Justin Lavner

0

The USA Today has highlighted a new study that says newlyweds who have “cold feet” going into marriage are more likely to divorce.  I say make sure those feet are warm because divorce can be hell and children can be enveloped in that hell if you wait long enough.
I found the abstract of this study, but the dry academic summary tells me very little about the actual study.  I can view a copy of the study if I pay for it, but I regard this as a low down dirty trick perpetuated by academics who want us to think their research is always worth something — which it’s not, necessarily.  Notably, I am unable to access any juicy gossip points that may actually tell me something useful, such as who paid for the study. 
This always seems to have something to do with results and can sometimes infer whose tenure was dependent on this thing getting published. I will also refrain from commenting on publishing papers by psychologists, other than to say that they can get away with publishing an awful lot of “questionnaire” based and “pencil and paper” studies.  Medical doctor psychiatrists always seem to have to sample at least one bodily fluid to get something published.

The author of the study — Justin Lavner of UCLA — basically says that people who have “cold feet” or “jitters” at the time of the wedding are more likely to divorce later. 
The study followed 464 newlyweds.  He says nobody can say for sure whether folks had doubts about their partner or about the institution of marriage in general.  This tells me the study could have been designed to answer this question in more detail.  But as it is, we do know that 47% of husbands and 38% of wives had doubts. 
After four years, 19% of women who had doubts were divorced, as opposed to 8% who did not.  For men, 14% who had doubts were divorced four years later, versus 9% of those who did not.  Of the 36% of those couples of which neither partner had doubts, 6% still got divorced. I basically like psychologists.  Like most psychiatrists, I have learned to live in a symbiosis with them, where they do the psychotherapy and the psychiatrists do the pill-pushing.  Notice, I am talking mostly about PhD psychologists and clinicians. 
I’ve worked with patients who have been seen by professionals with lesser degrees.  A few actually get well.  At any level, most are subject to professionals who try to provide the minimal necessary to charge some sort of insurance.  They are the devotees of the ‘easy hour,” people who do things like light candles and tell patients to spend an hour “relaxing” from their stress.
Read more on Cold Feet Might Mean No-Go for the Future of Marriage…

Filed under relationships by on . Comment#