10 Encouraging Facts About Marriage You Need to Hear and Share

Some key good-news facts about marriage:

In an eight-year investigative study on marriage and divorce statistics, resulting in our book The Good News About Marriage, my senior researcher Tally Whitehead and I debunked common marriage myths with the following truths:

1. The actual divorce rate for society as a whole has never been close to 50%. Some high-risk groups (for example, those who marry very young) have hit that rate, but not the population as a whole. And rather than “increasing” (as many people think), the divorce rate has been declining for decades.
2. Most marriages aren’t just so-so.The vast majority are happy.
3. The rate of divorce in the church is not the same as among the non-churchgoing population; it’s significantly lower.
4. Remarriages aren’t doomed.A large majority survive and thrive.
5. Most marriage problems aren’t caused by big-ticket issues.So being in a marriage, or fixing a troubled one, doesn’t have to be as complicated as people think. Little things often make a big difference.

So those are the truths we covered a few years ago in The Good News About Marriage. What has happened since then?