Benjamin Counts

English 300 A
November 15, 2013
There Are Worse Things than Death: Marriage

Marriage: most people in this world go down the path of finding that one person to be
with for the rest of his or her life and to live together in holy matrimony. At face value marriage
sounds like a marvelous idea: live together forever, grow old together, raise a family, and love
each other till your dying breath. However, marriage, once you scratch the surface is not as
amazing as it seems. As a matter of fact, marriage is the worst man made notion in the world.
The stress, that marriage brings alone, is enough to avoid the whole idea of marriage entirely.
The stress I am referring to is the unhealthy kind of stress known as distress. This form of stress
is the stress we feel that makes us feel worthless, alone, and can ultimately make us sick and
suicidal. Thanks to all of the problems that arise form marriage; many married couples get
sucked into a distressful life.
The best place to start with the distress of marriage is at the end. Fifty percent of
marriages end in divorce which is a major distress enforcer and leads to a lot of unhealthy
circumstances. Those against divorce would possibly argue the divorce causes the distress not
the marriage, but a study showed that those who divorced between 1983 and 1988 were no
different than people who did not divorce during the course of the study (Booth & Amato 401).
This study shows that people who divorced were no worse off, emotionally, than those who
remained married even though divorce is known to decrease the standard of living of both men
and women (Booth & Amato 398). The stressful effects of divorce can be catastrophic so is the
stress leading up to the dissolution. The psychological stress increases as the dissolution
approaches (Booth & Amato 396) which can lead to many negative effects on each individual,
but more impressing is that the amount of psychological stress each person feels decreases

following the divorce (Booth & Amato 396). Now if marriage is so miraculous why are people
feeling less psychological stress after the marriage is over? The answer is that married couples
tend to have a lot of problems so to those people divorce may be a relief (Booth & Amato
398). Some people may ask if divorce is such a problem why go through with it? This simple
question can be answered by the fact that those who believe that it is wrong to divorce and then
experience dissolution [tend] [to] experience more distress than those who do not hold this
belief (Booth & Amato 399). The most reassuring way to avoid the distress of divorce is to not
get married because once the vows are spoken there is a fifty percent chance of having to go
through the psychological stress, and all the negative things that come with divorce
Working backwards; one of the things that lead to divorce is the inequality that appears in
marriage. The adjectives tense, bored, frustrated, unhappy, worried, and neglected were the
words that answered the question think of all the pleasures and problems that go into daily life
with your [spouse] and tell how do you feel (Pearlin 347)? This question was asked to
married people and most of the answers were negative, so how could marriage be a good thing. A
major form of inequality that takes place in marriage is status inequality. The status
arrangement in society converge in marriage in ways that may ultimately have adverse
consequences for the emotional well-being of the partners this becomes a condition
eventuating in stress (Pearlin 354) and the length of time people [are] married does not lessen
the consequences of status inequality (Pearlin 356), so as time goes on the stress one feels will
build up. Now with the inequality comes the lack of receiving the same affection one may give to
their spouse; as a matter of fact the chance of intense stress being present is greatest when little
reciprocity is experienced when signs of affection are weak and when sharing of values is
limited (Pearlin 354). Status inequality mainly appears when one marries a status striver but
there are other inequalities that occur in a marriage that have nothing to do with status, but the

stress of the inequality is the same as that of status inequality. The problem of inequality makes
the lesser spouse feel worthless and when one feels themselves to be a loser in a marriage,
marked by inequality, there are likely to be problems in interaction and exchange ( Pearlin 348)
and once a sense of loss does occur there is also a very good chance that stress will occur
(Pearlin 348). Inequality happens in marriage when it shouldnt; the person was good enough for
the other to marry so there should be no inequality; however this logic seems lost on people these
days. Why would person A want to marry person B if person B is going to make person A feel
inferior: unappealing.
Divorce and inequality lead to distress, but distress also causes marriages to be a horrific
life choice. There is a process that leads to distress and its a simple one: feelings of romantic
love tend to become weaker with time (Huston 304), so as time passes feelings fade and the
lack of love shown leads to distress. This process of feelings fading comes about over the first
year, evolving away from a romantic recreational relationship towards more of a working
partnership (Huston 304). Anyone who has ever worked knows that people tend to blame others
for mistakes that happen in the work place, and marriage is no different. Marriages tend to rely
on blaming their partner for negative marital events (Neff & Karney 595) and that leads to
distress, or maybe distress causes couples to play the blame game. In a four year marriage
study it was revealed that when spouses experience higher levels of stress than normal, they
report mores specific problems in the marriage (Neff & Karney 595). Now once one spouse
feels stress there tends to be a stress spillover which causes the stressed person to take out their
stress on their spouse; as a matter of fact research on stress spillover indicates that when
spouses stress is high they are likely to exhibit more negative behaviors in the relationship (Neff
& Karney 596) which means that some accidents of marital decline may be found in the
external context of a marriage (Neff & Karney 603). Basically, when one feels stress they

decide to take it out on their spouse causing a never ending cycle. This in turn causes a stressful
relationship and high amounts of distress, which marriage can cause, can lead to suicide,
alcoholism, anxiety and depression.
Knowing all the stress that comes with events in marriage along with marriage itself; the
idea of holy matrimony seems like an unattractive idea. First there is the fact that right off the bat
once one gets married they are looking at a fifty percent chance of divorce, inequality, and the
fading of romance which all leads to distress; which leads to very negative behaviors such as
suicide and depression, and if marriage leads to sadness and death; can one really say it is such a
beautiful thing to live in holy matrimony: honestly I dont think so.

Works Cited

Booth, Alan, and Paul Amato. "Divorce and Psychological Stress." Journal of Health
and Social Behavior. 32.4 (1991): 407. Print.
Huston, Ted. "The Social Ecology of Marriage and Other Intimate Unions." Journal of
Marriage and Family. 62.2 (200): 298-320. Print.
Neff, Lisa, and Benjamin Karney. "Stress Crossover in Newlywed Marriage: A
Longitudinal and Dyadic Perspective." Journal of Marriage and Family. 69.3 (2007):
594-607. Print.
Pearlin, Leonard. "Status Inequality and Stress in Marriage."American Sociological
Review. 40.3 (1975): 344-357. Print.