Today’s episode is for those of you who just need to know that the hard work of creating a thriving, passionate marriage is worthwhile. Whatever you’ve been through, however difficult the road ahead appears to be: we really want to distill some hope for you today so that you stay committed to creating something beautiful with your spouse. Marriage is not always easy. But we want you to know it is worthwhile.

Today we’re going to take you through the top 5 benefits of creating a happy marriage. To come up with these top 5 benefits I asked our researcher Paul to go out and just survey the literature and see what the consistent themes are: the repeated positive outcomes that keep bubbling to the surface when researchers are studying marriage.

We are not knocking off anyone else’s top 5 list today: we put this one together from our own survey of the research. And good research at that: I am talking about the psychological journals where we have real researchers in the trenches trying to figure out the nuances and details of marriage every day, not just some Joe Average blogger’s opinion off the Internet.

So, let’s jump in. We’re going to work from the fifth benefit back to the first.

#5: Personal Growth

The research consistently shows that a happy marriage enables spouses to grow, both individually and as a couple. This comes through mainly in three different fronts.

Personal Goals

It’s easier to meet personal challenges when you know someone has your back, right? Well married people often report that the level of support they get from their spouse is the strongest determining factor in how well they achieve their personal goals[i]. Your support of your spouse makes a big difference in his or her life. With your support, your spouse feels secure enough and has enough practical and emotional assistance to aim for their important goals in life, whatever they may be.

So creating a happy marriage ends up setting the stage for helping one another achieve personal goals. It is not hard to imagine how a distressed marriage takes up so much energy that it gets in the way of achieving those goals.

Resilience

A cool study from 2011[ii] found that overcoming stressful circumstances with your spouse early in the marriage makes you far more able to deal with stress later in life. In this study high marital satisfaction (especially good communication and support) enabled couples to build up resilience to stress, which helped them adjust to stressful life events such as the transition to parenthood. Other research shows that high marital quality can help couples cope with difficult circumstances such as financial pressure and illness[iii].

This is brilliant too: of course, life throws all of us curveballs. But when you create a happy marriage you create a safe harbor, a place you can come to in order to recharge and renew yourself for facing those challenges. And this ends up making you stronger in the long term.

Growing Together

When your marriage is going well you start to embody the traits you admire in each other, allowing you both to grow as people. High satisfaction with your marriage and with who your spouse naturally leads to the admiration of your spouse. When couples admire each other they work to embody the positive traits they see in each other. In a well-functioning marriage both spouses, therefore "sharpen" each other and help make each other better[iv].

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” Proverbs 27:17 NIV. That’s the principle at play here.

So you take these three together: facilitating personal goals, fostering resilience against challenges, and promoting personal development and you can really see how a happy marriage fuels personal growth. That’s a huge blessing that comes from creating a happy marriage.

#4: Health

High marital satisfaction has positive effects on both physical and mental health. This happens through various routes[v]: