You meet someone. You fall in love. You get married. You live happily ever after.
Ah, if only it were that easy, says Jeffry H. Larson, professor and chairman of the Family and Marriage Therapy Program at Brigham Young University.The truth is, he says, some couples need more time to mature, some have to work through specific issues and others should never be together.
How do you know if the couple you're a part of fits one of those categories? What factors contribute most to success -- or failure -- in a relationship?
After 20 years of his own research -- and years of work done by others -- Larson has a few answers. His recently published book, "Should We Stay Together?" (Jossey-Bass, $25), offers prospective couples some scientifically proven methods for evaluating their relationships and improving their chances for long-term success.
Larson shared some of those ideas with conference participants at a national marriage and family conference held recently at BYU. The conference theme was "Revitalizing the Institution of Marriage of the 21st Century."
As we enter the new century, we've learned a lot about what goes into a successful marriage, says Larson. "Sixty years of research suggests that relationships develop at a number of levels and that certain criteria can help predict success and failure."
Out of that he has developed what he calls "The Marriage Triangle," which highlights the individual traits, the couple traits and the family background and context that can help or hinder a relationship.
Let's look first, he says, at the factors that predict marital dissatisfaction. These are the three sides of the triangle:
Individual traits
1. High neurotic traits.
2. Anxiety.
3. Depression.
4. Impulsiveness.
5. Self-consciousness.
6. Vulnerability to stress.
7. Anger/hostility.
8. Dysfunctional beliefs. (If you enter marriage convinced that you live on different planets, or that you'll never understand each other, he says, you probably won't.)
Couple traits
1. Dissimilarity.
2. Short acquaintanceship.
3. Premarital sex (especially a lot of experience with many different partners).
4. Premarital pregnancy.
5. Cohabitation.
6. Poor communication and conflict-resolution skills.
Context
1. Younger age.
2. Unhealthy family-of-origin experiences.
3. Parental divorce or chronic marital conflict.
4. Parental or friends' disapproval.
5. Pressure to marry.
6. Little education or career preparation.
Some of these are things couples have little control over. "You can't change your family background. But you can do things to change the effects that has on you; you can work through issues. In some cases, it's not so much the events as how you think about them."
The couple traits are probably the easiest to work on, he says. "But most things can be changed. Severe cases may need therapy." He remembers one couple he worked with, where it turned out that both of them were clinically depressed. "They were brave enough to send out cancellation notices just days before the wedding. Now they are both involved with other people and much happier and healthier.
It takes guts to confront some of these issues, he says. But the time to do it is before -- not after -- the marriage.
On the other side of the triangle, says Larson, are the leading factors that predict marital satisfaction:
Individual traits
1. High self-esteem.
2. Flexibility.
3. Assertiveness.
4. Sociability.
Couple traits
1. Similarity.
2. Long acquaintanceship.
3. Good communication skills.
4. Good conflict resolution skills/style.
Context
1. Older age.
2. Healthy family-of-origin experiences.
3. Happy parental marriage.
4. Parental and friends' approval.
5. Significant education and career preparation.
These, too, are things couples can work on, says Larson. For example, research has shown that the better acquainted a couple is, the higher the marital satisfaction. So, here are some exercises to test that acquaintanceship:
List your partner's five most important life goals.
Discuss how you well you know your partner with others. How does your experience compare with theirs?
Write a description of how well you know your partner as well as your blind spots.
Look at how familiar you are with your partner's current life-stressors.
If you go through these exercises together, you may learn a lot about each other. Then you can set goals for improvement. And you can do this for each of the traits.
"The more you can increase your knowledge and understanding of your partner, the better off you'll be," says Larson. It takes some time, but that time is important. Don't be like the couple he just heard about who had decided they were lifetime partners -- after one four-hour date.
"Go slower. Talk about more important and meaningful topics," he advises.
His recommendation is that couples be acquainted for a minimum of a year before they consider marriage. "Your best resources," he says, "are time, self-disclosure and listening skills."
And, he says, if he had to choose one trait that would help the most in building a relationship it would be flexibility. That one thing can take care of a lot of potential problems.
With effort and commitment and caring, couples can find that "happily ever after," after all, he says.
Just don't expect it to be easy.