Making Marriages Stronger, Essay Example

Whether you have been married for four months or 40 years, it still takes work to maintain a healthy and strong marriage. Within the United States, the divorce rate is 3.4 couples per every 1,000 population. The marriage rate in the United States is 6.8 per 1,000 total population. This means that the divorce rate for couples within the U.S. is right at 50 percent.      ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) With a fifty-fifty shot at success or failure, it is not surprising when people go ahead and give up on their marriage. Remember, chances are good one of the partners in the couple has parents who married and divorced at least once. And because of that, many of us didn’t have very good training or examples on how to be a good marriage partner. Divorced parents and couples on TV sitcoms were the examples we learned to follow. Pre-marital counseling, if taken, is usually rather quick, of short duration, and follows a standard protocol for all couples regardless of any issues unique to the particular relationship. We have received lessons on how to gossip about our partner, tearing him or her down in front of friends and family. We have learned fighting about chores and childcare duties is commonplace in a marriage, and that controlling each other with guilt and giving our partner the silent treatment are appropriate interaction techniques. Since we did not hear “I love you” often, or see random acts of kindness between our parents we have learned it is normal to take each other for granted.

Nobody told us we have to remind our partner often that we love them. Of all the married couples I know, it is the ones who make a purposeful effort toward the continued betterment of their marriage who are the most content couples. There are ways to prepare for entering into marriage and ways to make your marriage stronger. Couples can strengthen their relationship bond by following these five principles.

Mandatory pre-marital counseling for every couple who applies for a marriage license. There are topics that every couple needs to discuss before walking down the aisle and taking those vows. It is important to understand just what one needs of the other and what one expects the other’s role to be in the relationship. For example, never directly communicating that one partner expects to quit working after children are born can lead financial problems and resentment in the relationship.

Mandatory marital counseling for any couple who files for a divorce. Before being allowed a divorce, couples need to make an effort to resolve those “irreconcilable differences”. Couples applying for divorce should be required to undergo marital counseling for a specified period of time before being granted the divorce.

3. Mandatory parental leave, as opposed to maternity leave. After the birth of a child, each parent should be required to take a specified amount of paid leave in order to adjust to the new status of their relationship, their new parental duties, and to bond as a family.
4. Encourage planning dates, so bonding as a couple can take place.
5. Make your own traditions, something that is representative of your joined families and unique to the identity of the couple together.
6. Required continued education courses on how to become better spouses.
7. Required finance classes to be taken as a couple, to combat financial stress on the marriage.

Works Cited

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Faststats Marriage and Divorce. 29 March 2012. 5 December 2012 <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm>.