Secrets of Lasting Love

We’re fascinated by age gap romances – the relationships where one partner is old enough to be the other’s parent – and there are plenty of high profile couples who seem to be doing just fine.

Think Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher (she is 15 years older); newly engaged Harrison Ford (66) and Calista Flockhart, (44) or Tom Cruise (47) and Katie Holmes (30).

And what about Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who share not just a marriage but the same September 25 birthday – it’s just it is 25 years apart.

These Hollywood matches are all beating the odds, according to new research on the secrets of lasting marriages conducted by the Australian National University.

Divorce More Likely If Wife Older

Analysis of 2500 Australian couples over six years shows the chances of getting divorced double if there is more than an eight year difference in age (if the man is older) or more than two years (if it is the woman who is the older).

And while marrying someone of similar educational, social and religious status helps your chances of avoiding divorce, these factors don’t matter as much as age.

Marriages in which the husband was nine or more years older than the wife, or two or more years younger, had a separation rate of 17 per cent compared to about 10 per cent for their more age-compatible peers.

It also helps if the husband is over 25 when you marry, and if neither of you have children before getting married. Having a similar attitude to wanting children or another child is important, also.

Not Rich, Not Poor Best

Being comfortably off helps in the cause of marital stability, but not if you are very well off – the richest 25 per cent have a higher risk of separation. Being poor, unemployed and feeling financially stressed, is a deadly trifecta for marriage stability. About 20 per cent of those unemployed at the start of the survey later separated compared to 10 per cent of those who had a job.

And another thing the demographers advise: don’t marry a smoker if you are a non-smoker. It is definitely a romance killer. Two smokers, however, will get along fine.

Is Your Music Depressing You?

Music has an amazing ability to affect our moods for good and bad, sometimes without us realising it. Listen to Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Soundgarden and it’s likely you’ll encourage feelings of hostility, sadness, tension and fatigue, while repressing impulses for caring, relaxation, mental clarity and vigour. That’s what research shows grunge rock does.

And it seems “depressing” country music has a lot to answer for.  A study which compared suicide rates in US cities with the proportion of country music played on the radio showed the higher the amount of country music played, the higher the suicide rate amongst white people.

The authors suggest that country music may “nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work”*.

What Music Makes You Sad or Happy?

That’s why researchers at the University of New South Wales, in association with the Black Dog Institute, are interested in finding out how people use music to manage their mood – and they’d like your help.

Their on-line survey aims to evaluate whether people use music to manage their mood in various day to day situations; also whether people’s music choice varies according to their personality type and when they are depressed.

Aussie Men At Risk

Four times as many Australian men as women commit suicide. And like rugby league legend Steve Rogers, they may be the ones you’d least expect to want to make an early exit.

Steve Rogers, father of former Wallaby and now Gold Coast Titans rugby league player Mat Rogers, appeared to “have it all” – the dream sporting career as one of the most outstanding Australian footballers of all time, then a successful business life as boss of his old team Sydney’s Cronulla Sharks to follow. A close friend reported that the night before he took his own life, the 51-year-old appeared “more than content, he seemed exuberant. “

Said Mat Rogers in an ABC programme at the time: “As a person of his stature and as a public figure he found it really hard to talk about his problems with other people which therefore exacerbated the problem.”

Taming the Black Dog

That’s something The Black Dog Institute wants to change. ‘Black dog’ was the term Britain’s Wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill coined for depression – his own depression, and the logo for the institute plays on Churchill’s Second World War ‘V’ for victory sign.

The Black Dog Institute is a not-for-profit, educational, research, clinical and community-oriented facility offering specialist expertise in depression and bipolar disorder attached to the Prince of Wales Hospital and affiliated with the University of New South Wales.

*Jim Gundlach, J. – author, Steven Stack (1992) The Effect of Country Music on Suicide. Social Forces. 71(1): 211.