MarriageTweets

Forget everything you thought you knew about marriage and divorce in the Air Force. Most of it isn’t true. An analysis by Air Force Times of the service’s marriage and divorce statistics turned up surprising conclusions. Many defy easy explanation. Female airmen are two to three times more likely than male airmen to be divorced and are less likely to be married. Of the active-duty force, 66.6 percent of men and 63.2 percent of women have been or are married, and 5.3 percent of men and 12.5 percent of women are divorced. Among the general population, 9.2 percent of men and 11.6 percent of women were divorced as of 2007, again the latest data available from the Census Bureau. Women are the only group in the Air Force that has a higher divorce percentage than in the rest of the U.S.

It seemed like good news on marriage last year. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported a record number of registered marriages since 1989 and a 10 per cent drop in divorce numbers since 1999. The reality is that marital relationships have never been more unstable in Australia. The number of marriages has increased because the population has grown. However, the proportion of married people has not really changed. To get a true picture of the situation concerning divorce, we need to take account of the fact more and more couples (about 1.2 million) have entered cohabiting, or de facto, relationships. The ABS refers to those in registered marriages together with those in cohabiting, or de facto, relationships as the “socially married”. We know from surveys (in the absence of official statistics) that de facto relationships break up much more frequently than formal marriages. But because these break-ups are not officially registered as divorces, the rate of break-up of the socially married is not represented in the ABS figures. If they were, the rate of separation of the socially married would be higher than the formal divorce statistics.

via Steven Stosney: Negative reactivity between partners is what keeps couples making the same mistakes over and over. That’s when one cannot have a negative emotion without the other responding defensively. The principle holds even if the negative emotion is not expressed - one sulks, the other reacts. Reversing negative reactivity starts with questions that are more philosophical than psychological. You have to decide what kind of a person and partner you want to be. Do you want to be driven by your ego? Or motivated by your deepest values? Is your resentment or anger helping you be the person, parent, and intimate partner you most want to be? Read more…

The number of people tying the knot is at a 20-year high, while fewer of those signing up to conjugal bliss are shedding tears over a failed marriage. Last year, there were 118,756 marriages registered in Australia, almost 2500 more than the previous year and the highest number in the past two decades. In 1989, there were 117,176 marriages. The figures are contained in a snapshot of the past 20 years from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that also shows a declining divorce trend.

See clips from Keynote sessions from the 2009 Smart Marriages Conference. All 150+ sessions, 12 Plenary Keynote presentations, 2 Banquet Keynote presentations are available through iplayback.

Researchers who followed 6,949 U.S. adolescents into young adulthood found that those who married were more than twice as likely to become obese than those who just kept dating. Obesity was up to three times higher in married versus dating partners. Couples who lived together reported less physical activity, more TV and computer time and other obesity-promoting behaviours that they risk passing along to their offspring. // related: Does marriage make you fat?

US researchers from Indiana University analyzed data on 3.8m people diagnosed with cancer between 1973 and 2004. They found people who were married had a 63% chance of surviving five years, compared to 45% of people who were separated, the journal Cancer reported. The team said the stress of break-up probably affected survival rates. Previous studies have looked at the impact of marriage on health outcomes. Lead researcher Dr Gwen Sprehn said: “Patients who are going through separation at the time of diagnosis may be a particularly vulnerable population for whom intervention could be prioritized.” The study will be published in the November issue of Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.