I have been finding of late that in the conversations that I hear in public that more people are talking more often about either divorces occuring to them to close relations. Likewise among my peers I find less of them are vying for marriage and in fact more who are married are targeting marriage dissolution earlier than say people would 20 years ago

Is this the trend? Are divorces on the cusp of overtaking marriage rates??

Discuss.




chit chat mod: I'll be much obliged if you could move this to Debates. Thanks

It could be a sign that you are getting old.

The demographics shift a bit as you age.

We're talking about public spaces. Not my circle of insurgents

The only time when I hear about marriage is when we're talking about an ex-gf of mine. True story.

I hear it. What I hear is "I thought they would change" or "I thought I could handle (insert issue)".

And honestly people try to cover up dissatisfaction in marriage with raising kids or buying things. When the kids have left or are leaving and the things start disappearing the cracks become more obvious.

That and I think it's a serving of non communication and a lack of compromise. No one has learned to share or to have someone else do things their way or to simply discuss differences. We're used to people yelling on TV, yelling this and yelling that. The calm discussion is few and far between.

I know of one friend that's getting a divorce. Her husband's drinking and issues with her children have prompted this.

And if a relationship doesn't work, you can kick out a boyfriend. It's a legal mess with marriage. So there's more of a reason to stay single, especially to protect your possessions and investments.

I think people have gotten in their heads that you HAVE TO marry to have kids. Or that you have to marry by a certain age. Or that you have to marry at all. Sure there's a social stigma and a couple more papers to prove parenthood, but you can be together but not married, and people are realizing that now.

I think marriage will mean something completely different with my generation in the coming years, with every social issue influencing.

I don't want to even think about marriage until I'm in my late 20s. I'll admit it: I'm selfish right now. It's the ME time for ME. I laugh at my schoolmates that are marrying each other right now and attending marriages. Yeah they might work, but you're blowing your early years away. Maybe we're all different people and some are ready to settle down right now. But I know a certain someone didn't even want to date the guy she's currently married to. Even tried to avoid him at the basketball game.

Here in The States the latest numbers I heard had 52% of marriages ending in divorce and even more ridiculous, 75% of second marriages ending in divorce. It's is already more popular here than marriage.

Can't be more popular than marriage, since they have to get married before they get divorced, so getting married is ahead of it. Now staying married is another issue.

I'd add that in addition to people thinking they can handle it, is the ones where the women get divorced, get on prozac (or similar medicine), decide the marriage wasn't so bad because the prozac numbs that part, and then go back and marry the same person again.

From what I see with the change of mentalities and technology in the US people go through more personality changes then they did in the past.

People shift their viewpoints on yearly basis instead of the decades they did in the past.

Also many in the US are shifting to more a selfish phase, where they care less about the wants and needs of others and instead focus only on their immediate satisfaction.

Huh?? if 52% get divorced, then by mathematical fact, it is indeed more popular... Stephen Hawking I am not, but I do know 52% > 48% and therefore divorce rates are indeed overtaking marriage rates.

But remember, you can't have divorce without marriage.

Stucco understood what I was trying to say, 52% < 100%, as the married people are what they are gauging the 52% by. Where 48% may be staying married, 100% of the group got married in the first place.

Seems to me that often divorced people are quite unhappy with what has happened to them, and they are quite vocal about it. Divorce is a sort of failure, for whatever reason it happens. The people who stay married are content, and as we all know people don't comment about being happy, they just enjoy it. Unhappiness brings out the bitching, so divorcees are speaking up more.

When I hear divorced people talking about what a bastard the person they married is, that really reflects on their bad judgment in marrying that person in the first place more than anything to me.

When people say divorce is more popular than marriage, they mean that divorce rates are higher than marriages rates for that year etc, i.e. more people got divorced in 2008 than married. The fact that more people have been married in the past, or throughout history, than have got divorced, doesn't really factor into that equation. Obviously people have to get married before they can get divorced, but the point is that the number of people currently getting married is lower than the number of people currently getting divorced.

2nd - why would anyone want to get married? If you love someone or have feelings for them, why do you need the state or some other social institution to ratify or verify your feelings for one another? If you like them, you like them, you don't need a white wedding dress and a reception in hawaii to tell you that. Marriages just cause people to feel the need to stay with someone when they no longer have any feelings for them, because of the bond or connection they think they both made at an earlier date. That's dumb.

Maybe in some cases you could assert that those who have got divorced showed bad judgement through getting married to person X in the first place, but realistically it is unlikely that they were fully aware of all aspects of the personality and life of the person they planned to marry, AND EVEN IF THEY DID SUCH ASPECTS CONTINUOUSLY CHANGE AND EVOLVE OVER TIME. I.E. If two people from humble backgrounds get married, and then one of them becomes very successful and makes a lot of money, that often completely changes the dynamic of the relationship, as wealth, the new experiences the individual is enabled to enjoy as a consequence of that wealth, and all experiences those persons have had anyway between the time they got married and a subsequent time, shape their personalities, their moods, their thoughts, their ambitions, interests, tastes, etc. For example I know people whose fathers are terribly pretentious today, who will only accept the very best and finest things of life - 20 years previously when they had nothing this obviously was not their mindset. I know people who have made a lot of money, associate with very, very wealthy people, see these wealthy people sometimes enjoying very decadent lifestyles, i.e. drugs, massive amounts of strippers, escorts, prostitutes, alcohol etc, and because they esteem to the wealth and the apparently enjoyable lifestyle of those individuals, their mindset alters and they start desiring more self-serving needs, and neglecting their pre-existing relationship. This causes them to have affairs, sometimes become alcoholics, etc, the marriage breaks down and divorce happens. The notion that either party showed bad judgement in such cases is ludicrous , because it would have been an impossibility for either of them to have been able to predict the complex assortment of subsequent activities that would have had to occur for such an eventuality to manifest.

I am only able to commit on personal experiences with this issue because I have not done a lot of the research that some of the others here have.

In my area of the country (New Orleans) there is a very strong Catholic following (at least in my circle). No one in this circle is divorced and most are married (I will be the last of my circle of friends to wed). I personally feel that when you wed someone you make a commitment to that person "Till Death". There is no divorce because you don't like the way her breath smells in the morning or the way she picks her teeth annoys you. Anything less the forever is a failure. You have to learn to compromise and sometimes live with just being content. You have to understand that everything will not be butterflies and snowflakes, there will be problems, but IMO a relationship is measured by how the couple gets through these problems and not how many good times they had together.

I come from a single parent family and my father was non-existent in my life. I did not have a great example of how a marriage/parents should work but I did have a good example of how they should not work. I can tell you that I will do everything in my power to not have my children raised by a single parent (When I have kids).

Most of my friends's parents are still together and they wish to follow in their parents footsteps of a long marriage. They have a great example of how a successful marriage should work.

I just wanted to mention the two different backgrounds because a persons background should not effect their future(For this issue). We are all rational human beings and have the ability to make our own choices in life.

I always hear reports about how marriage is failing in this country but I rarely see it firsthand. I do not deny that the reports are factual, it is just not something I am surrounded by. Divorce is just not accepted in my circle and it forces the couples to work through their problems rather than taking the easy way out and splitting. I can honestly see, however, how easy it could be to just divorce when a major problem arises especially if it is socially accepted in one's group.

For many, that establishes not a criteria but a goal

Myself, I've been married and divorced, and am remarrying in October of next year. The is no "reason" other then we choose to live together as a married couple. It's not a legal issue, nor a religious one. More of a societal one.

I've been saying for a long time that it has more to do with society's attitude toward marriage. Women look forward to GETTING married much more than BEING married... they dream of the expensive dress and being Queen-For-a-Day and having everyone treat her like she's special and having a big party. They don't really consider that after that you're, you know, married.

I have a lot of male friends, many of whom by now have gotten married. Some of whom have gotten divorced. In my experience, men have gotten married for what I consider to be all the wrong reasons: "We've been together for a long time", "We're not getting any younger", "I dunno, I guess we're practically married already anyway". That kind of thing. Maybe it's just my friends being macho and not wanting to show their inner feelings or whatever, but not once have I heard them say that they proposed marriage because "I can't imagine spending a day of my life without her" or something to that effect. One of my male friends also get married because of family pressures: their family expected them to have a big to-do of a wedding after being with his girlfriend for so long. Mainly it was a show for his family.

So... if the majority of guys actually don't want to BE married, and women want to GET married more than BE married, where does that leave us? Well, it leaves ME thinking I'm probably never going to be married. Not because there's soemthing wrong with me or because I don't want to be: but because I don't think I'm going to find a guy that genuinely wants to be married to me, and I don't ever want to force him to. And really, more than anything, I don't want to be yet another statistic of a failed marriage.

And what's so wrong with BEING married? Maybe if society romanticised all the fun parts about BEING married people would maybe have some desire to BE marrried. Maybe we could focus more on the fact that marriage is serious business... but it can also be taken way too seriously. Marriages that started in the 40's and 50's have generally lasted a long time. Perhaps because back then, society emphasized being married more than the wedding itself.

Quick tangent: If all these "Focus on the Family"-type groups are really so concerned with family values, why the fuck aren't they encouraging married couples to work through their problems and stay together (and, you know, not leave broken homes for their children), instead of trying to deny gays and lesbians the right to marry?

That's something I was gonna bring up. Listen, if people really want to hold up the sanctity of marriage, then they shouldn't let people get divorced. It's not in the bible, that's for damn sure. I'd love to see, whenever gay marraige is federally legalized, what the statistics are. Whether or not gays are different in their marraige & divorce statistics. They'll probably be the same eventually, but damned if people who have been deprived don't appreciate what they finally have.

It is already legal in England, so I'm sure you'll be able to find out in the near future. I doubt gay divorce rates would ever come close to straight divorce rates though, due to the difference in the dynamics of the relationships. There is a pressure placed on straight couples to get married, which does not exist for gay couples, who consequently are more inclined to marry because of the right reasons, rather than in order to please some other entity, because its the socially acceptable thing to do, or because thats just what everyone else does.