Why So Many Marriages End In Divorce

Having a lesiurely conversation today with some co workers and I found that 4 out of 5 of us were divorced. We all married for the wrong reasons & now find ourselves divorced before 40. Only 1 of us are now remarried. This is very scary to me. After my 16 month marriage I just came to realize that I too married for the wrong reasons. And now after being divorced for 6 months I can finally say it someone else besides myself that I Married For the Wrong Reasons & literally screwed up. Now I understand why so many marraiges end in divorce. People are not marrying for the right reasons any more. Lets face it no one wants to be alone for the rest of their lives but at the same time settling for someone that you are not truly in love with is still being lonely as well. Just needed to put that out there.

Anymore? People just now have the OPTION to marry for the "right reasons."

The reason people didn't get divorced in 1903 was because men NEEDED a woman around to do the housework and the childcare and women NEEDED a man around to do the heavy lifting and earn an income. Life was harder then, and gender roles were quite rigid, and a family's survival depended on every adult being married at least until they had adult children who could take them into their home. So marriage was more of a business contract and agreement to raise children together than a love thing. And even if your husband beat you daily and raped you every night, you had no legal recourse and you were probably better off with him than trying to live as a divorced woman anyway, so you sucked it up and made do with your crappy life.

Gradually, our society has changed. Women have economic and political freedom. Modern technology means that the average home doesn't require someone to keep the hearth warm all day or someone to chop wood or darn socks, so that being single and living alone is actually a viable option. And now we marry for love, not out of necessity. And we have the freedom to leave that marriage if it doesn't make us happy. And so marriages end sometimes. Sometimes they end even when a couple really works hard to make sure they are in love and tries very hard to make it work.

It feels good, after love has gone bad, to over-simplify. It feels good because it makes the answer for next time seem very attainable. But I don't think it is useful thinking. Marriage is hard work, every day, forever. Thinking it would be easy if you just made sure the love is real first isn't going to help you make a real lifelong connection. It isn't easy, that's why so many fail. It's like climbing Mt. Everest hard. And knowing it is going to be hard work is one of the criteria for it to actually work.

Not sure I actually agree with any of that Take2

I think it's more of a case that divorce is more socially acceptable than it was in 1903.

People married for love as much then as they do now, I don't buy the notion it's because a woman couldn't do heavy lifting or men couldn't darn socks.

Marriage was a sign of stability, especially within business circles and couples stayed together because divorce was seriously frowned upon, especially for the woman. So the woman stayed in the marriage rather than being a social outcast. Now it's socially acceptable, women don't / wont put up with the crap they use too so divorce has become more common

And anyway your whole post goes against the argument because marrying someone because they happen to be handy around the home is not a good reason for wanting to spend your life with someone, in fact if that was the criteria for marrying someone today it would probably increase the number of divorces, because without love, respect, attraction, chemistry etc etc etc people wouldn't stay in the marriage no matter how good at doing the dishes they were

i was going to divorce him but he's soooo good at chopping wood :)

I agree with both Horseyguy and Take2, at least somewhat. The vast majority of adults got married in the old days, and divorce was rare and generally frowned upon. The roles of the husband and wife were more clearly defined and created a dependency and synergy at the same time. Times have changed, and labor-saving devices make both men and women less dependent on one another, and it's much more practical for women to earn their own income today, so people are getting married later and getting divorced more often. And I think that people have also become more selfish in modern times, and less willing to put in the effort to keep a relationship going.

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Originally Posted by Horseyguy [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]

People married for love as much then as they do now, I don't buy the notion it's because a woman couldn't do heavy lifting or men couldn't darn socks.

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On what are you basing this claim? I have talked to people from those generations, I have read history and social commentary for the time. People married because it was expected and because it was necessary. Love was a nice bonus if you could get it, but not the main point of marriage at all. If a farm woman died in childbirth 4 generations ago, the man would be remarried in 6 months. If a farm man died in a farming accident, the woman would be remarried within a year. Women in particular, due to economic and political inequality, could not really afford to be unmarried adults and were stuck in marriages where there was abuse and cruelty. Life was totally different then, I am not talking about needing a man to mow the lawn or a little lady to work the washing machine...the work that each part of the couple did was much more physically demanding than anything we do today AND time consuming. A man coulld learn to darn a sock, but when would he do it if he needed to also put in a 12-hour day of hard labor to survive? And how would he manage to also tend the garden and can the vegetables for winter and bake bread and sew the clothes?

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Originally Posted by Horseyguy [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]

And anyway your whole post goes against the argument because marrying someone because they happen to be handy around the home is not a good reason for wanting to spend your life with someone, in fact if that was the criteria for marrying someone today it would probably increase the number of divorces, because without love, respect, attraction, chemistry etc etc etc people wouldn't stay in the marriage no matter how good at doing the dishes they were

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No, I am telling you your life bears little resemblance to the life of your great-great-great grandfather's. When divorce is not an option socially, when each day is hard labor from sunup to sunset and more than one person can do, when gender roles are rigid and there is little time or money for leisure, when there is no such thing as retirement and everyone works until they die...the reasons for choosing a lifemate, the expectations of what that partnership will look like, are different. To judge today's marriages by those of 100 years ago is meaningless. To judge the marriages of 100 years ago by marriages of today is equally meaningless.

I don't think it has much to do with the 'right' or 'wrong' reasons.

Divorce is more acceptable now.
People have different expectations now, and are no as willing to compromise or sacrifice (you can get divorced now afterall).

Regent, after all the fighting & talking we still ended up back to square one. We even had outside counselors that we knew come to help us but it didn't work. My final compromise to save marriage was simple lets get counseling from a professional that neither of us knew. He refused & that was the last straw for me. He didn't want to compromise he wanted everything his way & counseling was our last resort so I divorced him. Simply because he refused to do something that could have potentially saved our marriage. Had I stayed in the marriage we were headed straight to physical abuse & I had already seen that coming which I would not tolerate by any means period. So to me compromising is a way to balance things out but if compromising is not a key element you will end up like me divorced after a 16 month marriage.

I don't think we pay enough attention to our instinct anymore. I have a theory on why the divorce rate exceeds 50% -- people are so freaked out by the intense emotions that strong chemistry brings up it scares them -- it did me -- so they run away, or push it away. Then they end up marrying nice people, who are good friends, because no one wants to be alone and stability is good -- and mostly these nice people are safe (you don't have to worry about that person having the power to really hurt your heart.) You can grow to love someone, for sure. But its not going to be the same as when it works out with the person that you have strong chemistry with -- these are probably less than 15% of marriages and you recognize them immediately, they still look at each other with love after 30 years. Scary part of this theory is, what if you wait around for that chemistry and you never find it, or you find it and it doesn't work out... That's why I'm here now! Which is more stupid? -- waiting around and possible ending up alone or growing love with a nice person and then running into your soul mate?!?

I think there are a number of reasons why divorce is on the rise, and many of those posted in this thread are accurate. I also believe people feel more free sexually now, so it's much easier to find sexual partners, which reeks havoc on many marriages, thus causing divorce. Also you have more scams now, like people suddenly leaving after a 10+ year marriage to collect alimony checks and child support. One of my ex's mom did that, got alimony for life and never worked again.

And then there is that evil website Ashley Madison.

I think one reason people divorce more readily is because life expectancy is much greater now than in the past. Not only is it extremely difficult to anticipate what your LIFELONG needs will be when you can expect to live to 75, spending that much time with someone who grates on your nerves is asking a lot.

Another possibility is that modern people tend to be more specialized, and have less in common with each other. In the old days, almost everybody was a farmer, so everybody had the same interests and concerns. These days, many people have a very specific career and skill set, so they have less in common to talk about. And with more leisure time than people had in pre-20th century times, we all have more time for specific hobbies. Thanks to the internet, it's easier than ever to really focus on a few narrow interests to the exclusion of all else.

We also have less community, so that specialization means more in a marriage than it did in previous generations. I mean, even when most men were farmers, NO women were farmers, they were mostly mothers and home managers. With 100% chance their life tasks and interests and hobbies and such would differ wildly from their mates' My grandfather and grandmother had very different hobbies and interests, but they had a huge social network and each went his/her own way. They met up to have dinner together and go to bed most days, even after both were retired. Sundays they did church and lunch together, but sitting in a sanctuary doesn't really require a lot of a relationship.

Most of my friends and co-workers don't know their own neighbors at ALL. Sure, we all have our select friends, but we have a lot less diverse social network than our parents and grandparents had. That puts more pressure on our partner to be our be-all end-all buddy, confidante and sharer of all fun activities. I was raised to view my mate as my logical and morally correct choice for my best friend. My mother and grandmother never expected or wanted their husbands to be their best friend.