What’s good for relationships is bad for couples therapists right?  Earlier this week onthe YourTango blog I speculated that getting married sometimes feels like the kiss of death to a perfectly good relationship.  After all, nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce. 

But it turns out that couples therapists might instead prescribe marriage to all couples, if they read the latest study from the United Kingdom.

Here are some stunning facts from a study from the Jubilee Center, a UK-based Christian organization, who says that married parents are nearly 10 times more likely to stay together than un-married parents.  They write that  ”more than half (50.3 per cent) of cohabiting couples separate before their child’s fifth birthday compared to less than one out of fifteen (6.3 per cent) married couples.  Ten times!!  In their report “Cohabitation in the 21st century” the folks at Jubilee point out the scale of the problem – only 50% of children are born to married parents – and around one-third are born to those who are cohabiting.

I grew up in England when marriage was going out of fashion.     The Jubilee center confirmed my suspicions with cold hard facts.  In 1961, the mean age at first marriage was around 24.  By 1998, it had risen to about 28 and has recently broken the big three-oh barrier.  They are even predicting that the number of cohabiting couples will double over the next 25 years. 

Are we heading for a world where children will hardly ever experience a stable home?  And why should there be quite so much difference between married parenthood, and simply being bound to your family by love?

And what does Imago couples therapy have to say about all this?

A relationship is a journey of change, starting with a wonderful joyous stage called romantic love.  Delighted by our partner, our body even creates a cocktail of delicious chemicals which ensure we remain in a great mood, and overlook the things about our partner that our friends can’t stand.    Sooner or later the nice drugs fade away, and we are left with the reality of who our partner is, and enter into a power-struggle.

It’s natural to assume that if you are in some kind of ongoing disagreement with your partner, then maybe they just aren’t the right person for you.  First you try to get them to change, then you change them….by leaving them, and getting someone who is a better fit.   Oh except the same thing happens with them.  Why?  Where’s the perfect partner for me?

Could the perfect partner actually be the very same person who I fight with?  That’s what Imago says.  And that the power-struggle is a natural meeting of subconscious emotional agendas.  If we use a tool like Imago dialogue to discover these agendas, and work through them, the reward is a true and lasting love.

It takes commitment to your partner to get through the power-struggle, and for some people marriage feels like a stronger commitment than sharing an address.  But however you make the commitment, the power-struggle is a tough stage in a relationship, and it helps to have a couples counselor or couples workshop to guide you through.

Is marriage bad for couples therapists?  Probably not!  It may often be the commitment that people express to themselves through marriage vows which brings them into a struggle, for which they will seek relationship help.