News

Does more relationship experience lead to better relationship success?

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Published in the Journal of Marriage and Family
Published in the Journal of Marriage and Family

Consider this article from the Institute for Family Studies.

It says:

In most areas of life, having more experience is good. Want to be great in your chosen field? Sustained experience is essential. Want to be great at a sport? There’s no substitute for practice. And anyone who runs a business can tell you that their best employees are those who have been in the job long enough to have learned how to handle the normal well and the unexpected with wisdom.

While more experience is often beneficial in life, the story looks different when it comes to some types of experience before marriage. For example, in our Before “I Do” report, we surveyed a national longitudinal sample of young adults about their love lives prior to marriage to examine factors associated with future marital quality. We found that having more sexual and cohabiting partners before marriage is associated with lower relationship quality once married. In particular, having only ever lived with or had sex with one’s spouse was associated with higher marital quality. Our findings are consistent with other studies showing that cohabiting with more partners before marriage is associated with greater likelihood of divorce1 and that a higher number of sexual partners before marriage is associated with lower marital quality and greater likelihood of divorce.2 As we noted, what happens in Vegas may not always stay in Vegas. But why?

There are many reasons why having more romantic partners before marriage may put one at higher risk of difficulties in marriage. One of the most important explanations comes under the heading of what some call selection effects. For many people, an elevated risk of difficulties in marriage was present before they had their first relationship experience. Background characteristics such as parental divorce, low education, and economic disadvantage are associated both with having more sexual and cohabiting partners and also with lower marital quality and/or divorce.3So it may not be that having more sexual or cohabiting partners causes further risk because a lot of risk was already in motion. Selection is a big part of how relationships unfold, but is it the whole story? We believe that, in addition to selection, behavior matters and has plausible connections to marital outcomes. We are going to explain four reasons why having more relationship experience before tying the knot might make it harder to succeed in marriage.

Here are the 4 reasons:

  1. More Awareness of Alternatives
  2. Changed Expectations: The Perfect Sexual Lover (in Your Mind)
  3. More Experience Breaking It Off
  4. Babies

I have to quote the one that I’ve personally encountered in my mentoring – number three: more experience breaking it off. I’ve seen this commitmentphobia in two women who had “wild” periods in their past who had broken up with cohabitating boyfriends.

It says:

Cohabitation has characteristics that seem paradoxical. Living with a partner makes it harder to break up than dating, all other things being equal, and often now comes at a time in relationship development where people have not really chosen each other for the future.8 And yet, cohabiting couples frequently break up, and they are more likely than any other time in history not to end up marrying.9

These days, cohabitation has become more a part of the dating scene than a lead-up to marriage. Let’s call the phenomenon cohabidating. In this context, some people are getting a lot of experience at leaving serious relationships (or surviving being left). Just as with our prior point, that does not sound bad in one way—at least insofar as people are breaking off relationships that had no future. But it’s also true that people tend to get good at things they have a lot of experience doing. People can get good at moving out and moving on.

How does that impact marriage? Some people probably so deeply learn that they can survive leaving a relationship when they are unhappy with it that they leave reasonably good marriages that would have given them and their children the best outcomes in life. They bail too quickly.

Obviously, many others leave very poor or even dangerous marriages only after a lot of agonizing and effort. We’re not suggesting divorce is ever easy or that it is not sometimes the best course. But in a day and age when people get so much experience moving out and moving on, we think many may learn to do so too rapidly, and to their detriment.

If you want to get good at relationships, experience may not be the answer. Reading good studies like this, and making decisions that line up with the research is much wiser. As always, never follow your heart. Always follow rational arguments and evidence, and keep connected to a good panel of advisors who have had long-term relationships success. That’s the best way to avoid disaster.

People ask me how to learn how to do relationships well if your parents are divorced and the culture is a cesspool. The answer is to go back in time to before radical feminism, to the time when men and women had distinct roles, and had to attract each other without using sex. Men had to prove their feelings to women with actions, and when women chose men for the roles of husband and father. Parents were consulted to give advice about courtship and marriage. Where can you find this today? Well, books by Christian authors like Jane Austen are very helpful. If you like DVDs, go out and get yourself the BBC production of “North and South”, which is based on the book by Christian author Elizabeth Gaskell. My favorite romance is Edmund Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac”, just make sure you get the Brian Hooker translation if you are reading it in English. Although the best version is the original French. Shakespeare is also good – I got my rule of saving the first kiss for the proposal / engagement from Henry V.

You have to dig if you are going to get away from a culture that trains people to fail to prepare for marriage. You have to fight to develop and maintain your ability to love another person well, in a Christ-like way. The culture says to treat the opposite sex like a commodity, but you should instead think of them as something designed to be presented to God. Never treat them in a way that causes damage to that vertical relationship, that’s the most important thing about them – how they see God.

Podcasts

William Lane Craig lectures on failure in the Christian life

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I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery
I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery

I found this audio on Brian Auten’s Apologetics 315 web site.

Here is the MP3 file.

And here is my summary.

Intro:

  • the topic of failure is not one that is often discussed by Christians
  • failure #1: failure in the Christian life which is the result of sin
  • failure #2: when a Christian is defeated while trying to serve God
  • the consequences for failure #1 can be worse for the Christian
  • the consequences for failure #2 can be worse for the world as whole
  • how is it possible for a person to fail when they are obeying God? (#2)
  • how can it be that God can call someone to a task then let them fail?
  • failure is not persecution – persecution is normal for Christians
  • failure is not trials – testing is normal for Christians to grow

Bill’s failure:

  • Bill had submitted all the coursework for his second doctoral degree
  • but he had to pass a comprehensive oral examination
  • he failed to pass the comprehensive exam
  • Bill and Jan and his supporters had all prayed for him to pass
  • how could God allow this to happen?

Solution to the problem:

  • God’s will for us may be that we fail at the things we try in life
  • there are things that God may teach us through failure
  • Bill learned that human relationships are more important than careers
  • we need to realize that “success” in life is not worldly success
  • true success is getting to know God well during your life
  • and failure may be the best way to get to know God well
  • it may even be possible to fail to know God while achieving a lot
  • the real measure of a man is loving God and loving your fellow man

Practical:

  • give thanks to God regardless of your circumstances
  • try to learn from your failure
  • never give up

The ending of Bill’s story:

  • Bill spent an entire year preparing for a re-take of his exam
  • Bill was awarded his second doctorate “magna cum laude” (with great distinction)
  • Bill learned that American students are not well prepared for exams
  • the year of studying remedied his inadequate American education
  • in retrospect, he is thankful for the failure – he learned more

If you like this, you should pick up Craig’s book “Hard Questions, Real Answers“, which has a chapter on this problem.

News

The Democrats who cried wolf: how incompetent Obama and corrupt Clinton lost the election

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Why do people think that CNN are biased leftist clowns?
Why do people think that the mainstream media is biased against Republicans?

In the Tuesday elections, the Republican party won the Presidency, and held onto the Senate and the House of Representatives. Republicans also hold a majority of governorships and state legislatures.

How did this happen? Did the Democrats not paint all of their opposition as racist? Yes, they did. Did the Democrats not paint all of their opposition as sexist? Yes, they did. Did the Democrats not paint all of their opposition as Islamophobic? Yes, they did. Did the Democrats not paint all of their opposition as homophobic? Yes, they did.They said all those things. That’s how they talk about Republicans.

But this time, the American people did not accept the normal caricature of Republicans. This time, the voters decided to vote Republican in every possible race, in overwhelming numbers.

Why?

Rich Lowry of National Review explains:

Yet again, Democrats breathlessly declare the Republican candidate a Nazi — and wonder why no one is listening.

The Republican nominee for president is a racist, sexist threat to American democracy — and this time, we really mean it.

In a nutshell, this is the Democratic argument against Donald Trump. In a wild, topsy-turvy political year, it is the one exceedingly familiar piece of the political landscape — because it is a version of the argument the Left makes against every Republican nominee.

That this line of attack is so shopworn, just when Democrats think we need it most, has led to self-reflection and regret from one of the harshest commentators on the left. The HBO host Bill Maher said the other day that “liberals made a big mistake” when they attacked George W. Bush “like he was the end of the world,” and did the same thing to Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Maher himself was a prime offender, with no hesitation about resorting to Nazi analogies (he compared Romney’s aides to Adolf Hitler’s dead-end loyalists, and Laura Bush to Hitler’s dog).

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been touring the country saying that Trump isn’t like past Republican nominees, even though they were attacked in exactly the same terms.

George W. Bush was a man of deep faith who did all he could to reach out to minorities and soften conservatism’s edge. Yet right out of the gate in 2000, the NAACP ran an ad accusing him of being all but complicit in a hideous racist murder in Texas. His botched handling of Hurricane Katrina wasn’t portrayed as a mistake in trying circumstances, but of his disregard for black people. He was called a fascist, a war criminal, and a would-be theocrat.

Obama now says Romney was only “wrong on certain policy issues.” This is rank revisionism. His campaign’s entire approach in 2012 was to disqualify Romney as a person, basically for being too coldbloodedly rational and prim and proper (i.e., the opposite of Trump).

Romney was not, as an Obama ad put it, “one of us.” He basically killed people with his heartless layoffs. He posed a real and present danger to Latinos with his policy of “self-deportation.” He was waging a “war on women.” One prominent piece of evidence for Romney’s unhinged sexism was his entirely anodyne, if awkward, comment that he asked for “binders full of women” when making appointments as governor of Massachusetts.

Harry Reid infamously alleged, with no evidence whatsoever, that Romney didn’t pay taxes for a decade. When the Republican candidate released his returns, it turned out he had overpaid. And so it went.

It has always been the case that Republican leaders are retrospectively deemed statesmen by the Left when they are dead or retired. It has happened to Ronald Reagan, who went from a warmongering right-wing radical to a statesmanlike moderate; to George H. W. Bush, who was an out-of-touch elitist and now is the epitome of class; and to George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, who now are getting their revivals.

This isn’t about the softening passage of time so much as opportunistically using past Republican politicians as a bludgeon against contemporary Republican politicians.

Genuinely alarmed by Trump, Bill Maher apparently realizes how tinny it sounds to lodge against him all the accusations routinely made against any other Republican. It was just a couple of years ago that Paul Ryan – an earnest policy wonk who operates in the inclusive style of the late Jack Kemp – was attacked as a racist for commenting on men not working in troubled inner-city neighborhoods.

If this isn’t crying wolf, what is? Confronted with Trump, Democrats don’t have any radioactive denunciations in reserve. They have all been deployed against a couple of generations of Republicans whose politics and characters were starkly different than Trump’s. And will surely be deployed once again – the charges never change, just the target.

The problem is that the blame for the election cannot be placed on Republican voters being motivated by racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. This election result was caused by two things: 1) the Democrats inflicted 8 years of failed social policy, fiscal policy and foreign policy on the American people, and 2) the Democrats ran the most entitled, secretive, corrupt candidate who has ever run in any American election.

The problem is that the average Democrat voter has not been following the news closely enough to understand how damaging the failed policies of Barack Obama have been, and  how bad their candidate really was.

The average Democrat voter:

  • does not know about Benghazi being blamed on a Youtube video.
  • does not know about the disasters in Libya and Egypt following our military interventions.
  • does not know about our failure to support pro-democracy forces in Syria, arm the Kurds, give anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, and give missile defense to European countries.
  • does not know about the details of the Iran nuclear deal.
  • does not know about the running of assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels.
  • does not know about the handing out of taxpayer money to green energy companies run by Obama bundlers.
  • does not know that Obama doubled the national debt from 10 to 20 trillion.
  • does not know that Christian business owners are forced to celebrate gay marriage and cover abortifacients in the health insurance plans they offer to employees.
  • does not know about illegal immigrants killing Americans after the federal government fails to deport them.
  • has not watched the Center for Medical Progress videos showing Planned Parenthood officials optimizing abortion procedures in order to maximize profit from organ trafficking.
  • has not watched the Project Veritas videos showing Democrats talking about organizing violence at Republican events, and organizing voter fraud.
  • does not know about terrorist attacks committed by Islamic refugees who were fast-tracked to green cards while skilled legal immigrants had to wait in line for decades.
  • does not know that Obama blocked construction of the Keystone pipeline, and that labor force participation is at a 30-year low because of Obama’s anti-business policies.
  • does not know that thousands of veterans have died waiting for healthcare, while VA bureaucrats falsified records and collected big performance bonuses.
  • does not remember how Democrat politicians wanted to give space to BLM rioters to break the law.
  • does not understand how Hillary circumvented information security policies to hide her emails from her employer, and how the Clinton Foundation accepted donations from foreign donors in exchange for access and favors.
  • believes that Obamacare is working as designed, and that everyone kept their doctor, kept their health plan, and is now paying less premium, with a lower deductible.

The average Democrat voter is not well-informed, and does not realize that the average Republican voter is aware of all of these things and more – and that this is why the average Republican voter voted for a clown like Donald Trump, rather than vote for a corrupt politician like Hillary Clinton. They voted against Hillary because she intended to double down on policies that we all know have failed catastrophically.

In my experience, the Democrats I know never ask me to explain my views, nor do they read any new source or scholarly work that contradicts the caricature they have of Republican voters. Republicans are familiar with the views on the other side, but Democrats believe caricatures. At some point Democrats have to put truth above their need to feel superior to others, and get informed. Laughing at people who differ with you on serious issues for substantive reasons does not lead to irenic discussion.

The real losers of this election are the celebrities, entertainers and the mainstream media. They have lost their authority to scare Americans with caricatures of Republican political views. I am not happy at all with a Trump presidency, he has just done too many things to burn bridges with me: false accusations against Cruz, slandering George W. Bush, petty insults against Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan, etc. But I am glad that Hillary Clinton lost the election and I am glad that the Democrats wasted so much money trying to get her elected. I am happy that the mainstream media lost. I hope that the people like Stephen Moore, John Bolton, Trey Gowdy, etc. who are on board with Trump (I’m not, I’m a #NeverTrump Cruz supporter) are able to punish the Democrats and shrink the size of government. That would be a really good thing for America.

Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy
Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy

My advice to Democrats is this: pick up a book by Thomas Sowell and read it. Try “Basic Economics”, which will teach you how different economic policies have actually worked out in different times and in different places. Then maybe you will have a more accurate picture of reality which will help you to understand what motivates the people who disagree with you on public policy.