From the magnificent Midwest, it's the Suzanne Venker Show, where men and women are equal in value, but wildly different by nature.

Join us here every week as we challenge the culture's hugely flawed narratives about men,

women, sex, and love.

From coast to coast and from around the world, thank you for joining us.

Don't marry the first person you fall in love with.

The more relationship experience you have before getting married, the better. That way you'll really know yourself when you say, I do.

For decades, this has been the relationship narrative passed on to the young and unattached.

But my experience as a relationship coach suggests the opposite is true.

And so does the data.

Theoretically, this argument makes sense.

If we need to try on a lot of genes to get just the right fit,

shouldn't we do the same when it comes to the most important decision of our lives?

But in fact, having more relationship experience is correlated to having a less happy marriage

or having less relationship stability later on. As countercultural as that sounds, when you

understand the reasons why, it makes perfect sense,

as Galena Rhodes of the National Marriage Project explains in a short video, which I have linked for you in the show notes.

She outlines three main reasons for this surprising outcome.

Number one.

Having more relationship experience leads to knowing what the alternatives might be, which in turn can make it difficult to invest in your marriage.

What's more our memory of those alternatives aren't reliable since we tend to remember the good things and forget about the bat.

In fact, not being aware of the alternatives could very well be a marital advantage, which sort of makes sense because you have nothing in your mind but the relationship that you are in to sort of muck up or cloud your thinking.

So that's number one.

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