When should a couple get divorced?

[Zues126]

I've tried asking these two questions a couple of times before on my thread but would love to hear what more members have to say.

1. What do you believe are appropriate reasons to divorce? Never? Physical abuse? Emotional abuse? Infidelity? Addictions (which ones)? Dissatisfaction?
2. What should the target divorce rate be? 1%? 10%? 50%? 80%?

Some marriages need to end. Others should be saved. But as we vote to move more marriages into the 'need to end' category, we are also voting to increase the divorce rate. Note that I am assuming we don't get to change humanity to fit our standards, for example we don't get to say 'cheating is a deal breaker but no one should ever cheat'. If it's a deal breaker than we need to allow for a divorce rate to reflect the number of cheaters.

So tell me newcomers, where do you feel that balance lies?

[AnotherStander]

Well I'm not a newcomer, but I think the high divorce rate today is just a symptom of a decaying society that has lost it's moral compass. Today it's all about instant gratification and entitlement. People don't want to work at anything, whether it's their job, staying in shape, eating right, or even their marriage. Honor, sacrifice and loyalty are dying traditions. I think we here may be a dying breed, people who actually care about the commitment we made in marriage and are trying or have tried to save it against all odds. I don't know whether this is the beginning of the end of society as we know it, or maybe it's just a redefining of society to something new and different, and maybe even better. Only time will tell. Personally I lament the earlier times up until around the 60's where marriage and loyalty were considered extremely important and friends and family were intent on helping to keep couples together instead of facilitating breaking them up. But maybe I'm just being "old-fashioned".

[Maybell]

I'm curious why it matters? This isn't something we can control. It won't change any of our personal outcomes. It's not my business why anyone else gets divorced (except my boyfriend, and that's only a matter of how i feel his behavior reflects on his character).

What are you after in asking this question?

[KGuy]

Well, if it were up to everyone on this site, a 0% divorce rate should occur...

As Maybell points out, it isn't up to us...

A marriage is a unity that is generally religous in nature. There are very few reasons the Bible gives for cause for divorce, one of them being infidelity. Yet, most of the people on this site have issues with A and still want to save their marriage. Its up to each of us to place what value we have in the vows we have spoken.

[Tobias]

1. ANY reason is a good reason to pursue divorce. A MR requires both people to commit to it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't fight to save a MR when there are challenges. MR requires a lot of hard work. A lot of people don't recognize that.

I would have said cheating would be a deal breaker for me and here I am: fighting for my R. I think physical and emotional abuse shouldn't be tolerated but depending on the situation you can perhaps work on it. My W and I have both done abuse towards each other. I can explain it away, I can rationalize it but we both did it. In many ways we both should have ended it. But neither of us wants to add further pain and we recognized that we need coping skills. If the abuse (even words) continue we need to end it.

Divorce has always been happening. We just now hear more about it. In the past people had to hide their sexual orientation or because the H owned the W a woman couldn't really easily leave unless she wanted to have nothing. Affairs always happened, so did premarital sex (our grandparents are just as likely to have had premarital sex as we do...although our generation has more access to more partners and sex is more openly discussed).

I don't know if most people on here would say no to divorce. Several LBS ended up being the ones to file because the WW or WAS didn't change.

At the end of the day it's up to us who we want to spend our lives with. But unlike previous times it's no longer good enough to say: well we made our vows so let's stay together forever. Many of us on here have failed in our roles (many of us admit to not being the best possible person). So if something changed it is that making a commitment isn't good enough anymore: we need to actually be better people. And if you look at GAL, detach, 180s etc you can see that ultimately it boils down to the crucial parts that make a R work. These books should be taught in schools not just for MR but ANY type of relationships: being workers, being friends, being colleagues etc.

Absolutely I want my W to stay and us to remain married BUT if we continued on the path we had been we both would have sacrificed and been in something that ultimately made neither of us happy. Right now I think it would be defeat if we ended it before working on us. But we deserve to be happy. My W deserves to be happy. I hope it's with me.

Perhaps what is something that needs to change is stigmatizing sex outside of marriage and leave the vows to those couples that have made a real commitment to each other. But people change. I never assumed marriage was easy but I was still unprepared. It seems a lot of people rush into marriage because they want to have sex and are worried about how society reacted to that and so they rush into marriage. They were not in love...they had lust. Love is something that grows over time.

And our future generations know this: they delay marriage, they delay having kids because they are worried about going through a divorce. They haven't really deviated from monogamy but aren't quick to rush into marriage. They want to have a career and get their finances lined up. We can say family values changed but in some ways they didn't. Right now teenagers are having less sex than any generation prior (and are using less drugs including alcohol).

You may be reading this and wonder well why did you get married? I love my W. I enjoy being around her. we laugh together, we have fun together, we have similar convictions in terms of justice and equality. We love travelling. We just never understood what the other person needed. The way we fight, the way we talk, the way we work together, we slowly drifted away. Resentment occurred. I never stopped loving my W but I certainly felt resentment. I certainly felt like she took me for granted. So what did I do? I lashed out, I tried to hurt her, etc.

Perhaps we shouldn't be married. Perhaps we need to call it off. But I disagree with that right now. I would have said the same thing if we were cohabitating.

But is divorce taking the easy way out? My W was miserable for years. I was denying our problems. It wouldn't be the easy way out. However, we both recognize perhaps that there is a better reality possible.

I don't remain committed because of how society views marriage, I am not religious but I don't believe God or whatever you want to call the higher power wants us to be unhappy, I don't remain married because it makes more financial sense. I want to remain married because I love this woman. She deserves a better version of me. I deserve a better version of myself. This woman still has my back, she still goes to counseling, she still validates my worth. If those things stopped I would say: bye, there is the door.

(I wonder if the OP is doing research?)

[Zues126]

Thank you for the replies. Personally I find this topic fascinating for many reasons and feel a divorce busting forum is an appropriate place to have this conversation.

One thing that jumps out is how diverse the different ideas are on marriage and divorce. Some people think that marriage should be forever, even to the point that they don't remarry or date again after their partner leaves such as missmyfriend. On the other end of the spectrum some people feel that marriage is an 'at will' arrangement and that no one should stay if they don't want to continue. Right away it's clear that when we talk about marriage we use the same word but have totally different ideas of what that commitment means.

One idea that I find intriguing is the trade off between the freedom to leave a bad marriage and the increase in the divorce rate that would cause. For example, in my observations the most common answer I see for when it makes to end a marriage is that divorce should be avoided "except in cases of abuse, infidelity, or addiction". But this can be defined just as widely. Are we talking just drug addiction? What about alcoholism? What about eating disorders? Pornography? Shopaholics? People that can't stay off their cell phones or internet or social media? When we talk about infidelity are we including emotional affairs? Pornography? Strip clubs? When we talk about emotional abuse, I think every spouse has done or said something that can be considered hurtful. At what point do we call it abuse and justify a divorce?

I am not suggesting that since there is no black and white line there is no point in having some ideas of what isn't tolerable. One thing I am pointing out though is that if the societal escape clause remains that vague anyone that feels like leaving a marriage could easily build a case that would meet those standards.

There is a trade off between the freedom to leave a marriage and the pain caused by a divorce. We don't like the idea of people (specifically ourselves) being stuck in an unsatisfying marriage. But when we look at the consequences of allowing the divorce rate to climb and allowing marriage to become disposable and just another word for girlfriend or boyfriend there is a cost there as well. When we subscribe to the beliefs that a marriage can be left at will (whether literally, or practically under the guise of a broad list of reasons that can be applied by a WAS to any situation) we are choosing to accept a high number of divorces. I don't hear this talked about because people don't like accepting a choice between two distasteful alternatives, so instead many people seem to adopt an attitude of "We should have clauses for people to leave if it's not a good marriage but people should just treat each other better so those things don't come up and the marriages stay together". Unfortunately that isn't really an option. Yes, you can make an argument that as marriage becomes more 'at will' then people will step up their game to avoid divorce, and this has happened to some extent, but not enough to reverse the high divorce rate.

I tend to challenge the idea that there is a good partner out there for each of us, and that somehow if we got stuck with a bad one we just need to find a better one. Each time a family splits up there is devastating pain to many people including children growing up in broken homes. So from a macro level there needs to be a big net gain to justify the split to make it the best strategy for our entire society. Yet there are a certain number of people in this world partnering up. All of those partners are human and have varying level of partners. So when a couple splits, the same people just pair up with other people. There is no net gain, yet there is a loss accrued with the separation. Furthermore it's reasonable to assume that people that are less likely to be marriage material are most likely to break up again and again and just continue to circle around the partner pool, while the best candidates remain out of the pool due to their successful partnerships.

We could argue that going through a divorce is a growth opportunity and that many of these people bring more to a second marriage, yet that doesn't match the statistics about the success rate of second or third (or more) marriages. Maybe any growth that is obtained is offset by the baggage we carry of having split homes, step parents and children, the loss of shared memories, and the knowledge that divorce is acceptable and survivable.

By the way, I'm looking at this from the view of our entire society. Clearly an individual that gets divorced may remarry, and may find someone that they build a great relationship with. So at an individual level this strategy yields the best chance of finding a 'happy' marriage. Yet at the macro level it seems this is the exception to the rule, and the result is that on average more people go through more pain and aren't any more fulfilled. Furthermore, not only don't most people find a permanent lasting marriage that is more fulfilling, they lose the few benefits of what their original suboptimal marriage provided (such as a quiet lifelong commitment, shared memories, a partner to be at your side through thick and thin, etc).

I believe that the idea of a happy marriage is the unicorn many people chase. Most people like the idea of marriages working in general, until it means that they themselves won't get what they want, and then they should be able to go find their partner that will give them what they want because they are different or special. I think this is what can explain the fact that many WAS's were dead against divorce before and after they walk, but make themselves the exception because people should be able to be happy.

For me these have been important things to reflect on. Partly because it helps me to try to find understanding in why my family was destroyed. Partly because I get to raise my children and teach them my beliefs, and my understanding of how people work and what I believe is the right outlook may influence the quality of their lives.

I don't have the answers as to when it makes sense to get divorced. For me, personally, I believe the cost of divorce is so high and the actual gains (not the outcomes we dream we'll get, but what actually plays out) don't justify those separations in most cases. I can see a clear line for divorce when there is way over the line abuse and infidelity (striking and screwing), but beyond that I think the rise in the divorce rate is too costly. I think that would reduce the divorces immediately, and if our society brought back the divorce stigma and infidelity stigma that would help reduce reduce them further by disincentivizing this behavior.

But, as Maybell pointed out, I can't change how our society looks at these things. I don't think we're going that direction, in fact I think we're moving further away. Today many kids grow up with the idea that marriage is at will, that a marriage doesn't have to last to be a success, and that having many partners both in relationships and sexually is a good thing for personal development reasons, and so you 'learn what you are looking for'.

For me I don't subscribe to these beliefs but I see that I am in the minority. But I get to at least use this information to make my decisions as to whether or not I choose to open the doors to a future partner. As for what I teach my children, well, sometimes I'm at a bit of a loss because even if they accept my beliefs, I don't know that my beliefs will do them any good if they are the only people playing by those rules.

I also accept that it may be for the best. Maybe our society evolves to where a series of 5-10 year relationships becomes the norm. People used to stay with one company their entire career, now it's a new job on average every couple of years. Things still get done, people still get paid. Maybe our society has it absolutely solved, that a series of 5 year relationships is perfect because we get the butterfly and honeymoon stages again and again, and we get to always hope that the unicorn is just around the corner waiting for us after we read our next relationship book. So while it doesn't look promising or right to me, maybe this is progress.

In the end as I've said before, I think that it's possible that Artificial Intelligence can bail us out. Either by telling us how to work with each other, or by becoming the partners that we crave to meet our individual needs. Who knows?

Thank you for the conversation. I appreciate all of your responses and look forward to reading anything else anyone cares to offer. Divorce has been a big part of my life and for me this has been helpful to think about and learn more about. Take care and hope you have some light in your day today.

[Maybell]

Well, it's an interesting theoretical conversation even if I'm not sure it gets us anywhere, so I'll keep biting.

First, I'll say I'm not sure a series of short marriages is really where we're headed. When I lived in California, my daughter and ONE of her friends were the only two in their large social circle whose parents were still married by the time the girls were nine. When we got to Maryland, she became the only one in her large circle of friends whose parents were divorced. Of my ex's circle of friends and family, only one or two who are divorced. He lost most of our friends in the divorce -- those people are all still happily married. I don't know if you're living in a divorce heavy pocket of the population or what, but I think for the most part people agree that marriages are one and done, whenever possible.

Secondly, THANK GOD he left. I would have stayed, and I fought for that marriage, but THANK GOD he left. He abuses alcohol. He was emotionally abusive to me -- not in the bullying sense, but in the eye-rolling, condescending, belittling sense. He was financially irresponsible. He spent time on porn that should have been spent with the family. He was no fun to be around on weekends. He loved "spontaneity" but hated to be put out, so we never really went anywhere. He cheated on me and I'll never know if they were just women he picked up in bars or if they were prostitutes. Probably a blend of both.

I would not want my kids to grow up thinking that was normal.

Now My Guy and I have been dating for only a bit over 18 months, but if he left it would hurt my kids a lot. It's not only the marriage of their origin that is important to them. He's invested in them and they've invested in him and if something happened to part us, there'd be a ton of healing to do. Anyone who loves their kids is going to be hesitant to subject them to that kind of pain every 5-10 years.

I think our society has a sickness, no doubt. I do not know if the overall divorce rate is indicative of that. It's lower than it was in the 80s, that's for sure. And it has to be better for kids to have the example of a narcissistic or dysfunctional parent reduced in their lives, or to have the opportunity to have the example of a more stable parent amplified. I personally have not witnessed any casual divorces. At least not yet. We never really know what's going on between a couple. As many of us can testify, sometimes not even both halves of the couple knows what's going on between the couple. So I can't but think that the availability of divorce is a good thing. Divorce did not destroy my family. My ex-husband destroyed my family. Divorce gave me the chance to limit the damage. What would my life, or yours, have been like if we'd been forced to stay within those marriages? Don't think it would have been the happy family you're missing.

[Parkema]

Hi All,

The divorce rate in the UK is actually falling...

[TxHubby]

Well I'm not a newcomer, but I think the high divorce rate today is just a symptom of a decaying society that has lost it's moral compass. Today it's all about instant gratification and entitlement. People don't want to work at anything, whether it's their job, staying in shape, eating right, or even their marriage. Honor, sacrifice and loyalty are dying traditions. I think we here may be a dying breed, people who actually care about the commitment we made in marriage and are trying or have tried to save it against all odds. I don't know whether this is the beginning of the end of society as we know it, or maybe it's just a redefining of society to something new and different, and maybe even better. Only time will tell. Personally I lament the earlier times up until around the 60's where marriage and loyalty were considered extremely important and friends and family were intent on helping to keep couples together instead of facilitating breaking them up. But maybe I'm just being "old-fashioned".

+1 on this!

[Zues126]

I wish I had more time. I am on my way out of town for work and won't return for a couple of days. I'll try to share a few of my thoughts and see what develops. Thanks for your replies Maybell and Parkema.

I was under the impression that the falling divorce rate was partly due to the falling marriage rate. Less young people getting married at all, and the increase of long term relationships outside of wedlock. Like much of our society was losing faith in marriage altogether. Either way, it still seems much, much too high.

Here's the part I have the hardest time with- The divorce script tends to sort people out into two categories: The good people that do their part to have healthy and fulfilling marriages, and the bad people that are narcissistic and have family of origin issues and are abusive and selfish and we need to escape from. Oddly enough after some time of reflection it seems that everyone's WAS turns out to have been- wait for it- a bad person! And everyone on these forums- you'll never guess- is one of the good people! Wow we are so lucky on these forums that every one of us is so good and we all escaped from all the bad people that left us! I am playing a little, but this is what I've observed from watching hundreds and hundreds of LBS posters.

Personally I find the whole thing very distasteful. To me a marriage means "one and only partner for life". So the idea of comparing a spouse to another partner is really gross. Let me try to compare...hmm...it hits me like if someone lost their child in a car crash and said "THANK GOD JIMMY GOT KILLED IN A CRASH, HE WAS SO AWFUL, NOW I CAN HAVE MORE KIDS THAT AREN'T SUCH BRATS!" No one would say that about losing a kid, I just can't compute how our spouses stopped falling in the same category.

I don't really believe in the 'good people/bad people' thing. I think we're all just human people. I think that we view our WAS's through crap tinted glasses and view our new partners through rose tinted glasses. It is the only explanation that makes sense because it would be improbable beyond reckoning that this is just a 'good guy forum'.

Either way I am put off by it. My XW labeled me a 'bad guy' and threw me in the junk pile and is trying to go through new partners to find her 'good guy' that she knows she deserves. If there were good/bad guys out there I think I'm closer to a bad guy, and apparently in this new narrative that means that no one should be with me because the rules say so. This is fine with me because I don't want to play temporary marriage with a group of people that doesn't see the value in a life partner and would rather play the replaceable game.

Personally I believe that people grow and change, and that there is nearly as much a chance of a bad marriage evolving into a good marriage as there is of aborting it and starting over a new marriage. We talk about all the personal growth going on with our forum members, many posters talk about how they weren't the best spouses but now would do better. Divorce prevents those future seasons to turn and allow improvement. And again, even if it's a simple and fast way to try to avoid real lasting painful problems, I don't think it's a viable overall solution and I think it causes more pain and problems than it prevents.

For what it's worth, I recognize I'm in the minority on this. I also am not suggesting I am somehow right. I acknowledge that I feel very differently about these things than most which is why I appreciate the conversation.