Till Death or Nasty Habits Do You Part

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like a horse and carriage

--Frank Sinatra

Oh really?

Maybe Frank wouldn’t have crooned about such a view if he’d known what the divorce statistics were going to be a few years down the pike.

Or what his own track record was going to be in the nuptials department.

Or perhaps if he’d just bothered to examine a fundamental flaw in the song:

Just how often do any of us see a horse and carriage, anyway? And when was the last time anyone asked the horse in question if he was happy in the arrangement?

Granted, talking about the staggering number of couples who end up biting the Big D is nothing new. We’ve all read about it, witnessed firsthand how common it has become.

What is new, though, is knowing the reasons why: What makes some couples stay together? What makes others fall apart?

Until now, all we had were our own, often slanted opinions.

If John would just understand Jane’s need to compulsively shop, their marriage would instantly improve.

Or: If Jane wouldn’t nag John so much about leaving his smelly gym socks on the dinner table, maybe the marriage could be saved.

But what it all came down to was speculation. And the problem was, there was nothing very concrete to go on. Until now.

Researchers at the University of Washington sat down with 52 couples to see if they could determine which ones were likely to remain married, and which ones were likely to utter the phrase “Tell it to my attorney!” in the near future.

What they found--by examining the couples’ manner of talking to one another, their body language and other nonverbal cues--was startling.

The ingredients that led to a long-lasting marriage aren’t as mysterious as some people may have believed. It isn’t the crapshoot some people have made it out to be.

In 94% of the cases, the researchers made an accurate prediction.

*

Now, many of you--especially those who don’t have the benefit of traveling to Washington to sit in a room with a bunch of researchers--may not completely understand what particular tone of voice, choice of words or body language is likely to lead to single-income tax-filing status.

It would be helpful to know, wouldn’t it? Especially if the insight comes before the marriage, and not afterward.

After all, we are heading into June--the month of marriages--and perhaps that bit of information could head off some problems.

That certainly was my goal when I contacted two local wedding consultants--both of whom also are ministers and perform marriages--to find out if there was anything they could tell me.

*

Georgi Martin is a Swiss Reform minister in Oxnard. She’s also a wedding consultant with Anytime Weddings, whose advertisement in the phone book promises quick, “affordable, legal marriage.”

Martin didn’t know about the Washington study but said it didn’t surprise her. Using her own methods of observation, she figures she has “at least an 80% accuracy rate” of predicting which couples will only briefly know the meaning of marital bliss.

“What amazes me is how little they’ll know about each other,” said Martin, who has been performing marriages for 12 years.

“You ask the mother’s name of the bride, and the groom has no idea. You’ll ask, ‘Were you ever married before?’ and when one answers yes, the other will say, ‘Really? I didn’t know that.’ ”

Other couples, she said, have an unrealistic picture of what life ahead of them is going to be like. “You’ll hear them talk about wanting three kids and a house in the country, and things like that, and they don’t even know how they’re going to pay for the wedding.”

Tamara Conlan also is a wedding consultant and, for the last eight months, also has been performing marriages. But it’s kind of a side business.

“My real job is as a masseuse for the L.A. Raiders,” said Conlan, who is an ordained minister of the United Evangelical Churches.

“My son got married by a minister a year ago. She was in the house 15 minutes and made a lot of money, and I thought, ‘Hey, I can do that. It wouldn’t hurt my back.’ ”

Conlan said the couples who come to her office--which is filled with a massage table and football star pictures--tend to be somewhat unconventional. And most, she added, have lived together a long time and are comfortable with each other.

Perhaps that is why most of them seem so well-suited for each other, she said.

“I’ve married about 20 couples, and I’d bet most of them are still together,” she said. “I wouldn’t marry them if I thought they were a terrible match. I think I could tell.

“I wouldn’t massage anyone I wasn’t comfortable with, either.”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds about as scientific an explanation for predicting marital success as anything else.

Now, if Martin and Conlan can just talk to me about that matter of the smelly gym socks. . . .