A recent poll by Woman’s Day magazine surveyed over 3000 married women and the results were very interesting. Over 1/3 of the women surveyed stated that they would not marry their husbands if they had it to do over again, and another 20% had doubts if they would to it again. I didn’t see a comparable poll for men, but other surveys over the year have shown that men as a group have a higher level of marital satisfaction than women.

There are no mulligans in marriage (unless you are Carmen Electra or Britney Spears), and you can’t simply ask for a “do-over”. You can get a divorce, but it doesn’t change the fact that you were married, doesn’t alter the history, and doesn’t give those years back. They are what they are and you’ve done what you’ve done.

You could certainly say that we should have caution in interpreting these survey results. After all, any survey is simply a snapshot in time (ask President Kerry). Expressing doubt that a decision you once made was the right one or wishing on the day the pollster called that you hadn’t done it does not by itself constitute a crisis. What married person hasn’t had a moment like that?

It does however raise some interesting questions:

Why are women generally less satisfied in marriage than men? Is it that women have higher expectations of what a satisfactory marital relationship is? Is it that guys given food, sex, and access to the remote control are happy, while women want and expect much more? Popular literature and culture have extolled the romance and magic of marriage, setting a very high expectations bar. When the marriage inevitably doesn’t measure up to this romantic nirvana, disillusionment and disappointment set in. I think it is reasonable to say that where your expectations are in relationship to the reality of who you married is very important in determining how successful your marriage will be. If you don’t expect much and don’t get much your satisfaction level would remain fairly high. If you expect nightly wine and roses and get a couch potato….well, you aren’t going to be too happy.

Or is it that buyer’s remorse is just a natural state of mind? Remember when you bought that new car, all shiny, sleek, and sitting in the lot? Out of all the cars you could’ve had, you bought that one. Yeah, it doesn’t get very good mileage and may seem a little impractical….but damnit, you wanted THAT car. A few years later you are still making those payments and its beauty and sleekness don’t have the same appeal it once did. You think to yourself, “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. I could’ve had that other car or maybe waited awhile and made do with what I had.” A spouse isn’t a car, but you get the idea. What was once charming or maybe didn’t really matter becomes annoying over time and you resent it. Is it so unnatural to look back and wonder, “did I do the right thing?” I’ve listened to high school students wax rhapsodic about marriage and thought to myself that maybe someone should be injecting some realism in there somewhere.

Many would argue that the state of marriage is in rather bad shape. The divorce rate soars ever skyward with each passing year. “Till death do us apart” has been replaced by “until I’ve had enough.” People know when they marry that in spite of their vow it really is a temporary state, worth about as much as Nick Saban’s contract with the Dolphins. I suspect that people have always had the buyer’s remorse, but changes in society have simply made it easier to act on that remorse. There really isn’t much we can do to put that genie back in the bottle and you can argue that we shouldn’t even try. Is it really better to keep people trapped in loveless marriages? It seems like we could do more on the front end with honest discussions about expectations and the reality of buyer’s remorse.
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