New Scoop on Some Old Stats

I love the way you can always find the table of contents (it is always right after the cover page) and you don’t have to go flopping through the first half of the magazine to find what you are looking for. I love all the questions. Relationship questions, money questions, sex questions …I always read the advice columns. There are even questions for me alone to ponder. I don’t always give my soul the searching it may deserve, but I love the questions.

I love the article headlines on the front cover that get me to buy the magazine - this month it was “Better Sex: The 20 minute Rule” (when you find the article, you learn that most women need about 20 minutes of foreplay to achieve orgasm…hmmm) but it could have just as easily been “How Not To Feel Like A Stuffed Turkey”.

And I love all the pages with the little tidbits of information*. I love the little article-ettes that give fitness tips (clench your butt cheeks while seated at your desk…hey I’m doing it right now!), or beauty ideas (I case you haven’t already guessed, it’s Heather writing, not Dan or just little morsels of interest about our fellow citizens. I love it.

What does any of this have to do with CouplesQuestions? Well….

In this month's issue, in a section entitled “Are These Stats Still True?”, there were three significant updates to old data relevant to our interests at CouplesQuestions.com. The first stat-buster in the article that really caught my eye was the former belief (from a 1986 Newsweek cover and article) that a woman over 40 was more likely to be killed by a terrorist that get married. Now, a woman over 40, apparently, has a 40% chance of getting married. What changed? In a nutshell: 40 is the new 30.

The next stat that is most definitely related to couples and good news for women everywhere is that the old statistic of 43% of women having some type of sexual dysfunction is incorrect. Now it is believed that it is more like 24%. The new numbers focus more on how a woman feels about her own sexuality rather that what she may or may not be doing or feeling (or not doing or feeling) sexually. A woman may lack desire, but that is not deemed a dysfunction. Only those women who are deeply troubled by their sex life are deemed dysfunctional.

The last piece of information I found most interesting. For a very long time we have been told that 50% of marriages will end up in divorce. The good news is that number is actually lower. It seems somewhere between 40% and 50% is the actual number (a shame they couldn’t be a tad more specific). The great news is that the numbers drop dramatically to 24% the couple is at least 25 years old when they marry and if they wait seven months to have a child. Something they didn’t report, but we mentioned in a blog post back in August, is that couples who do some type of premarital education (like, say, couplesquestions.com) reduce their chances of divorce by 31%. Cool!

Happy Couples, Happy Planet!

*Don’t get me wrong, the longer articles can be good, too. I am not averse to lengthy articulate pieces of writing (I’ve been known to crack a book or two) it’s just that sometimes, between feedings of my 4 month old or once my toddler has settled into her lunch of pasta and peas, the short little articles are just what a gal needs to keep from losing her nut!

posted by Heather and Dan @ 7:48 PM