Introduction

This is the fourth edition of Fighting for Your Marriage, a book first published in 1994, substantially revised in 2001, and then again in 2010. The first three editions were well received among couples and professionals alike, and all were bestsellers in the relationship and marriage fields. The first edition even had the illustrious honor of being mentioned on Oprah! This being the case, you may be wondering, “Why change something that already works?”

Well, a lot has happened in the last 14 or so years, to say the least. The dynamics of marriage, including who gets married (and divorced), have changed significantly, while national and global events have put additional stress on the institution of marriage. Widening political and social polarization, increased economic uncertainty, the opioid crisis, the COVID‐19 pandemic, and the further entrenchment of technology into our everyday lives are just a few the major developments that have taken place over the past decade and a half.

What has not changed is that people benefit from having a happy, healthy relationship in terms of emotional, physical, and even financial well‐being. Not surprisingly, children who grow up with parents in a happy, healthy relationship also do better in life.

Arguably the biggest news in the world of marriage is the fact that less than half of millennials, currently the largest generation in the United States, are married. When millennials do get married, it's at a later age. In 2022, the median age of marriage was 30.5 for men and 28.6 for women; in 2010, these figures were 28.2 and 26.1, respectively. We expect this trend for marrying later will continue, at least, through this decade.

At the same time, the divorce rate has been in steady decline, and we believe it likely will continue to decline for the foreseeable future. For example, between 2000 and 2020, the rate of divorce in the US has declined to 42 percent. Although many experts have said the probability of divorce for first‐time marriages is approximately 40 percent, it is hard to know what the likelihood of divorce will be going forward for couples marrying for the first time today. We expect that divorce rates will continue to decline over the rest of this decade.

And then there are the growing income and education gaps when it comes to the likelihood of marrying. Americans in the top quintile of income are now significantly likelier to get married than those in lower ones. The same goes for Americans with a bachelor's degree versus those with only a high school education. This was not always the case. For comparison, the 1960s marriage rates in America were nearly the same across income and education levels.

There are also now more women enrolled in college, medical school, law school, and many other graduate‐level fields than men. Not unrelatedly, 29 percent of women in heterosexual marriages now earn the same amount of money as their husbands, and 16 percent are the primary or sole breadwinners of their family. (In other words, just over half of men are their family's primary or sole breadwinner.)

Although this class divergence was clear in 2010, it has only accelerated since. Whether differing marriage rates are a cause or a consequence of inequality is a topic of much ongoing study and debate. Regardless, this reality must be taken into account when thinking about the role of marriage in peoples' lives today.

Another major change over time is the ascendance of living together without being married. This more ambiguous form of relationship encompasses a wide range of couples, from the highly committed to those for whom living together is much more like dating than a long‐term commitment. Yet, at the same time, the vast majority of people still aspire to marry (though less than in the past). Regardless of their aspirations, however, the likelihood that people will marry has declined. For example, between 2011 and 2021 the marriage rate decreased 8.5 percent. It's not clear if trends toward fewer people marrying will continue in the coming decade.

These are not the only ways the makeup of who is married or not has changed in the United States. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruling Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same‐sex marriage, extending the right to marry to hundreds of thousands of couples who had long been denied by the state. With the ruling, the United States became one of twenty‐two countries (now thirty‐two) to recognize same‐sex marriage.

Looming over all of these changes has been the widespread adoption of smartphones, which have had a profound impact on dating (and, by extension, marriage). Although dating websites were already proliferating by the early 2010s, the presence of a constant and reliable internet connection in people's pockets all but ensured online dating would permanently shape how couples met. It's probably no surprise, then, that a 2019 study from Stanford University estimated that 39 percent of all heterosexual American couples met online in 2017, whether through dating sites or apps. Another study found that 77 percent of the online dating population in 2019 had been on at least one date with someone they met through a dating site or app; both figures are surely higher today. To offer some comparison, in the last edition, published in 2010, we noted (with no small sense of amazement) that the number of couples who met online was estimated to be 20 percent. The popularity of digital coupling represents an enormous and obviously unprecedented shift in human behavior.

What all of this boils down to is that marriages today require partners to be even more skilled in communication, conflict management, and negotiation than ever before. Because marriage is becoming somewhat rarer and partners choosier, partners (especially women, we feel it's important to note) are less likely to automatically accept things. Many more issues are fair game for discussion. Assumptions are out.

What all of this boils down to is that marriages today require partners to be even more skilled in communication, conflict management, and negotiation than ever before.

Partners also have higher expectations for the positive sides of their relationships. They often expect their partner to be their best friend and soul mate. So when negative things happen, they have to realize that even best friends can have conflict, and that they must work through their issues in a way that doesn't threaten their relationship's success. The importance of productively managing conflict, especially today, cannot be overstated. We have even more evidence than in the past, increasingly drawn from more diverse samples of couples, that the negatives in relationships are more hurtful than the positives are beneficial. Accordingly, with this new edition we continue our focus on how to defeat negative patterns while also accentuating how to strengthen positive connections.

Just as in 2010, but to a far greater extent, there's a massive amount of information about relationships and marriage out there, especially online. If you go to any search engine and type in a question about relationships, you'll get back nearly infinite results. But how do you know what information you can trust?

That's where we come in. In this fourth edition of Fighting for Your Marriage, we have continued our commitment to science by refining our work based on research. We believe this gives our approach a strong foundation that you can trust. We wrote this book for everyone who is interested in learning research‐based skills that will enable them to have and keep a satisfying current or future long‐term relationship or marriage.

This book is for you if you want to do any of the following:

• Apply up‐to‐date, research‐backed strategies to deepen your relationship.
• Prepare for marriage or a long‐term relationship.
• Repair a relationship or marriage that is not going well.
• Bridge the emotional distance that has grown between you and your partner.
• Enhance your chances for relationship and marital success.
• Repair your or your partner's lack of desire for sensual and sexual connections.
• Fall back into love if you fear you've lost that loving feeling.
• Learn more about how to have a happy, healthy relationship, even if you are not in a relationship right now.

Many of the strategies in this book are based on our decades of research, much of it involving observing couples over time and noting how their communication strategies help or hinder them as they tackle common relationship problems. This process involved recording couples as they talked about their issues, and then having teams of coders assess the communication dynamics of these couples. This process has enabled us to describe key patterns when it comes to relationship success and failure—patterns that we will be passing on to you. As the famous New York Yankees catcher and philosopher Yogi Berra put it, “You can see a lot just by watching.” Simply put, our research shows that what couples argue about is not as important as how they argue.

Simply put, our research shows that what couples argue about is not as important as how they argue.

The strategies in this book are based on the widely acclaimed Prevention and Relationship Education Program (PREP). Based on more than forty years of research, this book will show you how to talk more and fight less,...