What Kind of Marriage Do You Really Have?

Published October 24, 1985. What kind of marriage do you have anyway? Would you really like to know? Now you can find out, if you are willing to answer a few questions.

Dr. David Olson and associates from the University of Minnesota have devised what they call the MACES III marriage evolution. It is an acronym for Marriage Adaptability of Cohesion Evaluation Scale. Since it is in its third revision, it is called the MACES III. They have tested it on thousands of married couples and believe it to be a useful instrument in evaluating contemporary marriages. What's more, it can be administered and scored by the couples who take it.

The test consists of forty questions, twenty on how you perceive the marriage now and twenty questions on how you would like the marriage to be. When both husband and wife take the MACES III test, it conveys some important information.

According to the researchers who devised the test, there are two aspects in marriage today that are very important, cohesion and adaptability. Cohesion is how closely bonded the couple is emotionally, while adaptability is how flexible the couple is in rules and structure. After taking the exam the results are tabulated, and marriages can then be categorized into sixteen different types. Any one of the sixteen marriage types will “work” if that is the type or kind that both husband and wife desire. The problems arise when there are differing perceptions of how the marriage is now or how spouses would like it to evolve.

Are you willing to participate in a little research project? If so, here is what you do

1. Get your husband or wife to agree to participate. Then write: Dr. Brent Barlow, Box 7528, University Station, Provo, Utah 84602. Send a long, self-addressed, stamped envelope and request two copies of the MACES III marriage evaluation form.
2. I will return to you the two copies. Each spouse individually completes the evaluation and then scores it according to the directions included. After you have scored the evaluations, determine which of the sixteen types of marriage you have, and send me (anonymously) the results for my research project. The project will only be worthwhile if several hundred couples are willing to participate and share with me the results of the MACES III.

When Dr. Olson was at BYU last spring, he talked about the new MACES III evaluation form and the information it is generating about contemporary marriage. He then predicted that marriages in the Intermountain area would be found mainly among three or four of the sixteen types possible. I want to test his hypothesis and will share the results with those who are willing to participate.

Are you game? Call your brother-in-law and challenge him and his wife to take the MACES III along with you and your spouse. Inform him that you can now tell him what kind of marriage he really has, if he actually wants to know.

After all the results are in, I will share Dr. Olson’s predictions with you in a future column. Remember, the information you return to me is anonymous. So what have you got to lose? It takes about 15 minutes to complete and another 10 minutes to score. So in less than a half hour you can obtain some helpful insights into your own marital relationship.

For what it is worth, Susan and I took the MACES III, scored it, shared the results, and spent the next hour talking about what we had learned. For us, the MACES III provided a very interesting and worthwhile discussion.