Newlyweds? You Could Write A Book Statistics Provide A Volume

The road to love and marriage can take some strange twists, including dance-floor fractures, a baker held hostage and meeting that special someone at a bereavement counseling session.

It also contains some surprises. For instance, while most folks say they married for love, some confess they marched down the aisle for money.

And nearly one-third of brides and grooms who responded to a survey for a new book about marriage say they did not have sex on their wedding night. Exhaustion was the reason most of them cited.

These stories and other insights into the world of newlyweds are shared in the book “Just Married,” by Barry Sinrod and Marlo Grey.

The volume is based on questionnaires returned by 3,876 couples married two years or less. The authors sent out 10,000 questionnaires. The authors turned the answers into a series of tables and graphs, with a selection of unsigned personal anecdotes at the end.

One couple reported that their cake was held prisoner.

“The bakery that made my wedding cake was held up on my wedding day,” they wrote. The crook took hostages but the baker escaped and delivered the cake - three hours late.

A bride reported that she and her fiance spent $740 on dancing lessons so they could impress their friends at the wedding reception, to no avail.

“As we walked onto the dance floor, my new husband slipped on a piece of ice and - would you believe it - broke his leg.” she lamented.

A happier ending was reported by two octogenarians. They met while attending a bereavement meeting after the deaths of their spouses, fell in love and got married.

The book is filled with statistics about all things matrimonial.

For example, 89 percent of the respondents cited love as the reason for marrying. Another 6 percent cited pregnancy, 4 percent said loneliness and 1 percent admitted they married for money.

Recent grooms were generally happier about matrimony than brides. Ninety-nine percent of men said they never regretted marriage, but 13 percent of women did have regrets.

In an open-ended question on how the marital relationship could be changed for the better - a question that had no suggested answers - the responses included everything from “make his ears smaller” and “make him pick up his clothes” to “have more sex,” “have much more sex” and “have much, much more sex.”

On the quantity vs. quality front, two-thirds of the responding newlyweds reported they had sex more often when they were single, but nearly three-quarters said lovemaking was better now that they are married. Just 10 percent reported waiting for marriage to have sex.

OTHER FINDINGS: What do you wear to sleep? Men: Nothing, 39 percent; pajamas, 24 percent; underwear, 21 percent; sweats, 10 percent. Women: Nothing, 49 percent; pajamas, 39 percent; underwear, 9 percent; sweats, 3 percent. Who controls the remote? Men: 85 percent. Who talks on the phone more? Women: 72 percent. Where is your wedding gown? Attic, 56 percent; cleaners, 25 percent; lent it out, 5 percent; who knows? 14 percent. How do you get along with your in-laws? Great, 54 percent; fair, 36 percent; poor, 4 percent; not at all, 6 percent.