After nearly 35 years of marriage, my folks are calling it quits. After enduring the hard parts of marriage - scraping by as a couple on a teacher’s salary, raising two children, starting a family business - a 35+ year relationship is going down the tubes.
All of this is basically happening because my mom’s idea of retirement doesn’t exactly sync up with my dad’s ideas. Dad wants to move to Florida or South Carolina and play golf with his college buddies for the remainder of his existence. My mom wants to stay on Long Island and live out her remaining years in the house in which I grew up.
All of my dad’s high school and college friends are divorced. Most of my dad’s guy friends have started on their dream of living in a place where it’s warm and playing golf all the time. Of the couples that my mom and dad knew in college, they are the next to last to dissolve their relationship. The last holdout couple just broke up, as the wife in that relationship figured out FROM HER KIDS that her husband had been cheating on her regularly with a young woman in her early thirties.
Last night, I spoke with my best friend who grew up down the block from me. His parents sold their house and are splitting up the proceeds. The wife will move in with her sister not too far from the house they just sold. The husband will move into temporary housing until he can find a place in Florida, where he hopes to - you guessed it - play golf every day for the remainder of his natural life.
So, is marriage a dead institution? Should I hold out for someone who will spend the rest of their life with me? Or has the fabric of our society changed sufficiently that this is no longer a realistic goal? And, lastly, what the hell does golf have to do with it?
maybe you just need to marry someone who wants to retire to florida with someone who’ll play golf all day?
I don’t know, really. I’ve never seen anything of interest in golf, but people do want different things out of life & if the things are more important to them than the relationship, something will give… I don’t think it’s a male/female thing either, as my mom (who is single) just moved down to Devon from Birmingham (about 300miles) to retire - she’s wanted to do it for ages, and has finally done it.
However a recent study found that kids of parents who were married were only half as likely to end up in single parent families whilst under 18, so it must have something going for it. I don’t know whether that means people take it as a more serious commitment, or whether the people that are likely to get married tend to take a relationship & kids as a more serious commitment or what. I hate statistics. At least you got that.
Sorry, not much help here. Anyway, good luck with your parents - are they going to sell the house that she wants to live in, or will it be more amicable than that?
My inlaws are coming up on their 52nd anniv, my folks just had their 48th. Both sets love to travel and have been doing a lot of that in their respective retirements.
My 17th anniversary is in 2 weeks. We plan to move aboard our boat when we retire and cruise our days away. Almost from the beginning, we’ve talked about what we want to do when we’re done working.
To answer the question - no, I don’t think marriage is a dead institution, but I do believe that people don’t take it as seriously as they should. It’s a unique kind of partnership that requires unique effort. At least, that’s what I think…
well, since people are still getting married, no it’s not dead. Have the changing dynamics of society changed the dynamics of marriage? yes. Is it a good thing? Generally yes. The fact that women no longer are expected to be married, that we don’t attach a social stigma to divorce…these are positive things. Sometimes things don’t work out. But do you really want to stay married to someone you dislike? If so, I’ve realy got to wonder about you.
I agree with FairyChat that marriage isn’t dead. My parents 24th anniversary is this year and i’m sure neither of them wants to move to the Carolinas or Florida to play golf forever and ever. They very much want to stay in the house they’re in right now [where i grew up].
Besides, if you’re parents are getting divorced, Thespos, i’m it’s over more than your dad wanting to play golf forever… THere has to be more, or else i’m inclined to say you have very immature parents [which i’m sure isn’t the case at all].
The more folks go their separate ways, the more improtant marriage becomes. Look at marriage as a contract which pretty much establishes the rights and responsibilities which parties have both during marriage and also after marriage. Without marriage, it gets a lot murkier when folks separate, unless they previously made their own domestic contract.
Eventually, I expect that laws will catch up to make ‘common law’ the equivalent of marriage, but we are a long way from it yet, particularly in the areas of net family property and possession of the family home.
There are a host of social, legal and economic benefits offered to married couples which are not offered to ‘common law’ couples, ranging from estate succession to pension benefits. Yes, a great deal of progress is being made in these areas to protect common law spouses, but there is still a great deal of discrimination against non-mainstream (e.g. poly or gay) couples who may wish to marry but are prohibited.
I question on two grounds whether or not the statistics indicate that marriage as an institution is failing:
Divorce is both more easily obainable and less socially frowned upon now than it was in previous genarations. Instead of staying in a bad relationship, people are now more free to move on until they find a good relationship which they can maintain. Ease of divorce makes marriage all the more successful an institution because it is now possible to keep trying until a successful marriage is had rather than be held in an initial bad marriage.
The same folks who get divorced have a tendancy to get divorced a number of times, so while figures such as “1/3 of all marriages fail” get bandied about, it is more correct to say that most people have successful marriages, but those who do not often have to make more than one attempt before either getting it right or giving up.
Finally, let’s step back and start thinking about marriage in terms other that “until death do us part.” Is it conceptually possible to have an institution thought of as marriage, but with the recognition that a marriage may not be forever? Obviously for many people, this would make a farce of marriage, but I suggest that it does not. It simply recognizes that people marry with the best of intentions, but often grow in different directions over the years. I suggest that the recogition that something other than death might terminate a marriage should not invalidate marriage all together. Instead of focusing on the disolution, why not focus on the the time in which the marriage was working, and then consider if it was all worth it?
(I suppose I’m a hopeless romantic, sitting alone surrounded by my cats…)
Sadly, marriage was always a fragile institution.
At least with divorce we no longer have the tragedy of watching “philandering husbands” “live in sin” while the “abandoned widows” mourn and are endlessly on the receiving end of pity.
That was the oft-repeated scene from my youth.
35 years. How sad for you and your parents. But 35 years and 2 children, that was a marriage even if it is coming to end. A divorce doesn’t invalidate the whole marraige.
Not trying to be troublesome (at least not any more than I usually am) – but I have to point out that this marriage until death do us part thing arose when life expectancy was a LOT lower.
I cant imagine sharing 35 years of my life with someone just to let go when we finally got to reap the fruits of our labor.
I imagine they’ll both find it harder than they think to be apart. After 35 years, you’d imagine the soul would get used to the company of its counterpart.
