Love Lessons

You want happily ever after? Go back to school!

We take courses to learn how to drive or ski or care for a newborn. Why, then, shouldn’t we study up when it comes to marriage—especially when nearly half of all unions in the U.S. fail?

It’s this line of thinking that motivated Chicago-based psychiatrist Arthur Nielsen eight years ago to start an undergraduate psychology course at Northwestern University, called “Marriage 101.”

“In any other chancy area of life,” reasons Nielsen, “People will have lessons.” With marriage, often, our only guidelines for the subject are what we learn from our parents. And as anyone whose parents are divorced or unhappily married can tell you, that can be a spotty education at best—hence, Marriage 101.