(From Parade magazine's 9/21/08 Poll on American Marriage)
I'm not necessarily a big believer in polls and surveys. Many surveys are flawed from the start, by failing to get a statistically-significant sampling of different ages and demographic groups, or by asking "loaded" or poorly-worded questions. And even when everything is conducted properly, people don't always answer truthfully, especially when the questions are about love and sex.
But usually you can learn at least something from surveys. I found the Parade results interesting, because in one important respect they confirm and quantify what previous surveys have strongly suggested: that wives are considerably more likely to be unhappy in their marriages than husbands are.
Look at some of the findings:
- When asked, "Do you ever think about leaving your spouse?", twice as many women as men answered "Often" or "Daily".
- When asked, "Overall, which best describes how you feel about your marriage?", twice as many women as men answered "I'm miserable".
- When asked, "If you had to do it again, would you marry the same person?", a much-higher percentage of women than men answered "I'd try to do better", or "Definitely not".
- When asked, "Why don't you have sex with your spouse more often?", 17% of women (but only 12% of men) answered "I've lost sexual interest in my spouse".
I mentioned in a previous blog article that, nationwide, 75% of divorces are filed by women. Not every unhappily-married wife will seek a divorce, and those who do often put up with their frustrations for years before taking that step. But the women who eventually say "Enough is enough" are the ones who today are "Thinking about it often".
When you look at the Parade results from a different angle, it's clear that many husbands are clueless when it comes to their wives' dissatisfactions. For example, men were more likely than women to answer "Yes" to "We talk often and communicate well", and nearly 50% less likely to say "We don't talk to each other enough".
Men should pay more attention to survey results such as these, and realize that just because they're satisfied doesn't mean that there isn't a big problem developing. Too many men are living in a dream world, a fool's paradise, and when reality strikes some day it's not going to be pretty. They'll be like the thousands of men who said in a different survey (one conducted by AARP a couple of years ago) that they never saw the divorce coming. You can almost always see it coming, if you take your blinders off.
