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My parents, and me and my wife all got married when we had a net worth of maybe a few thousand dollars. My parents have been married decades and me and my wife are going on ten-years(she's millennial and I'm gen-x). Everyone around us who had mortgages or owned homes and had cars and better social lives don't make it five-years in marriages.
This has actually been the case with every marriage I've seen since I was a kid. People with lots of capital and assets and booming social lives just don't last in long-term relationships.. It's not money that keeps us together either me and my wife are both functioning adults who have out own income..
Only answering your title question....divorces usually cost money that "broke' people do not have.
Like people that are practically destitute are advised to declare bankruptcy but are expected to be able to come up with the thousands up front for a lawyer to do so.
One aspect of getting married while poor that might play into it (and that MIGHT is HUGE) is the necessity of working together more carefully just to stay afloat. People usually learn more from adversity than they do from ease. Their needs may have been more basic and non-negotiable, so the relationship has to be grounded on more important things, not trivia.
That being said, so much depends on the people involved and why they happened to be broke at the time. Huge variations in that alone, and money is just one reason. There are lots of marriages that started at one financial status that didn't survive when that status changed. Poor folks who eventually had money didn't stay married once they did and vice versa. A marriage doesn't always last longer just because its better. Sometimes it just lasts due to habit, sticking it out because of responsibilities, financial benefits, passivity.
Then there's that whole different generation and state of society thing too...can't ignore that one.
As someone who was with a guy for 18 years, and we began in poverty...
Had I been more financially solid as a young adult, I would not have stayed with him. It would have ended a lot sooner.
Some factors there:
Because I was pretty clueless and unsupported, unguided by my family, and was underemployed, didn't know how to drive or own a car, had no idea how to get health care or how to get into college, I was vulnerable. That vulnerability led me to be easy prey for a guy with serious issues who would one day go from being low-key emotionally abusive, to terrifying. He helped me to finish growing up though, he had the ability to give me lessons I had to learn. How to drive. The beginnings of how to budget. But because I was pretty low in life at the time, I didn't have very good self esteem, and the first man who seemed strong and willing to stay with me, got the job. It did not occur to me that I could find better.
And over the years, we survived a LOT of hardship and adversity together. There is a thing called "trauma bonding." Like battle buddies in war, we had been in the trenches together. It really felt like, even if he drove me crazy, we were a remarkable team. That did not change until we reached a point where our life circumstances should have been pretty good...money was good, we had a lovely house, he didn't even have to work if he didn't want to...and as though he could not survive without crisis, he BECAME the source of crisis. He lost it and started doing really dysfunctional and dangerous things and constantly throwing tantrums and making everyone's life hell. I once thought that when "things" got better, he'd be happier...I learned then, that he would fight happiness tooth and nail because it seemed to threaten his very purpose in living. So, it had to end.
But if we hadn't gone through what we did, I probably would have seen that side of him sooner, I don't know. All I can say is it took hitting a sort of rock bottom, and that did not come from external circumstance, but from within the relationship itself.
I think, too, that when you are poor, or desperate...changing things seems scarier than holding onto something, even if it's not a very good something. The unknown is scary, that whole "devil you know" thing is there.
I do not believe that the relationships of people who started out on the rocks in life, are necessarily stronger or better relationships, just because they last. But I do think that in the absence of enough challenges, some people will create drama with bad behavior, and perhaps that might end affluent marriages in some cases.
If you look at a group of couples who stayed married 30 or 40 years, or whatever you consider lasting, those who started poor are more likely to talk about that. Who would say they had it easy when they got together?
The stresses of a hardscrabble, poverty existence are destructive to relationships. So "being poor" isn't really a protective factor in marriages. However, if you get together and money isn't part of the equation, it does cancel out the "marrying for financial security" factor.
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