CRYSTAL
If you want to make a successful Hollywood movie, you can be sure there is a winning formula in the following script: Man meets woman, they quickly fall in love, they move in together, they have a tragic misunderstanding which almost breaks off their relationship, the climatic moment of reconciliation arrives just in the nick of time, they embrace and declare their love for each other, then kiss for the final scene with a’ happy ever after’ feel as the camera pans out to a sunset.
This might be a little oversimplified, but this clearly is the view that many young women might have of the romantic possibilities of meeting Mr. Right and falling in love. In this worldview, if you meet the right person, you will be happy in a relationship with him or her for a lifetime.
After almost thirty years of meeting with engaged couples and married couples, Kevin and I can assure you that this expectation is far from the truth and in fact can lead the couple to unhappy relationships. Indeed, in today’s current environment in the United States, there is such a large number of couples who live together for years before their marriage that the romance of the early years is quite often gone by the time they get to the altar. Indeed, cohabitation can actually lead to a statistically higher chance of either breaking up before marriage, or divorcing within the next ten years.
Crystal and Kevin Sullivan
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