Marriage Today: What 1,001 Couples Report (page 3 of 6)

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Finding No. 2: It's Really About Trust

The Statistics
Survey respondents were given a list of traits and asked to pick which were most important to their marriages. These five were rated highest.

Trust 63%
Time spent talking, laughing, having fun 52%
Compatibility 30%
Ability to resolve differences effectively 30%
Forgiveness 27%

Respondents were also asked to rate from 1 to 10 how happy they were with important elements of marriage. Given are the percentages of people who rated the element either 9 or 10.

Trust 66%
Freedom of personal/career growth 60%
Compatibility 58%
Ability to forgive 58%
Verbal affection 51%

"We always have people that are envious of our marriage," a blissfully wed woman told Reader's Digest. "They don't understand that most of it is trust and respect. We are like one."

More than friendship or laughter, forgiveness or compatibility, spouses name trust as the element crucial for a happy marriage. Survey-takers ranked this old-fashioned virtue as five times more important than good-quality sex -- and most said the level of trust had improved in the years since they first became husband and wife.

In today's stressed-out marriages, where we need more from each other than ever before yet have less time in which to give it, trust is no longer a given. "Trust may be even more important than love itself," says Terry Hargrave, Ph.D., a professor of counseling at West Texas A&M University and author of The Essential Humility of Marriage. "We write songs and poetry about love, but too often we ignore this other important pillar of marriage. I'm glad to see it was named and counted as important."

Trust is all about fairness and balance -- it's both partners doing their share of the work in a relationship. It's something that each partner is always aware of, on some level. And like money in the bank, trust is an important relationship resource that can be used well or squandered. "Done right, it takes on a magical quality: If you trust your spouse, you can give freely and happily. But when there's a lack of trust, spouses withdraw or manipulate or threaten," Dr. Hargrave says. "A lack of trust can destroy love. But a lack of love can't destroy trust -- in old-fashioned arranged marriages, those with a high level of trust could actually generate love even if a husband and wife barely knew each other at the start."

Dr. Hargrave points to a crisis of trust underlying the nation's high divorce rate. Sometimes the breach of trust is huge: infidelity, alcoholism, drug abuse. But more often, we fail each other in smaller, everyday ways that erode trust slowly but surely. "A working marital relationship is built on trust," he says. "Its success is based on how you answer the underlying questions: Can we give equally to each other? Can we accomplish the work of marriage -- nurturing children, becoming financially secure? Can I treat you in a respectful way? Can we do what we need to do in our community? In families where both spouses work, the acts that build trust are different than they are in traditional families. A wife is going out to work, so a husband needs to take up more domestic responsibilities. If this doesn't happen, you have trust problems -- and ultimately, frustrated and overworked wives who may decide that they're better off divorced."

Sometimes the act of getting married switches on a spouse's "responsibility gene," as one survey participant found: "The day we married, he changed from someone who I could never trust to someone I trust completely." For others, trust was part of the marriage pact itself, as one woman told us. "We promised to talk, to trust each other, not go to bed angry, to listen to our children, not to be judgmental, and if we disagree with each other, never to express that in front of our children, family, or friends," she said.

The good news: While you cannot conjure love from thin air, you can bolster the sense of trust in your marriage today. "Doing your share, not letting your spouse down can go far toward repairing relationships and building love," Dr. Hargrave says. "The fact that people are naming trust as a vital element in marriage is an encouraging sign. It cannot be taken for granted."