Two new reports addressing the divorce rate are sure to strike fear into married couples everywhere, though author Mort Fertel offers a more straight-forward path to marital bliss. The first study, released last week from the University of Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions, finds a strong correlation between heavy drinking and happy marriages — as long as both partners are heavy drinkers.
To quote Dr. Kenneth Leonard, the lead author on the study: “Our results indicate that it is the difference between the couple’s drinking habits, rather than the drinking itself, that leads to marital dissatisfaction, separation, and divorce.”
Of course, the University of Buffalo notes that there are several negative aspects to regularly engaging in heavy drinking, which they define as six or more drinks in an evening. These negative aspects include poor performance in the workplace, health issues, and of course the painful hangovers that follow. However, these negative factors do not include marital dissatisfaction, separation, and divorce.
Does that mean that the next time you and your partner experience a marital lull, you should agree to become mutual wine (or whiskey) connoisseurs? Turns out devoting your efforts to heavy drinking, instead of to getting that next promotion at your job, may have an additional marriage benefit: last week the London Evening Standard reported that divorce rates are predicted to rise as the economy improves. Turns out that when couples have more money coming into the household, they often elect to earmark some of it for an expensive divorce.
But is this a healthy or sustainable way to develop a relationship or marriage? Not likely.
If you’d prefer to maintain your marriage without engaging in socially or financially detrimental behaviors, there are many other tried-and-true ways of ensuring marital happiness while managing to avoid becoming regularly intoxicated or perpetually strapped for cash. Mort Fertel, author and guide behind the top-rated marriage program Marriage Fitness, states that maintaining a marriage is as simple as ensuring your spouse is the top priority in your life and that you set aside one-on-one time with your spouse regularly.
If it’s that simple, why do so many marriages end in divorce? Often because competing priorities — careers, children, even hobbies — push the other spouse out of the relationship and lead to a weakening of the marriage bond, Fertel says. As the Marriage Fitness Program notes: the more time you spend in close collaboration and loving bond with your spouse, the stronger your marriage becomes. Tip the balance too much in favor of business trips, late nights at work, child-centric extracurriculars, and outside friends, and your marriage drops in priority.
This is the essential recipe for happiness set forward by all marriage guides: work on building intimacy with your spouse, and your marriage remains strong. Luckily, heavy drinking and financial challenges are nowhere to be found in this recipe. If you want to prevent divorce, you can try seeing what it feels like to down six shots in a row, or you can spend some time every day talking to your spouse and sharing your thoughts and feelings in a loving atmosphere. We recommend trying the latter, and not putting too much faith in new “studies” about marriage success.