Then we switch partners and remarry, with roughly the same odds of success. Natalie Low, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and instructor at Harvard, counsels families as they navigate their way through the illusions and into the reality of marriage. She says the couples she sees are trying to nurture their relationships along with raising perfect kids and maintaining careers, but in this compartmentalized era, they are without the benefit of support systems of extended families and communities. Couples also expect to be happy. But the facts of life are very grinding, so the reality of marriage is grinding, says Low, who has been married for 51 years.
Marriage is now, as it has always been, hard work.
Marriage is not a static event that can be measured, but a series of developments those triumphs and setbacks that make up life. There is no obvious course to follow, so couples just have to keep working. A person sees dramatic changes during a marriage, Low says, so a couple has to be committed to a way of life. Knowing the pattern of marriage relationships might help couples stay together, if they can come up with positive ways to cope with it, he says. We have to build into marriage the idea that there will be lots of change.