Many people today now see marriage as fragile and unpredictable. I often ask my students, “How many of you have heard that there is a 50% divorce rate in our society?”

Nearly every hand in every class goes up. Because they have heard statistics like this, far too many people mistakenly believe that their own chances for marriage success are a 50-50 coin toss — and there is nothing they can do about it.

Is this true? Is marriage fragile and unpredictable? My answer to this question is “What kind of marriage are you talking about?”

What I have learned from over 30 years of researching marriages is that different kinds of marriages have different profiles of strengths and risk factors, and because of this, the divorce rate varies greatly across couples with different types of marriages.

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