Almost 50 years ago, psychiatrists Richard Rahe and Thomas Holmes developed an inventory
of the most distressing human experiences that we could have. Number one on the list? Death of a spouse.
Number two, divorce. Three, marital separation. Now, generally, but not always,
for those three to occur, we need what comes in number seven on the list, which is marriage.
(Laughter) Fourth on the list is imprisonment in an institution.
Now, some say number seven has been counted twice. (Laughter)
I don't believe that. When the life stress inventory was built,
back then, a long-term relationship pretty much equated to a marriage. Not so now.
So for the purposes of this talk, I'm going to be including de facto relationships, common-law marriages
and same-sex marriages, or same-sex relationships soon hopefully to become marriages.
