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No brainer. People follow their emotions and fall in love. Chemicals and hormones are so overwhelming even major areas of incompatibility seem minor (See it all the time). These areas of incompatibility will only grow as time goes on. If you include the people that remain married, even though they have grown apart, the divorce rate would be much higher than 50%. My parents tried sticking it out, then finally threw in the towel and had a successful divorce.
When I got married, I didn't expect it would end one day, and other people's choices in their own personal lives has never crossed my mind because it has nothing to do with me. I find it astonishing that so many people who don't even have relationship experience spend a lot of time fearing other people's divorces, as if it has any bearing on their lives.
Well, I didn't expect my marriage to go the way it did. As I've spelled out a lot of times, turned out my ex is gay. He discovered himself and left me.
Actually, the 50% divorce myth is just that (google it). It's an urban legend of sorts that keeps getting repeated. 70% of first time marriages DO stick together. Among my family and friends, the divorce rate is low (although the ones who divorced seemed to divorced again and again). So you can say I expected my marriage to be like most and last.
I have no desire to marry again though. Most of it has to do with my daughter, but some of it is selfishness on my part as well as not trusting myself due to my poor choice in spouse in the first place.
I have quite a few assets I've built up over time. I've been saving since I was a kid and started my IRA right out of college. I own my home, etc. If I marry and something happens to me, my daughter could get nothing. I feel staying single financially protects my daughter.
Also, when I was married, it was like indentured servitude. I worked 50+ hours a week in the office and came home and did all the childcare, home care, cooking, laundry, yardwork, etc. I was miserable. Granted, most men aren't like my ex and are lazy when it comes to household stuff. And yes, I still work, but I can work less now since my ex isn't demanding I earn more money... and yes, I still have household chores and stuff, but I've hired a maid to clean every other week (so I just have daily stuff like dishes and laundry to do) and moved into a house with a small yard and minimal yardwork. Overall, it's a whole lot less work. And for some reason, even with my smaller household income, I seem to have more money (my ex was a big spender).
I will never say never to marrying again... but I don't see the point. I don't plan on having any more children and I don't want to risk my money. Plus, to be frank, most men my age are divorced too and I am noticing that half of them are divorced (wife left them) for a good reason. Some of them are divorced two and three times over! (I assume you can say the same about half the divorced women too).
Sure, some are like me and circumstances just didn't pan out and they made a poor choice in spouse. But even then... people like me who made poor choices might not have the best skills in selecting a good match. One can say I don't trust them nor do I really trust myself to pick again.
I'm asking because those people that get married and divorced seem to think their relationship was going to be different from those other people that got divorced.
Please, don't misunderstand the post---I'm not telling people to go in thinking they'll get a divorce. I'm asking do people consider the possibility that it could happen to them?
Did you ever think this? What causes to people think their relationship is different.
The divorce rate is high, do people consider the possibility that it could happen to them?
Everybody thinks that at the beginning, and they usually are right. Just like snowflakes, no two relationships are alike. They are the interplay of personalities and pheromones, cultural assumptions and experiences. The combination of factors that drive two people into each other's arms are infinite.
Here's the problem, however. People think of their relationship as a thing. So if you use the metaphor of a relationship as a growing thing such as a flower or a mechanical object such as a car, it creates problems. Those kinds of metaphors are a trap, introducing a mindset where the relationship is something that is tended on a regular schedule the same way you'd water begonias or change the oil in your car. We're all guilty of thinking this way from time to time, myself included.
Yet relationships are not things. Instead, they are states of being.
As Heraclitus pointed out, you cannot step into the same river twice. Much the same, you cannot have the same relationship with your significant other right now that you had five minutes ago. So the relationship is constantly unique because it is constantly forming and reforming, evolving and adapting. Likewise, the metaphors get in the way when trying to think how to deal with a relationship that's gone off the rails. Use the words "fix" or "repair" when it comes to a rift in the relationship and you're back to the checklist mentality. Use gerunds such as "rebuilding" or "renewing" to indicate an ongoing effort and you're on the right track.
So to answer your ultimate question, people who think of relationships as something to be visited from time to time for pruning or the obligatory date night have it all wrong. A relationship is conversation that goes on every day with the other person. It requires awareness and compromise, patience and maturity.
So while all relationships are unique, all relationships rot without tending. They just happen to rot in a host of different ways.
I'm asking because those people that get married and divorced seem to think their relationship was going to be different from those other people that got divorced.
Please, don't misunderstand the post---I'm not telling people to go in thinking they'll get a divorce. I'm asking do people consider the possibility that it could happen to them?
Did you ever think this? What causes to people think their relationship is different.
The divorce rate is high, do people consider the possibility that it could happen to them?
Actually, no. I ignored the little voice in my gut that said not to do it. We had a huge fight about a week before the wedding that wasn't just cold feet. I don't regret getting married, or being married, and it was an amicable divorce. Still, I'd have a lot more money now if I had listened to that little voice, as I paid for the wedding, honeymoon, and, once married, most of the bills.
So people, if your gut tells you not to do it, don't do it. You may lose your deposits, but it's better than paying an attorney several years later.
I never in a million years thought I get divorced. But I already felt during the honeymoon that things are not as good as I thought. I stuck it out another 6 years because I had hopes that if I just keep trying, he might turn into the person I thought he is.
Then I had to make a decision to stay with him just to not be part of the FAILING MARRIAGE group or if I want to become happy and suck up the embarrassement and start all over again.
I was unsure of the entire idea of marriage, and had incredible frustration dating in my 20s. When finally I found a woman who would at least tolerate me, it was imperative to not lose her. For various reasons (mostly legal and political), it was imperative to marry her. The threat of divorce hung ominously from the very outset, not because I questioned the relationship, but because I've very risk-averse, and even a 10% divorce rate would terrify me. Also, my then-fiancee and I had known each other for nearly 5 years, but it was a long-distance relationship. We knew each other rather poorly.
As the years went by, I grew increasingly more confident and fulfilled in the marriage, coming to believe with confidence that it would be a lifelong partnership. Then came the bombshell of my wife's unhappiness and desire for a child. When that sentiment proved to be incontrovertible, despite any possible remonstrations, it became clear that divorce would be inevitable. But her initial testament of changed world-view (from child-free to desiring to breed) was shocking and sudden.
Now in my 40s, I'm actually more optimistic about marriage than I was in my 20s. To reiterate: as a divorced person, in some ways I fear divorce less, than I did before I was married, and indeed before I had any serious relationship. Why? Been there, done that.
So it me it makes perfect sense that our younger members on this Forum, with the least relationship-experience, would actually have the most trepidation over a not-yet-existent relationship moving to divorce 10 or 20 or 30 years in the future.
I believe a lot of people without relationship experience or very little experience are like this mainly because of the possibility of that person's relationship reflecting on one they may get into with someone they are interested in, in the future. This a flaw a lot of people have, when they witness something negative with only a few they have been exposed to, they think EVERYONE is like that.
This is a good point. I think the internet has contributed to this, because now you have access to (too much) information about other people. Some are too busy reading about others online and not going out to live their own lives and create their own experiences. They read articles, blogs, and also may not think or read critically, take opinions as fact or Truth, rather than experiencing it for themselves.
As cpg said, relationships are not an entity exterior to you. They are a state of being influenced by the two people in that relationship, and no two relationships will be the same. There is no cookie cutter mold and steps/rules to follow for how they should work. How they work is based on the investment the two in the relationship are willing to make to each other.
The divorce rate shouldn't bother you, and neither should other people's divorces. You don't know what goes on behind closed doors. If you do happen to know what caused the demise of the relationship, the takeaway shouldn't be fear of other people's relationship choices, but not to make similar mistakes in your own relationships.
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