By Beth Azar
Monitor staff
Four years ago, newlyweds Susan and Dave moved into a town house in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. They shared a courtyard with six other young couples, each as happy as the next. Today, only Susan and Dave and one other couple are still married. And Susan is left wondering what happened.

Their neighborhood is a casualty of changing times, say marriage researchers. Relationships between men and women are evolving faster than many marriages can withstand. As a result, the divorce rate hovers around 50 percent, more people are postponing or opting out of marriage and even more are deciding to live together without marrying, at least at first.

Even so, most people want to be in a romantic relationship and keep trying despite the dismal statistics, and psychologists are examining what makes marriages fail and ways to help them work.

Problems with equality

'There has been a world-wide revolution in women's rights both economically and psychologically,' said psychologist John Gottman, PhD, of the University of Washington.

And as the rate of women working has increased, so have divorce rates, he said.

Today, almost 60 percent of wives work and 22.3 percent of them earn more than their husbands. The change in women's work status not only forces more egalitarian marriages, but decreases pressures for women to marry or stay in a bad marriage-they can be financially independent and remain unmarried without stigma.

But women working doesn't cause divorce. Working actually increases women's satisfaction at home, said psychologist and marriage researcher Howard Markman, PhD, of the University of Denver. What decreases their satisfaction and precipitates divorce are the problems they face communicating and negotiating with their husbands, many of whom may be put off by their wives' careers or stuck in traditional views of spousal roles, he said.

'Equality puts a premium on negotiating everything,' said psychologist Clifford Notarius, PhD, of Catholic University and author with Markman of We Can Work it Out: Making Sense of Marital Conflict. 'Meanwhile, the problem with most couples is that they don't know how to discuss conflict.'

He and other marriage researchers have begun to design programs to help couples learn how to come to terms with their new roles and negotiate the inevitable conflict that will arise (see sidebar).

The future of marriage

The number of unmarried adults nearly doubled between 1970 and 1993, from 37.5 million to 72.6 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. More than half of this group have never married.

Those who do marry are postponing it longer than they have since 1890: The average age at first marriage for women rose from 21.3 in 1960 to 24.5 in 1993 and for men from 22.8 in 1960 to 26.5 in 1993.

At the same time, the number of unmarried couples living together rose 454 percent since 1970 to 2.9 million couples in 1990. By age 34, 45 percent of adults had co-habitated and 39 percent of married couples lived with their spouse before marriage.

But living together before the nuptials is no guarantee of marital success. In fact, couples who live together first divorce at higher rates than couples who live separately before marriage-38 percent and 27 percent respectively within 10 years, according to a study by University of Wisconsin researchers.

Part of the problem may be that the 'institution' of co-habitation isn't well structured, said sociologist Steven Nock, PhD, of the University of Virginia.

Marriage is a normative relationship-there are a special terms for married couples and recognized relationship between spouses, their families and friends.

Co-habitation, however, has no normative terms or roles. Lovers who live together are less committed to their relationships, tend to be less religious, more independent and have less traditional views of marriage and sex roles. They often have strained relationships with their parents and their partner's parents, said Nock.

A biological need

'People want to share their life with someone,' he said. 'They're looking for an intimate relationship that provides comfort, sexual gratification and friendship with a life-long partner.'

It's a universal biologically driven need to give and receive care, note psychologists Elaine Hatfield, PhD, and Richard Rapson, PhD, of the University of Hawaii in their book Love and Sex: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, to be published this month. They cite historical, sociological and psychological data from around the world, indicating the common thread of love and relationships throughout history.

There are also many logical reasons to marry, said Gottman. For one, there are big economic advantages, especially for people who want to raise a family. Also, research shows that a two-parent family is still the best place to raise kids, especially if the father is emotionally engaged.

'The benefits of marriage are extraordinary,' said Notarius. 'If you look at utilization of medical and psychiatric resources, happily married couples use less than any one else in the population. People are aware of the benefits a good marriage can provide.'

Besides, few people think they'll be one of the statistics, say researchers. When psychologist Blaine Fowers, PhD, asked married couples what their chance of divorce is, the average answer was 10 percent, and more than three-fourths refused to acknowledge it was even a remote possibility.

Lofty expectations

He studies marital illusions-the fantasies and unrealistic ideas people hold about marriage in general and their partners in particular. He found that happy couples are more likely to form illusions than unhappy couples. They agree to unrealistically rosy descriptions of their marriage. And they idealize their spouses, attributing more positive qualities to them than to anyone else and giving their spouses credit for more positive aspects of the marriage than themselves.

In other words, the higher the level of marital satisfaction, the more marital illusions are in place, said Fowers. This implies that, to be happy in a marriage, people must form unrealistic illusions.

This trend seems particularly salient in the United States. When Hatfield asked college students in the United States, Japan and Russia what traits they desired in a mate, students in the three countries gave surprisingly similar answers. They cited such traits as kindness and understanding, a sense of humor, expressiveness and openness, and intelligence (in that order). However, more so than students in Russia and Japan, American students assumed they could, and should, 'have it all' from their partner.

'We have to engage in illusions to maintain the kind of satisfaction we expect,' said Fowers. 'When problems arise, the illusions break down and people become dissatisfied.'

One way to deal with this dilemma is to form a broader sense of a good marriage, said Fowers. Instead of thinking in terms of individual satisfaction, people need to start thinking about family as a unit rather than the sum of its parts, he said.