were not
a good match.
8 February 2017
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The above information is reprinted with kind
permission from Marilyn Stowe. Please visit
/
staying-unhappy-marriage-for-the-best/for
further information.
© Marilyn Stowe 2017
Factors in a good quality relationship
Source: I
t takes two, couples relationships in the UK
, Relate, 2017
Trust
Communication
Commitment
Shared values
Personality
Shared interests
Fidelity
Sex life
Physical attraction
Other
Don’t know
67%
52%
37%
34%
28%
21%
19%
13% 12%
2% 2%
