Once upon a time, you were only able to have a stable relationship if you were married. A stable relationship being distinguished as being emotional rather than

Once upon a time, you were only able to have a stable relationship if you were married. A stable relationship being distinguished as being emotional rather than purely physical or economic or very short-term (one-night stands). That all changed around the 1960s when it became common for people to live together even if unmarried leading to fewer recorded marriages. Many unmarried people can and have maintained stable relationships for decades. Obviously, if there are less official marriages occurring, the number of divorces will also fall. That's purely a semantic distinction, and actually quite meaningless. A better study would be to find the ratio between the total number of stable relationships (married or not being irrelevant) and the number of those which breakup. What is the number of stable relationships? How many of those are breaking down? What is the ratio of the breakdowns to those which remain stable? Does that ratio agree or not with the current divorce-ratio?