My brother’s best friend is getting divorced. It made me realize I’ve never known anyone going through a divorce. I know divorced people, but I’ve never known anyone while they were going through a divorce.
It breaks my heart, though, to hear about this divorce. They’ve been married only two months. Two months! I don’t even know how that happens.
Wow. That’s hardly a divorce. More like a do-over.
Seriously, divorces suck. Even the amicable ones. Sorry you (and he) have to go through this.
Two months? If i had given them a wedding gift, i’d be asking for it back.
Seriously, i’ll probably get my ass kicked for this, but i have no sympathy for anyone whose marriage collapses that quickly. Either they didn’t think about it enough beforehand and didn’t take time to consider the potential problems, or they did think about them but decided to go ahead anyway.
Note: this doesn’t apply if one partner turns out to be abusive and the other partner leaves to escape it. In such cases, i’d obviously feel for the abused party.
Amen mhendo! I firmly agree with all that you say including your exceptions to the rule.
Hell I’ve had arguements that lasted longer than 2 months with my hubby.
Yeah, we went through the stage where all of our friends were getting married, then they were all having kids, now it seems like we’re in the divorce stage. Out of six people who stood up for us at our wedding (6 years ago), two have never married, two are still married, and two have gotten divorced (none of these people were married to each other). We’ve had two couples in our little social circle split up within the past six months, one due to infidelity, the other due to stupidity (well, that one actually has a lot of factors going into it, but it really seems like a waste).
Also, the kids from these marriages are just devastated. I know a lot of kids go through this and most make it out just fine, but especially in the marriage that broke up because of infidelity, I can’t imagine how this isn’t going to have a negative impact on them.
On the upside, Campion, if you’re married or in a relationship, take this opportunity for some routine maintenance with your own SO. I think watching our friends dissolve their families has helped my husband and me to strengthen our marriage. Not only has it made us hug each other a little more tightly, it’s made us discuss things that aren’t problems in our relationship, but that one day could be.
I don’t yet know why they’ve decided to call it quits after such a short time (other than no violence or betrayal is involved), but I’m with you on this. Two months is such a short time. I’ve never been married so I’m probably talking out of my hat on this, but I could marry a complete stranger and make a go of it longer than two months. Yeah, I know that’s ignorant of me to say that, but I think I’m right.
I never thought about it before but among my immediate family and circle of friends there was only 2 divorces, both by my Father’s Mother before I was born.
I don’t really have a direct comprehension of divorce.
2 months does make them both sound a little silly and immature. Sorry about that. But better they divorce now than after they have kids.
Good Luck, hope your brother is there for his friend during the upcoming period. I am sure he’ll need it.
Two months, that’s a pretty grim assault on the definition of commitment. I’ve got crap older than that in my fridge.
For those undertaking marriage though, please consider keeping all the credit-wise stuff in both names… loans, monetary accounts, etc. My SIL is going through a divorce now and quickly discovering what a detriment having no established credit can be since everything was in his name.
Sounds like these folks wanted a wedding, but didn’t want to be married.
I originally read this as "I’ve got a crap older than that in my fridge.
Of course, given who the poster was, i didn’t think twice about it. 
Better two months than two years…or two kids. :eek:
'Course, we can’t really judge without knowing the particulars of what went on, and frankly nobody really knows precisely what occured except for the two parties invovled, but if it is as amicable (or at least mutual) as it sounds, it’s probably for the best. Commitment is a good thing when it comes to mountain climbing, but not so great when it comes to an impending train wreck. Some unions are not “meant to be,” and are better of terminated before they stack on more coal cars. Heck, with any luck, they aren’t fully unpacked and haven’t comingled their books yet. That’s the worst in my experience, especially when it comes to arging over a textbook to a thermodynamics class that both hated. :rolleyes:
I’d still ask for the asparagus cooker back, though. 
Stranger
Well, then, it’s official. The second wave of now-single men has begun. My dating pool is getting deeper.
:: puts on swim goggles ::
Me either – there’s really only one divorce in my family. An aunt and uncle, married twenty-five plus years. My BIL was divorced before he married my sister, but that’s also before I knew him.
Yeah, I know. Still sucks. I just remember him as this skinny little kid with the big eyes who so skillfully managed the “innocent” look that my brother couldn’t. It breaks my heart to think about him divorcing. It’s not rational, but there you go.
He’s a good 'un, if you go for the mid-twenties, athletic, gainfully employed, respectful-of-his-elders ( ) type. Of course, so’s my brother. Just don’t get between either of them and a keg. 
I learned a long time ago not to judge divorces.
In our family, they are genetic. My own parents got divorced when I was in high school (just shy of their 25th anniversary). My mother’s parents got divorced when she was in high school. My mother’s GRANDparents were even divorced, as were most of her aunts and uncles. I never knew the reasons for any of these divorces (except perhaps my parents’, and even then it’s my father’s word against my mother’s word), so I grew up just taking it for granted that divorce happened.
I am the oldest of four children. The older of my two brothers (who is three years younger than me) got married almost immediately out of high school. The marriage didn’t even last through college. They were both just too young, and didn’t really understand each other or the commitment of marriage. He has since remarried to a woman who is slightly older than I am.
My sister (who is about a year younger than I am) got married when she had just finished college. She got divorced about four years later, when she finally accepted the fact that her husband was an alcoholic and that he was not willing to do anything about it. She is now living in a legal partnership with someone else, but has no intention of actually getting married because she doesn’t want to go through the divorce hassle again.
My husband and I have been married for more than (do the math… 2005-1988=13) thirteen years. We got married after my brother’s divorce, but only about a year before my sister’s divorce. It took me a good five years (or more) to convince him that I didn’t believe in divorce, and that I was willing to stick it out for as long as he was. We both have flaws, obviously, but they are not overwhelming flaws, and we are willing to tolerate them. We also knew each other very well before we got married–we were close friends for a while, then we lived together for a couple of years before making it official. We also have kids (unlike my siblings), but we both believe that a Bad Marriage is worse on kids than a Good Divorce, so I can’t say that we have avoided divorce only because of the kids.
My younger brother, though, has never been married, and even though he is nearly 40 years old, and he would like to have a more permanent relationship, I think he has decided to avoid marriage until he’s absolutely sure that it will work. Which will probably be never, given the family history.
Er, that would be 17.
Divorce runs in my family, too. My parents separated when I was 15. They never got divorced, they just never spoke to one another again up to their deaths. Two of my mother’s brothers were divorced. One remarried and has been miserable ever since. My sister (11 years younger than me) has been divorced twice. One of my brothers would be divorced if they had been stupid enough to actually get married. He isn’t stable enough to warrant a decent relationship. But he’s tied to his shrew of a mother-to-their-kid for eternity. All my friends from the past are divorced.
My supervisor at work is on the other side of a really ugly divorce from a hellish marriage that has taken such a toll on him, he looks ten years older than me. He’s ten years younger.
Lucky me, I waited until I was 39 to get married. I got all that adolescent crap out of my system a long time ago. When it looked like this was my chance, boy, I went for it. I am so grateful to my wife for choosing me, I am not going to screw this up. I plan to be the exception to the rule in my family.
But two months? I have crap older than that in my fridge, too. I also agree, better now than later, if that’s the way they want to be.
Dr Samuel Johnson was once asked by his amanuensis, Boswell, whether he did not suppose that there were ‘fifty women in the world, with any of whom a man may be as happy, as with any one woman in particular’. He replied: ‘Ay, sir, fifty thousand.’ What he was getting at is that the original attraction will turn out in the end to have been almost accidental, and it is what is built on that which matters. And Dr Johnson was speaking as a devoted husband and inconsolable widower.
Incidentally, the value of speculation based on reason and authority (i.e. listening to and understanding the words of the wise) can exceed the value of those with experience. Experience is rather over-rated - in my experience! - since it is so often filtered through prejudice thinly disguised as subjective opinion.
Ah, roger, I’d forgotten about this thread.
You will get no arguments from me here. Unless you reject my advice based on experience.
For those who care, the update is shockingly mundane. They thought marriage would fix the problems in the relationship. It turns out that it only magnified them. Also, “amicable” is apparently not a word one can apply to divorces following two-month marriages with any degree of truth.
If you can’t trust your spouse, you’ve got nothing. Don’t think that your jealousy will go away once you marry. It will not.
And don’t spend $27,000 on a wedding. It will only come back to haunt you in so many ways.
These things are based, not on my experience, but on my reason and authority. Or at least based on what I remember talking to my brother about after Thanksgiving dinner.
I respectfully disagree sir. Which is not to say that your point is without merit - merely that I believe the point that I’m about to make has just as much. (smile)
In my opinion, yes it’s true that initial attraction can be somewhat accidental, based on circumstances and as to how people are thrown together - but what TRULY determines long term relationship success (in my opinion) is personality type compatibility. There is a significant body of consensus amongst psychologists that our major and secondary personality types are effectively set in stone by the age of 8 or 9 years of age. And that further, our ideal partners are people who have a secondary personality type which equals our own primary type, and vice verse. Apparently, it’s possible for couple who don’t fit this ideal pairing to make a go of things - but they have to work at it harder. Of all the combinations, the couple who are DESTINED to end up fighting like cats and dogs are couples whose major personality types are respectively “dominant” and “analytical”. And the reason? The former is the “big picture person who orders everyone around” and the latter is the “micro details person who has to understand the minutae of every problem”. It’s simply inevitable that they’ll end up looking upon each other with disrespect I’m told.
Now, being a psychological theory - I’ll happily accept that it’s inherently non-empirical and by definition, impossible to prove. Still, of all the theories I’ve read in my life, The “primary and secondary” type system is the one which makes the most sense to me. Think about it… think about your closest long term friends - take note how you compliment each other - you’re not identical in personality but you do compliment each other. Couples who are lucky enough to share that sort of cross pollination never seem to separate - like ever…
The way I see it is ‘different personality, same character’, where the latter refers to such things as moral belief, value placed on honesty and courage, etc. Actually, probably close to your position, except I was cursed with a personality that combines the very doperic “has to understand the minutae of every problem” with an even more thorough-going detestation of categorising things, and of its effect on thinking (and thinkers) especially. A bloke called Bourdieu once described classification as “symbolic violence”, on the grounds, I believe (others have interpreted it this way, anyway), that it involves the suppression of dilemmas or uncertainty. So, on the one hand I crave lack of ambiguity, and on the other I raise doubt, in my academic endeavours (just now busy converting my PhD thesis into publishable form), to almost a regulatory principle.
Of course, I have been close to divorce with myself on many occasions! We certainly separated a few times.