Which marriage is most likely to succeed?

It’s no secret that marriage carries with it a risk of doing well or failing. More often than not, people go into marriage with an extremely knowledgeable, if not idealistic heart that what they have chosen will work for them. It would be helpful to examine which marriage would be most likely to succeed. What makes those marriages successful, and what commonalities might thread through them? The short answer is the ability to have both individual and together identities and goals. What does this look like? As children grow into becoming adults, they learn various ways to rely either on others or themselves or a little bit of both. It is creating a balance of both self-reliance and other reliance that seems to help marriages succeed. A person who has individual goals in work and their personal life who feels supported by their spouse and a person who also has goals to achieve and their spouse create a balance of this reliance and self-reliance on another.

Along with having healthy independence and a healthy reliance on each other to create a team, successful marriages seem to carry a few other common traits. In 16 years of providing couples therapy, one of the most common issues couples struggle with is effective communication. Communication makes marriages succeed because having the ability to communicate needs, feelings, and thoughts regarding any number of issues keeps the relationship transparent and trusting. So much is misunderstood. People often think about situations and assume and create many feelings inside themselves without checking in with their partner about whether or not what they’re thinking and feeling matches what is actually happening. By having effective communication, there is always a clear path to understanding each other, and by understanding each other, growth happens, and if growth happens, marriage can continue. Going back to the concept of teamwork, successful marriage also reflects common goals the marriage might have outside of individual goals. This creates another layer of opportunity and experience to grow together, bonding the marriage. And lastly, as people grow and mature, their individual goals grow and mature and might also need support, nurturance, and encouragement, especially when venturing into something new. A successful marriage often supports one another in its goals. The more people can support each other in their individual goals; they come back into the marriage feeling more esteem and satisfied, giving back to the relationship tenfold. So, this combination of individuation with teamwork and a constant flow of productive communication seems to make the marriage succeed.