3 Ways to Build a Happy Marriage & Avoid Divorce: George Blair-West (Transcript)

 

Dr George Blair-West is an author, researcher and medical doctor specialising in psychiatry in private practice in Brisbane, Australia. In an actionable, eye-opening talk, psychiatrist George Blair-West shares three keys to preventing divorce — and spotting potential problems while you’re still dating.

Here is the full text of Dr. George’s talk titled “3 Ways to Build a Happy Marriage & Avoid Divorce.”

 

Dr George Blair-West – TRANSCRIPT

Almost 50 years ago, psychiatrists Richard Rahe and Thomas Holmes developed an inventory of the most distressing human experiences that we could have.

Number one on the list? Death of a spouse. Number two, divorce. Three, marital separation.

Now, generally, but not always, for those three to occur, we need what comes in number seven on the list, which is marriage.

Fourth on the list is imprisonment in an institution.

Now, some say number seven has been counted twice. I don’t believe that.

When the life stress inventory was built, back then, a long-term relationship pretty much equated to a marriage. Not so now.

So for the purposes of this talk, I’m going to be including de facto relationships, common-law marriages and same-sex marriages, or same-sex relationships soon hopefully to become marriages.

And I can say from my work with same-sex couples, the principles I’m about to talk about are no different. They’re the same across all relationships.

So in a modern society, we know that prevention is better than cure. We vaccinate against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles. We have awareness campaigns for melanoma, stroke, diabetes — all important campaigns. But none of those conditions come close to affecting 45% of us.

Forty-five percent: that’s our current divorce rate.

Why no prevention campaign for divorce?

Well, I think it’s because our policymakers don’t believe that things like attraction and the way relationships are built is changeable or educable. Why? Well, our policymakers currently are Generation X. They’re in their 30s to 50s. And when I’m talking to these guys about these issues, I see their eyes glaze over, and I can see them thinking, “Doesn’t this crazy psychiatrist get it? You can’t control the way in which people attract other people and build relationships.”

Not so, our dear millennials. This is the most information-connected, analytical and skeptical generation, making the most informed decisions of any generation before them. And when I talk to millennials, I get a very different reaction. They actually want to hear about this. They want to know about how do we have relationships that last?

So for those of you who want to embrace the post- “romantic destiny” era with me, let me talk about my three life hacks for preventing divorce.

Now, we can intervene to prevent divorce at two points: later, once the cracks begin to appear in an established relationship; or earlier, before we commit, before we have children. And that’s where I’m going to take us now.

So my first life hack: millennials spend seven-plus hours on their devices a day. That’s American data. And some say, probably not unreasonably, this has probably affected their face-to-face relationships.

Indeed, and add to that the hookup culture, ergo apps like Tinder, and it’s no great surprise that the 20-somethings that I work with will often talk to me about how it is often easier for them to have sex with somebody that they’ve met than have a meaningful conversation.

Now, some say this is a bad thing. I say this is a really good thing. It’s a particularly good thing to be having sex outside of the institution of marriage.