The following is excerpted from The case for marriage: Science says it’s the key to happiness, published in the Deseret News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
A new report by the Wheatley Institute at BYU makes the case for being proactive in caring for and nurturing marriage. “The Soulmate Trap: Why Embracing Agency-Based Love Is the Surest Path to Creating a Flourishing Marriage” found 60% of Americans believe in true love and in a “one-and-only” soulmate relationship. Research, however, suggests that romantic relationships flourish through “the personal virtues and intentional efforts of the partners.”
Soulmate beliefs, on the other hand, “are often deeply paradoxical in nature and tend to place relationship success outside of one’s agency.”
The researchers studied 615 couples across the U.S. and Canada and found those that flourished had certain active traits, like being compassionate with each other and spending meaningful time together, regularly doing acts of kindness for each other and routinely maintaining the relationship.
The report uses data from the “Satisfaction or Connectivity?” study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. The report compared personal virtues like commitment, compassion and focusing on others rather than self, actions like kindness and spending time together, as well as relationship outcomes like satisfaction and feeling life has meaning.
The report said marriage needs a makeover to embrace single adults’ desire for a special love relationship without buying into the hard-to-attain, unrealistic “soulmate” version of love. Instead, the authors suggest striving for marriages based on “agency, commitment and intentional actions.”
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
