The human experience is driven by the desire for intimacy through interpersonal relationships, and one group in which this desire comes to fruition is the legally binding union of marriage. Through a literature review on the history of marriage, it is evident that the primary motivator for people to marry has changed over time, making the structure of marriage an evolving relationship on a societal and personal level. Shifting from economics to social class to religion, the motivating need for marriage in Western, 21st century society has now become a desire for happiness. Given this, this project is a synthesis of different psychological and sociological theories and studies that provide the key correlates of marriage satisfaction within individual differences, relational processes, and external context. Being happy together within a legally binding relationship is not always an easy task, but with the right knowledge on what truly correlates towards higher marital satisfaction, it is possible for couples to learn what can help them thrive.

Found especially at the high school and college levels, the sport of cross-country running is practiced by athletes around the globe. Characterized by rigorous training, this sport is accompanied by challenges that test the perseverance and mental toughness of a runner. This thesis aims to answer the question, how is happiness achieved in running? Approaching this question from a phenomenological perspective, this project utilizes interviews that inquire into the lived experience of cross-country athletes to better understand how these athletes obtain fulfillment in running. Two groups of cross-country runners were interviewed for this thesis. The first group consisted of three male and four female current collegiate runners, who, at the time of being interviewed, actively ran for a college cross-country team. The second group consisted of four male and four female former cross-country runners, who previously ran for a structured high school team and still consider themselves to be consistent runners. This second group of runners run primarily on their own and have spent their time after their high school cross-country season navigating running in the absence of a team. Upon analyzing the answers to the provided open-ended questions, nine themes were discovered that give insight into how happiness is achieved in this sport: 1) One of the biggest motivators for running is self-improvement, 2) Running is a significant stress reliever and way to obtain a sense of freedom, 3) A team is a significant contributor to a cross-country runner’s happiness, 4) There is much pride and joy to be found in suffering, especially when that suffering is experienced with others in pursuit of collective betterment, 5) Former cross-country runners often undergo a significant shift in purpose within running after leaving their high school team, forcing them to find new ways to identify with running and achieve fulfillment, 6) While some collegiate runners experience increased running satisfaction in college, others are burdened by the heightened expectations of this higher level of competition, 7) The ways in which success is measured has a significant impact on a cross-country runner’s happiness, 8) A deeply rooted running identity can produce much happiness; however, the ways in which that identity expresses itself may negatively affect the runner, and 9) Cross-country runners reported wishing they took better care of their bodies. These themes highlight the importance of prioritizing one’s mental and physical well-being and adopting a more multifaceted approach to success that prevents an overemphasis of objective running improvement.

To the public, law is portrayed as a career where people experience an intense workload that eventually leads them to burnout. As a person interested in becoming a lawyer, I took it upon myself to research how burned out lawyers are in the empirical literature and study if that burnout can be linked with job dissatisfaction and, further, life dissatisfaction. As predicted, lawyers have been and continue to be burnt out and that burnout has implications on their job and life satisfaction. In turn, a lawyer’s job satisfaction and life satisfaction can also have an effect on whether or not they experience more or less symptoms of burnout. After establishing that there is a problem, I researched potential solutions to increasing life satisfaction for lawyers within the existing flawed system. I discussed five solutions proposed in the book The Happy Lawyer by Nancy Levit and Douglas Linder, which included (1) gaining more control, (2) establishing more connections, (3) increasing flow experiences, (4) identifying pleasures and strengths, and (5) making downward comparisons. Finally, as a cumulation of all my research, I offer a final suggestion to increase life satisfaction, which is to create and stick to a schedule that works for the individual lawyer.