Ruth Institute Blog

Recently, I posted about Professor John Gottman.  He has a list of four things that predict divorce:  criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling.   He calls them the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Here’s a different sort of list.  It compiles various research studies and makes predictions about the likelihood of divorce given some more exotic variables such as occupation, the status of the children, hormonal levels and even facial expression in old photographs.

Somehow, I’m pretty sure these factors predict the arrival of the four horsemen, who then do their dirty work.  Nonetheless, the article is interesting reading.

The article is not tremendously useful for making decisions about one’s own marrital future (except, perhaps, in deciding what type of occupation you want your future spouse to have).  Tips that could be drawn from the article include: don’t marry a dancer; if you’re a man, don’t marry somebody in the military;  never wear a helmet (see item #13); don’t get married too early; don’t cohabit; consider farming or ranching as a profession.

Okay, maybe other aspects of your life will suffer if you take up ranching or if you never wear a helmet.  Perhaps most other aspects of your life.  But since this blog is about lifelong marriage, I had to throw them in.  Just saying.  So please, wear a helmet if you’re doing something like this.