Nina Fields; Conducted Study on Long-Term Marriages

Nina S. Fields, psychotherapist and social worker who wrote a popular book titled “The Well-Seasoned Marriage,” has died. She was 65.

Fields died Wednesday night at Northridge Hospital Medical Center of cancer, her family said.

Her book, published in 1986, was based on a study of long-married San Fernando Valley couples that she began for her doctoral thesis.

“When I began the study, my colleagues questioned whether there were enough good long-term marriages for the subject to be relevant,” she told The Times in 1987. “I knew a lot of people who were having such a good time in their marriages, but my associates just thought I had a very peculiar social circle.”

Fields’ study of 300 couples married from 18 to 30 years showed that an impressive three-fourths of them were in mutually satisfying relationships that had weathered crises and become stronger and happier.

Her book debunked perceptions that husbands and wives in long-term marriages become indistinguishable from each other and so interdependent that they can only function as a couple. Her study showed that husbands and wives were quite independent with lives and interests of their own, and although devastated by a spouse’s death, were able to make a fulfilling life alone.

The author married at age 20 and never regretted it. Her husband of 45 years, Maurice Fields, survives her, along with their three children, Abbie, Laura and Kenny.

Nina Fields, who held degrees from Case Western Reserve University and the California Institute for Clinical Social Work, was a psychotherapist and social worker in private practice in Encino for 35 years.

In addition to her husband and children, Fields is survived by a brother, Richmond, and six grandchildren.

The family has asked that memorial donations be made to the fund Fields and her husband established in 1970 to award the Gladys Salit Distinguished Student Award at USC: The Maurice and Nina Fields Endowment Fund, School of Social Work, USC, Los Angeles, CA 90089.