According to the recent observations the percentage of unhappy marriages in United States resulting in a divorce has become unbelievably high. Over 50 percent of first marriages are likely to end with divorce (Martin, Bumpass, 1999, p.23). This means that spouse relations as they are in a modern American society do not work well enough to enhance stable and happy marriages.

It is surely hard to define all the necessary conditions for family relations to become stronger and more reliable; however the freedom of choice seems to be extremely powerful in forming relationship that will make married couples happier. This is not a freedom of choice where women chooses one approach to marital relations and then finds herself being blamed for what she has chosen. The true freedom of choice means allowing a person to express own beliefs and act accordingly without a fear to be condemned by any society niche for his or her way of life.

In the nowadays society, which is so much influenced by feministic ideals, it is yet hard to find a couple that will be absolutely happy with wives’ positions being dominative in the family. Actually it was concluded that wife-dominant marriages are the least happy (Gray, Burks, 1983), which means that women’ power does not make happy neither wives nor their spouses. Meghan O'Rourke (2006) argues the idea that an urge for equality makes women unhappy not because women essentially can not be happy with dominant positions, but because they are being mislead by the excessive variety of choices. Of course the wide selection of behavioral patterns makes the probability of mistake bigger. In a situation where women need to choose between feministic ideals, religious beliefs, society priorities, background pushes and her spouse’s preferences, she is just like a high school student who was given an open ended question instead of true/false quiz. The more options she has, the more charges in inadequate behavior she will be faced. Is this a freedom of choice? No. This is a question with no correct answer which woman is yet obliged to give an answer to.

The perfect society with perfect relations will never make women’s decision making an unsolvable problem. In case all parts, which society if formed of, including spouse, religious community, coworkers and neighbors will accept woman’s decision either to be a housekeeper or participate in career lift, to give birth to 5 children or none, to cook vegetarian meals or roast beef as her free choice – this will be the start of the happy relationships of married couples and a society in a whole as well. This quiz should not have one correct answer but rather endless number of individual solutions.

It is when spouses will start accepting each other decisions without prejudices formed by some society values then will be the time of happy relationships. As Richard Bach wrote in his The Bridge Across Forever, “it doesn’t matter who is right. What’s important is what’s going on between us” (Bach, 1987 p. 109). His experience with relations with his future wife clearly shows how an ability to accept any decision of a beloved person as a free expression of one’s identity can result in strengthening relations. Another important thing we learn from Bach’s novel is that even something that seems to be incorrect at first glance turns out to be the matter we simply have never thought of. When Richard Bach first learned of his wife’s love to classic music he thought it was silly, however it turned out that he was simply not aware of how to appreciate this kind of music. Learning to appreciate classic music, lead him into falling in love with it too. The same thing seems to happen in spouses relations. Whenever one of us makes choices he puts himself in danger of not being understood, while ability to understand and willingness to learn results in mutually beneficial relationship where there are no rights or wrongs but only the freedom of expressing own opinion. When both spouses will know that whatever decision she or he makes there will be no blame placed upon him or her concerning that decision, when people learn understanding and start respect each other opinions even if at first glance it seems to be terribly wrong – there will be perfect conditions formed to live a happy married life in a happy society.

Bach, R., 1987, The Bridge Across Forever, Newman Communications.

Gray L, Burks N, 1983, “Power and satisfaction in marriage: a review and critique”, American Journal of Psychology, 93 p.513-538.

Martin T., Bumpass L., 1989, “Recent trends in marital disruption”. Demography, 26, p.37-51

O'Rourke, M., March 6, 2006, “Desperate Feminist Wives: Why wanting equality makes women unhappy”, Slate, Washingtonpost, Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC, April 15, 2006, .