Celebrities like her who get divorced a million times promote the idea that marriage is not a lifetime commitment. Counseling certainly used to be better. The Catholic church requires the most marriage counseling out of any religion - and incidentally is tied for the lowest divorce rates of faith communities.

So it is the counseling. I see your point about the celebrities getting divorced a lot. I didn't look at it like that.

Down comes the billboard.

My theory is that it is a matter of living in a society with more choices.

What choices did the average wife have 50 years ago with a high school education and a work force that was heavily dominated by men when it came to careers that paid enough to provide for a family? What of the social stigma of divorce? (which I think arose from a matter of the not entirely inaccurate perception that at the time a bad marriage was better than being divorced.)

I think divorce is more common now because both parties in a marriage are more likely to have the education and opportunities to find a better life if they are not getting what they want/need/deserve out of marriage.

Granted, with that comes an element who surely give up too soon because they can or don't take marriage seriously- but that is their loss in the long run.

I see this phenomenon as potentially positive. It is a reflection of the emerging reality in which both partners in a marriage have a more equal obligation to perform because there is not one partner who is completely dependent on the other for a real life.

Oh my God - are you serious?

It's not that the counseling was better - the sanctions were worse! (both applied by society and family, not to mention the law)

Divorce should probably be even more common than it is right now - people shouldn't stay in unhappy marriages. In the past, they did. It's not rocket science.

ETA: EE-BO's point on choice is spot-on

I think this is true to an extent, but why do people think the grass is greener on the other side? I can see getting a divorce if cheating, mental or physical abuse is involved, but why get a divorce for anything else. Work it out. Why even marry again, because now you have to get used to a whole new set of issues the new spouse may have. I would rather stay with the original spouse since I would be used to his issues.

I looked for research statistics on this but they differ greatly. I can say that the vast majority of people I know who are divorced got divorced because of one of the three reasons you mentioned and that none of them went into the marriage or the divorce lightly. Of course that's not a scientific sample.

Divorce is a traumatizing and difficult experience for everybody involved. To counter the question "Why get divorced for anything else?".. wellllll, do you want to spend every day for the rest of your life living with someone you don't speak to and don't like because they either changed drastically after getting married or weren't honest with you about who they really were before you married? Would you want to forego having children because your spouse decided after you got married that he/she didn't want children? Would you be able to stay married to someone who had a drastic change in their religious beliefs after marriage? Do you know what it's like to never be able to relax in your own home because you and your spouse can't be in the same room together without arguing? Or to sleep on a couch for 6 years because your spouse angers you so much that you can't sleep in the same bed with them? Or, to suggest marriage counseling and have your spouse refuse because "it's your problem you're not happy in this marriage?" It's not easy to categorize every reason into something acceptable. As for second marriages, I think that most of the time, people think they have learned something from the first time around and won't make the same mistakes again. Sometimes they're wrong, sometimes they make different mistakes. Lastly, when our society began the institution of marriage, life expectancy was much shorter, so people didn't have to be married nearly as long!

Somewhere, the stats show that the divorce rate increased with the passage of the "no fault" divorce, where one can divorce on a whim. That was either late 1950s or early 1960s.

There are "Covenant Marriages" in several states. Interestingly, when they give you a certificate for a Covenant Marriage License, you can still get a divorce, but you pay the laywers 10X more than what you would regularly pay.

But in general, our society is not taught how to be with each other. It's like McDonald's Hack in the Back Christmas new toy gleem that only lasts 24-28 hours.

I will be nearing 4 years of maritial bliss :rolleyes: And yes, my husband absolutely drives me nuts. But, I found that we are so close that if I lost him due to divorce, it will be like my entire insides would be ripped out.

My opinion is it also depends on the belief of the maritial family... My folks have been together for nearly 50 years. And I strongly believe it. Whereas, my brother who is divorced with a son doesn't share my beliefs.

I disagree. back then people believed in working things out. That was a "we" "us" generation. Today it's about "I" or "me". You might be right about the counseling being better now, but the values were much better back then.

Any investment to lessen the ultimate burden of ill-conceived divorce is fine by me.

CO. SIGN.

I think you've about covered 90% of American divorces...

Hard to say.

Wine is one of my hobbies, and rather unexpectedly in the last few years I have developed a sideline where I appraise wine cellars to be considered among the assets in divorce proceedings.

It has been interesting work, and in virtually every case I will have some serious face time with one or both parties in which the reasons for the divorce will come up.

I have been surprised by what I have seen. But so far I have not run into what I would call a frivolous divorce. These people were genuinely hurt and the hardest part of doing these assignments is being a good listener as an adult with a life and children breaks down in front of a complete stranger.

The reasons vary, and the severity of the reasons vary. But then again- when I say the severity of the reasons vary, that is my perception of the severity. That is a far cry from what a person actually experienced.

I think that most people want desperately to love and be loved and will go to certain lengths- often great lengths- to preserve a relationship. Beyond that, it gets to our desire to maintain the status quo- better the devil you know and all that.

And so, as I see it- the genuine desire to divorce someone has not changed quite so much as the practical ability to execute that divorce and move on.

Sorry to double post, but I'm very interested in these covenant marriages... I haven't heard of anything like this before...can you direct me to some more information? :)

AGDee, you make some very valid points, but I wouldn't marry a guy that I didn't think would be a great husband for me. Of course, I would make sure he and I shared the same family values. I've never been married, but I'm sure it can be hard. Through all the trials and tribulations that come with marriage, there are some positive things also, and I think a couple really should work through the negative things by focusing on the positive. Marriage is a blessing from God and anything from God is always good. That means marriage is good, it's the people in the marriage that make it bad. If a couple doesn't want to work it out and then divorce, then why even get married again to someone else. What's the point? Of course I don't think anyone should be miserable in a marriage, but it's never going to get better if both are not willing to work at it. It takes two. If one is willing and the other one isn't, of course it's not going to work. I just really think our generation is very selfish and are not willing to sacrifice. Marriage is a sacrifice. The Bible says for men to love your wives like Jesus loved the Church and gave himself for it. That's sacrifice. So through the trials and tribulations, I'm just a believer that if a couple is willing to work together and sacrifice for one another, it can work, even through the bad times.

Ironically, places like Smart Marriages, Marriage Partnership, Covenant Marriages, 5 Love Languages, and The Gottman Institute they probably will have a cottage industry generated by more religious groups than secular groups.

The question remains why are we still getting married given the difficulty?

Covenant marriages are kind of insane. It's sort of like the state taking a similiar approach to the Catholic church - it requires a lot more premarital counseling and divorce is only allowed for certain reasons. The Wiki article on it has a few sites with more information - and also brings up an interesting point. If I get married in Louisiana in a covenant marriage, nothing is to stop me from getting a divorce in Minnesota or some other state that doesn't have them.