Still, it is encouraged on every front. Venerated by society, and financially subsidized by the state. Yet when its failing, very little good advice available. I've found most marriage counseling to be very unhelpful. Designed to save something (that maybe be shouldn't be saved) with really weak aphorisms that don't get to the psychological depths needed to explore WHY we do the things we do, attract and even unconsciously desire chaos and failure, etc..
But married couples too often lose the fact that it's about the relationship first. More important than the house, the cars, even the kids. People forget that everything started with two people and two people only. They stop having compassion and being kind to one another. They stop having sex (so important), that feeds the relationship. The relationship is a living thing. If you starve it, it dies.
If you look at the statistics for first marriages the picture is less depressing. Also, the rates have been improving and people getting married today have much better odds.
They are also biased because many unhappy couples won't divorce for various reasons.
Why has this become so common? I remember the first time I read something similar thinking “Interesting, but that’s weird, it doesn’t match up with my life experience. I must live in a perfect little butterfly bubble of some kind.” Then I read an article which explained the statistics in more detail. Ahh.
So, why did this author write this article? Do they not know the statistics? Maybe they read some of the many earlier articles which make the same bad assumption and decided to build on that bad assumption - but without looking at the actual data?
Statistics don't lie but liars use statistics. Is that what happened here? Maybe. Maybe the author was just lazy. Who knows. But it does seem like a huge number of stories begin with a title and brief introduction, then 3 or 4 conservative or liberal platitudes sprinkled in, each of which are so general they misrepresent reality and hide useful and actionable facts.
Maybe its more a house of cards.
And the parent's comment is also true: if you get divorced then chances are you'll get divorced again, e.g. Liz Taylor's eight marriages.
Sort of depending on where you are in the world. Statistics for First Marriages is still quite depressing in many developed places, especially in cities.
And then on the other hand, rearing a child seems to have become more expensive as a percentage of worker output than it used to be as that output is extracted by things like rent.
>the rates have been improving
Maybe because record few people get married, and those that do, do so at record high ages [2].
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intelligent-divo...
[2] https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sc...
This is an unfair comparison because the standard for a marriage succeeding is a lot higher than for computers or cars. If I bought a car or a computer and it and had only a 60% chance of failing to last until I'm 80 years old I'd consider that fantastic.
But a marriage that fails after ten years is counted as part of the 40% failure rate.
On the other hand, marriage is touted as this perfect "till death do us apart" deal.
Should weddings be sold like cars? With "your mileage may vary" and "you will have many marriages throughout your life?" Maybe then I'd agree with your logic.
Sure. Mortgages come in 15 and 30 year sizes, and child custody is util they're 18.
Call it a 20 year sizing, after that you figure out whatchu need to split up and then think about the next steps.
If the goal of marriage is simply to stay together (rather than, say, to stay together and for it to actually be beneficial for those involved) then yes 60% of marriages are failures and 40% success.
But if the goal is more ambitious, then at least 60% of marriages are failures. Maybe the remaining 40% stay together for religious reasons, a misplaced sense of pride, for the benefit of children rather than spouses, etc.
I'm not so cynical to say 100% of marriages "fail" in this sense, but I'd wage it's a lot higher than 60%. And you might be a lot more worried about those marriages that fall into the "stayed together but bad" category, as they'll include abusive and exploitative relationships.
Everyone says - well, you'll be unhappy either way wrt marriage. But it seems to me those who don't get married are much happier - some in relationships, some not. But I would still personally like to get married, I think... so I guess I want these stats to be untrue, or for there to be an escape - "people keep marrying unwisely" etc.
It's more subtle than that. If you dig into the data, you'll see it's closer to "100 marriages this year, 50 divorces -- omg half of marriages end in divorce!"
This is only true if there were zero existing, previous marriages before this year.
The more common trend now is that people just aren't getting married, likely in small part because of this mathematical+reporting malpractice. When you convince people something usually fails, they don't bother trying.
The actual error is that some people keep coming back. Most people don't get a divorce, but some people skew the numbers by getting 2, 3, 4, or more divorces.
Ok, but your objection is only true if there were zero divorces in previous years. If the divorce count is half of the marriage count for the year every year, then it is indeed half.
Are you sure? Maybe the flaw is the notion that the marriage partnership should be expected to last for life. There are real reasons why some personal partnerships benefit from a legal framework that allows for division of labor and joint decision-making powers.
I've always thought that was a great disincentive to marriage if one were logical.
In general, filing jointly typically results in either the same or lower taxes. I'm not sure under what conditions under which it would be higher.
https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tips/does-being-married-affect-yo...
A therapist shouldn't be trying to save anything here, they should just help the couple digest their own feeling and get to where they really need to be, remaining as a couple or not
You could view this as making it easier to quit, or as making it easier to escape abuse (I suspect it's a little bit of both), but I think that the effect of feminism and (greater) equality in the workforce is a more significant contributor to the divorce rate than any cultural attacks on the institution of marriage.
Edit: it's less immediately obvious, but I think that feminism and equality have also had the same liberating effect on men. Marriages can be just as emotionally abusive for men, and if your wife has her own career you're less likely to be ostracized for "kicking her to the curb", which makes leaving a bad marriage easier. Long term, this can strengthen marriages. If you know they can leave, you'll likely work harder to make them want to stay.
To quote Paul Atreides when he became fed up with Fremen customs, "Ways change!".
[p.s. Did we read the same Frank Herbert? My Frank Herbert highlighted the fact that "the ways" in Arakis were influenced by an occult group called the Bene Gesserit ..]
[p.s.s.: https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Missionaria_Protectiva -- point being societal 'change' is almost always subject to organized control, internal or external.]
This is a bold assumption that will not hold in many countries and regions that consider marriage as something that is "done", especially if the act that proclaims it as "done" it's performed in the presence of some holy man, in a holy building, and if the marriage is, in any way, legally or morally "irreversible" or impossible to effectively unmake even for strongest and most plausible reasons to do so.
Such rules, counter-intuitively, make it much harder for marriages to be happy. If a marriage is "done", then there's no point in trying to "make" it - whether it means to make it better, make it worthwhile, or even make it happen with someone better-suited for the role.
I would imagine that this holds for other religions as well.
Personally I’m of the opinion that historically marriage is Disease control.
Imagine life with no medication or testing. Keeping marriage “pure” is a way to keep people healthy.
Any society that didn’t follow this would have a lot of STDs. The stricter a society the healthier the people.
Hence why so much social pressure developed.
Lots of Jewish practices have to do with health and sanitation.
Long list of things that makes a person “unclean” for X days.
I see many Parallels with Covid. It is creating new traditions that could last generations.
Someone coughs, they are “unclean” for 14 days. Social rules are completely different now.
Modern medication changes the game drastically. Lots of things are no longer a death sentence.
Same.
> Personally I’m of the opinion that historically marriage is Disease control.
While I don't disagree that this is a benefit, marriage isn't necessary for this to occur - only fidelity. Plural marriage would work just fine in this context, as would polygamy/polygyny.
Marriage is, at its root, a means of ensuring the generational transfer of wealth: it means that the person who possesses capital in the society (typically the man) can pass their wealth on to their children. It also provides some assurances to the legally subordinate partner that they will not be destitute should the other die or abandon them.
In my mind marriage developed as an adaptation to large civilizations. Whereas we once lived in roaming nomadic tribes, and fluid small groups (as can be observed in some remote tribes today), I think once agriculture flourished and towns started to outgrow the individual it became necessary for something like the nuclear family to develop. With families belonging to clans and clans belonging to city-states.
You're making a lot of assumptions about Covid and long term effects. The Spanish flu was many times deadlier and yet it did not change anything once it faded out several years later, things went back to normal.
A child you may have outside of marriage, no matter how obvious it is that it's yours, is illegitimate; not legally considered. Suddenly, adultery on the part of your wife is a very big deal indeed, and all the various other effects this has.
Obviously things have changed in many societies now, but historically this was a very big one.
Surprisingly recent, perhaps. See Trimble vs Gordon, of 1977.
[0] And others too, but very strongly pronounced in these cultures.
Is there further reading for this?
Not exactly about a number of days, but Deuteronomy 23:12 instructs those going to battle to carry a shovel so they could bury their excrement and not leave it exposed in the camp, lest God abandon the camp and not defend them from their enemies. (After all, God is holy and poop is not).
I highly recommend reading the original literature and not a secondary source. The way the text weaves reasonable ideas with superstition, threats of abandonment and punishment with messages of hope is a fascinating window into the way people thought in another time and place.
Becoming sick was near equivalent to being a sinner, so good hygiene and righteousness had some overlap.
Follow these rules, you won’t get sick. Got sick? You didn’t follow the rules.
Harsh reality, but a harsh time.
Menstruation is in Leviticus 15: https://biblehub.com/niv/leviticus/15.htm
... in fact, most of Leviticus is about "clean" vs. "unclean".
I'm reminded of GK Chesterton, in Heretics: "Posting a letter and getting married are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic a thing must be irrevocable."
On a second thought I assume it is because poverty, alcoholism, and family traumas (ranging back to WW2 and UPA/UIA raids) are all common in the lands of my origin, and religiousness becomes more like another drug and less like an actual, sane belief system.
So at least for that segment, it may very much look like something that is 'done' but the reality hits once the well-wishers go home.
de Botton kind of alludes to this here but in a wordy and deeply pessimistic way, but I don't think that's a good framing for it.
> It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage
> Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling.
I disagree, contrary to what he says a Romantic (in the literary sense) view always allows us to be flawed, because it always contains room for redemption. Thinking that marriage will be some kind of perfect union is rationalist thinking, like designing a system of gears. Thinking of marriage as union of two people who work together for something greater that both can share the fruits of is irrational thinking we need and can easily intuit. We're just really good at shunning this kind of thinking, these days.
In the end we both agree, he says: "Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition." I just think his framing here is needlessly pessimistic and dismissive of the romantic forces, and probably a terrible way to approach most of life's difficulties, never-mind marriage.