The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia
Galena K. Rhoades and Scott M. Stanley
Read the full National Marriage Project
Here’s a brief excerpt from the report:
This relationship sequence—with sex, cohabitation, and sometimes children preceding marriage—has become the norm in our society. But it raises some interesting questions. Do our premarital experiences, both with others and our future spouse, affect our marital happiness and stability down the line? Do our prior romantic entanglements harm our chances of marital bliss? And once we find “the one,” do the choices we make and experiences we have together as a couple before and on the big day influence our ability to have a successful marriage? These questions are important, of course, because about 80 percent of today’s young adults report that marriage is an important part of their life plans (Hymowitz et al., 2013).
To answer these questions, we analyzed new data from the Relationship Development Study. Between 2007 and 2008, more than one thousand Americans who were unmarried but in a relationship, and between age 18 and 34, were recruited into the study. Over the course of the next five years, 418 of those individuals got married. We looked closely at those 418 new marriages. We examined the history of the spouses’ relationship, looked at their prior romantic experiences, and asked them about the quality of their marriages.
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