I don’t assume we’ll be together. I married Mr. K with the hope we’ll be together forever, but I’m also a realist who understands that life is complicated and some things are out of our control.
I’ll post as someone who still carries baggage from my parents’ divorce. I’m 36. I was the unlucky kid that got to meet with the judge as a 10 year old and tell him who I thought we’d be best off with. I was coached by my mother to say, “Oh Mr. Judge, with all respect, we wanna be with our loving mama! Our daddy is a bad man!” She took me out for a nice lunch afterward and bought me a pretty new dress as a “thank you”. And let me tell you, she was no joy ride as a single parent who used child support money to buy dressy clothes and shoes for herself (while we got to wear hand-me-downs and save up our paltry allowances to buy our own clothes). I’ve had horrible guilt my whole life because of my parents’ divorce- there’s nothing like watching your father sob as he tucks you in for the last time. There’s nothing like listening to your mother verbally bash your father and vice versa in front of you as if you’re supposed to take sides. There’s nothing like packing your clothes to go visit your dad for 2 out of the 4 allowed days out of 30 that he gets to see you. There’s nothing like having to alternate holidays between houses. And on and on.
Getting divorced without kids is fine with me. Whatever you want to do. But when you have kids and you decide for some STUPID, SELFISH reason (of course I exclude abuse or some other extreme situation) that you’re just tired of the marriage and wish you had a different life, I just think that it’s criminal to do that to your kids. I could easily (and maybe I will) devote a good pit thread to people with kids who divorce for selfish reasons. And to people who don’t take marriage/children seriously enough to consider what they’re geting themselves into in the first place. Maybe my opinion is better devoted to a pit thread, but I’m chiming in here as a shining example of “divorce with kids = not to be treated as a ‘money back if you’re not completely satisfied’ contract”.
end of rant. 
I’m afraid that with divorce becoming more socially accepted, people aren’t taking marriage as seriously. They’ll marry someone on a whim (see Britney Spears, both times). I feel that marriage should be something you do only if you are entirely sure that you want to be with that person for the rest of your life. I think if more people considered that, and, say, waited 5 years from decision to marry to actually marrying, the divorce rate would go down to 25% or so. People know that marriage is not a binding thing anymore, so they treat it the same way they would a casual relationship. It has lost its importance in society, but the romantic notions remain.
I’m divorced, and while it was sad, and painful, it was simply the right thing for everyone. I was 16 when I met him, 26 when we divorced. Instead of thinking that my marriage had failed, I happened to see it as a pretty amazing thing that we held it together for a decade. I was completely different at 26 from what I was at 16. When I’m 40, I’ll be different than I am now. People are organic beings in more ways than one, and to expect that the changes that take place in two separate people will stay in sync across the board all the time is unrealistic.
The problem is that you don’t know how your views about things will change over the years. There’s no way anyone can be sure about something they haven’t experienced yet.
Also, not all marriages are based on love. I’d venture to say that most marriages aren’t based on love. It’s a nice idea, but the realities of life create a number of legitimate reasons for people to get married.
I’m not sure that people get married any more lightly than they always have. And while the rate of divorce may have risen steadily over the years, I’m reasonably certain that the percentage of **happy ** marriages is the same as it ever was.
annewaldron, divorce doesn’t have to be like that. Believe it or not, there are instances where it really is the best thing for everyone, including the kids. I wish my parents had divorced when I was young. Then maybe at some point in my childhood, one or both of them could have met someone else, and I might have had at least one example of a loving, functional romantic partnership.
Frankly, your mother sounds as though meeting your needs wasn’t first on her list of things to do regardless of her marital status. Do you really think she would have been a better mother if they’d stayed together, or do you just wish your father had been there to act as a buffer? And if so, is that the life you really wish for him?
I also tend to think that the marriage rate would be cut by 75% or so. 
I’m a fan of long engagements (2 1/2 years in my case), but there’s no good way to enforce that. As societal expectations get more lax (or diverse enough to have little meaning), people will increasingly do whatever they feel like doing. All institutions, including marriage, lose their ‘sacred’ meanings eventually. Sometimes this is good, sometimes bad.
We were engaged for 36 hours. But we lived together for 9 years before we married.
If there are no kids involved, then divorce should be relatively easy, as it is now.
However, once kids enter the picture, then divorce should be well-nigh impossible to obtain unless drugs, crime or violence are involved. At that point, the people involved need to stop thinking about their own selfish asses, put the kids first and make the marriage work.
My lover told his mother to get a divorce for the sake of everyone’s happiness some years before his parents did so. I don’t know how old he was at the time.
What makes you think that those problems are the only ones that can make a family miserable?
I don’t think divorce in itself is wrong, but I have seen friends divorce too quickly (imho) without having taken all possible steps to save the relationship (and having not nurtured the relationship properly in the first place).
I do recall seeing some statistics around second and third marriages that show that the divorce rates of second and third marriages are even higher than the divorce rate for first marriages.
This indicates to me that these people lack the skills necessary to either (a) choose an appropriate partner or (b) successfully hold down a long term relationship.
I’ve seen this in person where the divorcee places the blame of the marriage failure solely on the actions of the spouse, without considering what part they played.
Well, *that’s * broad and inflexible. You can’t imagine any circumstance in which the two people involved might be the best qualified to decide whether they should stay married? You can’t imagine any circumstance in which two adults are capable of doing what’s best for their children, *and * living satisfying lives themselves?
Don’t get me wrong, my experience of long-term love is that it ebbs and flows, and I **do ** feel that sometimes people give up too easily.
But if you’re truly unhappy with someone, I don’t think that living together is healthy. Living together is hard even with someone you *do * love. And why do people persist in thinking that children are best served by living with two people who don’t like each other? Do you have any idea what it’s like to live with that tension?
Of course, I do think it has to do with people’s expectations and cultural backgrounds. Every relationship has its own dynamic. Some people find it odd that my wife and I are best friends. Some people think it’s odd that some can get married for what seem to be purely physical reasons (i.e. sexual, monetary). Some get married because it’s convenient while they’re screwing, some do it because they don’t have anything better to do. And, in many cultures, there’s a much larger family component, to the point where the individual has, at best, the ability to choose among pre-approved suitors.
As long as your reality matches your expectations, chances are you’ll be happy. Too many people have either unrealistic expectations, or become deluded into thinking that their current SO meets their expectations, when in fact they don’t.
My opinion of divorce is that it is a sad, bad thing, but in some circumstances it’s the least bad of the available alternatives.
Whenever I hear of anyone getting divorced, it makes me at least a little sad.
Divorce is definitely a Bad Thing. It’s emotionally devastating for everyone involved. However, it’s often the least bad of the choices available.
I got married at 28 and had every intention that it was for life. It didn’t work out that way. The final tally was just short of six years. I was a wreck through the divorce itself and for a good share of the ensuing several years. Now, though, I can look back and say that it was the best choice for both of us – or the least damaging in the long run, at any rate.
Fortunately, we didn’t have children. I have to disagree that people with children shouldn’t get divorced for anything short of physical or emotional abuse, though. I’ve known kids who were messed up by their parents’ divorce, yes. I’ve also known kids who were at least as messed up by living with parents who actively disliked each other.
In a perfect world, everyone who intended to marry for life would be able to make their marriage work well for everyone involved for a lifetime. People would only have kids when they were absolutely certain they knew what they were getting into, and they’d never be wrong.
The shipping company seems to have lost the perfect world we ordered, though. Guess we’ll have to make do.
Some couples are emotionally wrecked, some are relieved and some have such good relationships that they remain friends/co-parent the kids and are better separate than they were together. There are as many reasons for divorce as there are for marriage.
Not always. I was quite relieved when my parents divorced. No more screaming arguements, and neither one was uncivilized enough to use me or my brother as a weapon against the other parent.
That’s a good point. I neglected those latter cases when I was jotting down thoughts from my own experiences. Thanks for the perspective check.
In any event, I think that to say “marriage is until death do you part, period” (as Sgt Schwartz seems to favor) is naive. Staying married isn’t always the best choice, even for the children.
That’s all well and hood if both parents are superb actors and the kids are really stupid.
I felt the guilt thing when I first filed for divorce and went back because of my kid. I spent two years pretending to love a man I couldn’t stand to be near. Kid’s aren’t dumb, and after awhile I could see how nervous my son was when his dad and I were together, like he was just waiting for the bomb to drop.
Once I decided it absolutely wasn’t working, and got me and the boy out of there, he relaxed and became his old carefree self. He loves spending time with dad, and he loves living with me-he’s happy wherever he’s at. He was not happy when we were all one big unit.
I heard a saying once that stuck with me: Kids would rather come from a broken home than live in one.