Marriage

Why Do People Marry?

For the most part, this is a pretty simple answer, but there are still quite a few things that influence people to get married. The first major influence would be the simple need for intimacy. When you get married its usually after you’ve found someone that you deeply love, and that fulfills your social needs. Another reason many people marry is because of the expectations set by the culture around them. In some cultures, its expected that you marry and if you don’t there may be some negative attitudes toward you. I found this in my life quite often actually, not so much in a negative way yet but every time I go home many people will ask if I have been dating or if I have any ‘prospects’ and the question of when I will get married comes up often in my family. In our society, there is definitely an expectation to get married.

Types of Couples

It’s pretty much common knowledge that there are many different types of couples, no one couple will have the exact same marriage just like nobody has the exact same personality. Research data shows that most couples can be categorized in at least 7 types of couples. The most common couple type that came out of the research is the Devitalized couple, these couples are dissatisfied to some extent with their marriage and are most likely looking at divorce or separation (It’s important to note that the couples from the study were not randomly selected and many were in therapy). Ten percent of the sample couples fell under the Traditional couple category, where they are satisfied with most of their marriage but are dissatisfied in at least one aspect of the relationship. Most often the traditional couple are dissatisfied with the communication patterns they have with their spouse. The last couple type I’ll mention is the Balanced couple. About eight percent fall into this category (from the sample) and they are quite satisfied with almost all aspects of their relationship but they tend to have poor money management and have trouble solving those issues.         

Expectations

Going into a marriage many of us would have some expectations on how the marriage will turn out, some expect their partner will always make them happy and that the marriage will last. Many of these expectations are unrealistic, you're not always going to be happy with your partner and there will be a time when it will be hard and thinking otherwise could cause problems in your marriage and set up you for a lot of disappointment. Many will go into a marriage having assumptions where they just assume things will go this way or their partner will do certain things. The issue with this is that most assume things without talking to their partner about them which can cause many problems if their partner is not living up to the unknown expectation. Another expectation would be the roles in which the husband and wife would take up during marriage. Role expectations can cause huge problems in a marriage especially when a couple doesn't agree about what roles each other should play.  

Marriage isn't easy and shouldn't be seen that way. It can take a whole lot of work and going into a marriage with the expectation that there won't be stuggles is one way to cause even more. Of course, if marriage wasn't worth it then nobosy would do it.