Now how about the husbands? Here is what Terman found about them:
| HAPPY HUSBANDS | UNHAPPY HUSBANDS |
| Have greater stability | Often have feelings of inferiority |
| Are coöperative | Compensate by browbeating wife and subordinates |
| Get along well with business associates | Dislike details |
| Are somewhat extroverted | More radical about sex morality |
| Are more conservative in attitudes | Inclined to be moody |
| Willing to take initiative | Are more argumentative |
| Take responsibility easily | Like recreations that take them away from home |
| Do not get rattled easily | Apt to be careless about money |
Another approach Terman made was to find out what husbands and wives complain about most in their mates. He found that unhappily married couples were overflowing with complaints while happily married couples voiced few criticisms. Here are the complaints he heard most often:
| COMPLAINTS FROM HUSBANDS | COMPLAINTS FROM WIVES |
| Wife’s feelings hurt too easily | Insufficient income from husband |
| Wife too critical | In-laws |
| Trouble with in-laws | Impatience of husband |
| Wife nervous or emotional | Husband’s poor management of income |
| Income managed poorly | His tendency to be critical |
| He has no “freedom” | His preferences in amusements |
| Wife has poor taste in amusements | His failure to talk things over |
| Wife is a nagger | His failure to show affection |
When Terman had accumulated all of his findings, he devised a “Prediction of Marriage Happiness Scale” by means of which an unmarried person could determine his own chances of finding happiness in marriage. This has nothing to do with the other person involved but simply tests your own capability of becoming a good mate for someone. He found what we have already indicated—that your background largely predetermines your ability to be a successful mate. Of the factors he found most significant in predicting happiness in marriage, ten stand out as most essential to success.
| 1. | Are your parents happily married? |
| 2. | Did you have a happy childhood? |
| 3. | Were you free from conflict with your mother? |
| 4. | Was your childhood discipline firm but not harsh? |
| 5. | Did you have a strong attachment to your mother? |
| 6. | Did you have a strong attachment to your father? |
| 7. | Were you free from conflict with your father? |
| 8. | Were your parents frank with you about sex? |
| 9. | Were you punished infrequently and mildly? |
| 10. | Is your attitude toward sex free from disgust or aversion? |
Terman says that any person who has all ten in his favor is a considerably better than average marriage risk. He gives emphasis to this by saying that any one of the ten factors seems to be more important to marriage happiness than does virginity of the individual at the time of marriage.
At Penn State, where the first all-college marriage counseling service in America was founded, an adaptation of Dr. Terman’s prediction scale is used, by special permission of Dr. Terman, along with the Guilford-Martin Personnel Inventory I and other tests. But the main device the Penn State clinic uses in building an over-all “index” of a person’s prospects for a happy marriage is the Adams-Lepley Personal Audit, which was a product of Penn State’s own investigations. This Audit not only discloses your potentialities for being a good mate, and the potentialities of your possible mate, but goes on to match your two profiles to see if you are compatible.
The happiest marriages, the clinic has found, are between persons who not only are good prospects for marriage individually but who have markedly similar personalities. The clinic calls this compatibility. It has found that opposites may attract each other but it is the likes who achieve the happiest marriages together.
In the process of perfecting this Audit, the clinic not only tested it on thousands of persons and couples but followed up hundreds of those couples who later married, to find out how well the predictions bore up after the couple had been living with each other a year or so as man and wife. (They bore up very well indeed.)