Graph Stat: How Did You Meet?

Lately, a big deal has been made about the way in which people meet. Women especially, it seems, want a good “how we met” story to package their marriage in something remarkable, or at least special. But what is the reality behind the circumstances of how people meet and the quality/success-rate of their marriage? This seemed an interesting question for LITD, who polled four couples nationwide regarding their marriage quality/longevity and how it related to their initial meeting. The results were staggering.

First, the dark end of the spectrum. We might think schoolyard and childhood sweethearts are the stuff of storybooks, since they always seem to last so long. Indeed, we found, they DO last long, but the quality of their marriage is dismal – they know each other so well that they almost look through each other, and walk through life together in a sort of dismal daze. The biggest surprise were the couples who were introduced by their mother – these not only represented the most miserable marriages, but also lasted the shortest. Why is that? We can only speculate, but if you think about it, did you ever like the kids your mother made you hang out with on vacations or trips? No. It also might have something to do with innate rebellion against your mother – anything she approves of (clothing, music, whatever) is automatically uncool and worthless.

You’ll notice a large number of “meets” cluster in the middle, hovering around tolerance and divorce. This is the thin line that separates success and failure, which most marriages we know dance around. But let’s look at the lone successful meet-metric: drunken one night stands. This goes against all our preconceived, Hollywoodized notions of what makes a happy marriage, but think about the couples you know who hooked up quickly and sloppily. That’s right. They are in the best shape. So what does this say? Again, we can only speculate, but perhaps it makes a case for throwing caution to the wind, not overthinking/overanalyzing things, and throwing back an Irish Carbomb or two. Controlling fate, perhaps, is better left to the Gods, in this case Dionysus.