Thoughts on 53% Divorce Rate?

[Xantippe]

“The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.” – David Copperfield, Chesterton on Dickens, 1911

I have to mention here that Dickens treated his wife/the mother of his ten children, very shabbily. He legally separated from her after 22 years of marriage (in the Victorian 1850s when it was not done), essentially stole the children from her and carried on with an actress.

The Marriage of Charles Dickens | Charles Dickens Info

A man orders a bracelet for his mistress. Instead it's sent to his home and his wife finds it. This isn't fiction. It really happened to Charles Dickens.

www.charlesdickensinfo.com

I appreciate Chesterton’s treatment of Dickens the writer, but he seriously whitewashes Dickens the man.

 

[Spyridon]

@BlackFriar are you married?

 

[adgloriam]

uneducated and inexperienced to be taken seriously (…) they pride themselves

That is you!!!

 

[commenter]

QwertyGirl:

My view of marriage is not the Catholic view

The reality is, most people don’t stay together because they took vows. They stay together because they love each other and/or have a commitment to their family. Taking vows or not taking vows doesn’t change that one bit.

There seems to be something almost non-repressable about many people always, everywhere, wanting to enter an indissoluable marriage. Let government set up a Marxist dictatorship, control all education and child care for decades, close the churches, abolish all sacraments…then a new generation wants permanent marriages.

Go to countries where the pope’s name has been banned for 500 years, where every vestige of Catholicism has been dug up and burned, and this or that version of Protestantism in place. Many want permanent marriages.

Go to places where a totally non-Christian religion has been entrenched for thousands of years. Many young people want permanent marriages.

The Catholic Church discovered, not invented, permanent marriage. It was already present.

 

[QwertyGirl]

I agree. Most folks like the concept of stability. You can’t get more stable than a happy, healthy marriage. It is the brass ring most hope for.

 

[BlackFriar]

BlackFriar:

but suggestive of naiivity to boot.

@Spyridon this is simple rudeness and lack of manners. Also a provocation and unassuming ad-hominem, insinuating and implying by tacitly passing judgement. Worth to note the pattern of consistency in certain users passive-agressive posting…With a long track record of pride and arrogance.

"Naiivity (Oxford): “showing a lack of experience…”
Nothing particularly untoward here my friend.

And surely not when compared to the poster’s phrase “meaningless drivel” and your own characterisation of myself as having a “track record of pride and arrogance”.

Its interesting that one could accuse another poster of ad hominem for describing a view as “naiive” (ie inexperienced) and in the same sentence call that person proud and arrogant.

 

[Seagull]

Is that the song - on the Ground Hog’s Day movie - with Bill Murray ?
You know - he awakes only to repeat the same day -
over and over - (8 years - 8 months - and 16 days)
As they say - it’s one day at a time - keep it solid -
Same with our relationship with God !

 

[Spyridon]

Their marriage has nothing to do with Spyridon’s marriage. You’re just coming off like a misanthropic git.

I concur.

Thank you for standing up for Justice.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

What irony? I’ve not been routinely rude to everyone I’ve interacted with on these forums. Between the two of us, you alone hold that distinction. You are the one repeatedly insulting Spyridon’s marriage and making baseless accusations that its doomed to fail.

 

[Spyridon]

happen to the best of couples as very few marriages are stronger than the influence of a society antagonistic to such values.

You have no idea what my marriage has survived.

It’s rock solid and I’d bet my life on it lasting till death parts us.

 

[BlackFriar]

You are the one repeatedly insulting Spyridon’s marriage…

If you could quote where I have done so I will certainly apologise.
However I believe you are mistaken.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Direct insults are not necessary; insinuations about the likelihood of failure are more than rude enough.

 

[BlackFriar]

Thankyou for withdrawing your accusation.

 

[Xantippe]

The truth of my experience is that divorce can happen to the best of couples as very few marriages are stronger than the influence of a society antagonistic to such values.

I don’t think that’s true, but of course we may understand “best of couples” differently.

 

[BlackFriar]

BlackFriar:

The truth of my experience is that divorce can happen to the best of couples as very few marriages are stronger than the influence of a society antagonistic to such values.

I don’t think that’s true, but of course we may understand “best of couples” differently.

Well I suppose this is exactly what is being debated here and in AL.
Its fairly clear to me that AL is trying to reincorporate those good couples whose marriages foundered due to factors they were largely helpless to control. Not even Church allegiance from birth can halt the divorce/remarriage contagion rampant in society. The divorce rate is much the same as that of others. That is indicative, to me, of institutional failure as much as personal failure.

 

[QContinuum]

I think 6 years of marriage is a respectable accomplishment these days.

My beloved spouse and I are approaching 17 years later this month. We are both products of parents who are still in their first marriages, one 50+ years, the other 43+ years.

I think that having that stability must contribute to our own marriage. For that matter, all the sibling marriages on both sides are also still in their first marriages.

Quite a feat, I’m told.

 

[Spyridon]

I gently observe that when you retort that Brian’s long experience of marriage is “meaningless drivel” because he is humble enough not to brag about it then I suggest that is “INCREDIBLY insulting.”

Go back and read brians comment again.

He never said he was married 40 years and that’s not what I said was meaningless drivel.

 

[Xantippe]

If that’s so, why are divorced women usually poor?

Poor spending habits?

This was WAY back, so apologies, but I wanted to talk a bit about the financial realities of middle class/upper middle class families.

Husband makes an excellent living and I’m 80-90% SAHM (I do a little editing). If you were to look at our family finances, easily 80% of our spending at this point is kid spending, given that 3 out of 5 residents at our house are the kids, their food, their clothes, haircuts, birthdays, Christmas, their medical, dental, a larger home to accommodate them, (opens mail) larger property taxes for the larger home, a larger vehicle to drive them around, private school for three kids, camps and extracurriculars, etc. In our monthly budgets, husband and I currently get something like $30-40 each total in “fun money.” I anticipate that kid costs are (God willing!) going to peak out in about two years and eventually diminish, but at the moment, wheelbarrows full of money are being spent on the kids and very, very, very little on mom and dad. In a family like ours, this level of kid spending would be unsustainable if income were constant but needed to fund two different households.

I can’t help but notice that there are very few divorced families and single parent families at our kids’ private school.

Typical contemporary 2-parent middle-middle class and upper-middle class parents spend on their kids at a level that would be unsustainable for divorced parents.

 

[Xantippe]

Its fairly clear to me that AL is trying to reincorporate those good couples whose marriages foundered due to factors they were largely helpless to control.

I don’t think that’s correct on the level of couples. I fully believe that good individuals have had marriages founder due to factors they “were largely helpless to control” (their ex-spouse being a serial cheater, pedophile, homosexual, asexual, out of control spender, out of control bipolar, narcissist, high functioning autistic in denial, etc.) or that individuals have marriage-destroying personal flaws through little fault of their own, but I don’t really believe that there’s an epidemic of divorce among couples with no serious problems.

I don’t believe in divorces that happen for no particular reason any more than I believe in airline crashes happening for no particular reason.

The divorce rate is much the same as that of others.

No, it’s not.

Also, the divorce rate is very sensitive to demographic differences in things like age at marriage, household income, level of religious practice, Catholic or not, Catholic in mixed marriage or not, time spent dating, education level, etc.

You’re talking as though divorce is something largely random like Zika or flu, but it’s not.

Divorce doesn’t just happen out of the blue to helpless victims.

 

[Xantippe]

Another thought–a lot of the serious personality and behavioral flaws that make a successful marriage impossible are things that one of the ex-spouses is likely to carry into their next marriage.

Hence, repeat marriages are less likely to succeed than first marriages:

The High Failure Rate of Second and Third Marriages | Psychology Today

“Past statistics have shown that in the U.S. 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce (link is external).”

I think that’s probably a bit high, but the general idea is correct–the factors that contributed to the first marriage being a failure may lead to the second or third attempt failing, too. (Even just from a secular point of view, becoming somebody’s Wife #3 or Husband #3 is stupid stupid stupid.)

As they say, wherever you go, there you are.