Before you blame the dating pool, ask yourself what you believe about marriage. A School of Family Life graduate student found that beliefs about marriage at age 19 were tied to relationship stability five years later.
At Brigham Young University, “ring before spring” is part joke, part tradition, and part very real pressure. Engagement photos bloom alongside the tulips, and timelines can start to feel as predictable as the seasons.
Briella Smith, a graduate student from Houston, Texas pursuing a master’s degree in marriage, family, and human development, is researching how beliefs about marriage at age 19 — before the ring, before the proposal, and even before the relationship begins — may shape the stability of the relationship years later.
Smith’s study of “marital horizons” explores two key factors: how important marriage is to someone (salience), and how soon they hope it will happen (timing). Her research, which earned second place in the School of Family Life graduate student category at the December 2025 Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Student Research Conference, suggests that beliefs about marriage salience and time may directly impact dating choices and relationship outcomes.
“We want young people to realize that their beliefs, expectations, and values about the future are impacting their choices now,” says Larry Nelson, family life professor and Smith’s mentor for the project.
Smith’s poster of her research titled “Engaged with the Idea: Marital Horizons and Emerging Adult Well-being,” reports results from following 368 unmarried emerging adults in relationships over five years. She examined how their marital beliefs at age 19 related to later identity development, loneliness, risky sexual behavior, and relationship stability.
“Knowing what you want out of marriage and your ultimate relationship is important for your behaviors now,” Smith explains. “Understanding your values and where you want to be in life is really important for your behaviors in the present.”
Four Kinds of Lovers
Participants fell into four combinations of belief and timing:
- The Visionary Lover values marriage and hopes to transition into it relatively soon.
- The Patient Planner values marriage deeply but sees it as something for later.
- The Impulsive Romantic does not place high importance on marriage, even though they would like to marry sooner.
- The Free Spirit places lower importance on marriage and does not desire it soon.
What Smith’s study found may surprise students expecting dramatic differences. Over five years, there were no significant differences between the groups in identity development, loneliness, or risky sexual behavior. Where a difference did emerge after five years was with relationship stability.
The Visionary Lover and the Patient Planner, two groups who personally place higher importance on marriage, reported greater relationship stability five years than the Impulsive Romantic. In other words, valuing marriage is associated with more stable relationships over time, regardless of how soon someone hopes to marry.
“You don’t need to get married right now,” Nelson emphasizes. “But if you’re not ready to marry, you don’t have to have a negative view about marriage either.”
He encourages students to hold a positive, forward-looking view of marriage, trusting that those beliefs will guide their choices while they continue to grow and enjoy their lives now.
More Than Just Data
“There’s people’s lives in the data,” Smith says. “You’re trying to understand what’s happening to people and how you can help them.”
Her study contributed to her marital horizons research by using a longitudinal design, examining how beliefs at age 19 related to outcomes at age 24. While hypotheses about identity development, loneliness, and risky behavior were not supported, the findings about relationship stability add nuance to the conversation about how long-term beliefs shape relational patterns.
“Our beliefs, how we think about things, really matter because they end up shaping our behavior and our reality,” family life professor and another mentor to Smith, Ashley LeBaron-Black says.
Smith’s research emphasizes intention over urgency: valuing marriage, no matter how soon you marry, is linked to greater long-term stability. In a culture focused on who you’re with, she encourages shifting attention to who you’re becoming and the future you’re building.
The Work Behind the Findings
Some classes in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences require students to submit research to the Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Student Research Conference, which places students at the center of discovery. This was the case for Smith, with the December 2025 conference being her second time submitting a poster as part of one of her class assignments.
LeBaron-Black explains that these kinds of assignments allow students to have a “uniquely student-driven experience where they get to shape their own process and actually produce something meaningful with it, something that adds value to the world.”
Through opportunities like the Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Student Research Conference, students take their ideas and theories about interpersonal relationships, values, other academic interests and place them under a closer lens.
“My experience has been a lot of exposure and independence in finding what I’m passionate about helping other people with, while also being supported by people who are already specialists,” Smith says.
A lot of the time, the questions worth studying are the ones that don’t have quick answers. That’s part of why the questions students choose to study often reflect the lives they hope to improve. For students who find themselves asking those kinds of questions, spaces like the Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Student Research Conference offer a chance to actually follow them somewhere.
Learn more about the Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Student Research Conference here.