Friday Flashback: Who Wants to be Average?

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I don’t understand people who look at studies on marriage, decide they are average, and feel happy. When you realise about 40% of first marriages end in divorce, average puts you just ahead of those who aren’t going to make it! Do you really want to grade your marriage on the curve, especially given the sorry state of marriage in our world today?

There are a growing number of studies about what couples do: what is average, or normal, or how common certain things are. If you’re ministering/counselling to couples, those reports help you understand what the common problems are, but beyond that I don’t think they have any real use. The fact the majority of people do something doesn’t make it right, useful, successful, or sane. The fact most couples argue as much after ten years of marriage as when they got married (a study I saw once) doesn’t mean it has to be that way. The fact it is true for “most couples” means it’s not true for some couples. Why do some couples beat the odds? Are they smarter or better? I doubt it! Rather, by happy accident, great effort, or because of what they learned from others, those couples found a way to be better.

My advice is to see average and normal for what they are, rather than something to aim for. Average should be seen as the staring line, not the goal. Go beyond, aim higher, have a marriage that blows the curve!

[This post first appeared Apr 24, 2012.]

Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash
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