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Not to get too autobiographical here, but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? So not 100% the most helpful thing to measure. My parents and t

Not to get too autobiographical here, but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? So not 100% the most helpful thing to measure. My parents and the parents of some of my depressed friends are not divorced, simply because divorce requires communication and a willingness to reflect upon the state of your marriage openly. As I said, I might be biased, but I think the hidden outcome of "not legally, but emotionally divorced" makes up a significant portion of turbulent marriages.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
A single parent household leads to worse outcomes for children in pretty much every single metric you can think of.
- mistersquid 6y ago
  > A single parent household leads to worse outcomes for children in pretty much every single metric you can think of. Divorce does not always result in single-parent households. Divorced parents can and do remarry.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    While true — in addition to your point about remarriage, I’ve met a couple who legally split because same sex marriage didn’t exist at the time and one of them was trans — you should probably show the frequency rather than existence of such groups.
- deleted 6y ago
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- DC1350 6y ago
  There’s a huge difference between single mom with a baby daddy that ran away, and a shared custody agreement between two people who are both in the picture. “Single mom” stories and statistics are usually about the former. I’m not sure how much worse the latter is compared to a two parent household
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    It's a better situation, but still not ideal. A lot depends on the custody terms and how well the two parents get along.
- deleted 6y ago
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- ThePadawan 6y ago
  From a financial standpoint, probably. Children not encountering lies, strife, or emotional disattachment on a daily basis anymore seems a significant improvement, however.
  - psyc 6y ago
    Having lived many years in both a miserable, acrimonious two parent household, and a post-divorce situation - my personal opinion is the latter is, unintuitively, far more harmful long term for the kids. But the former is so much worse for the parents that I don’t think it’s worth it to, say, stay together until they leave the nest. If that were possible without total loss of sanity, I think it would be better. But the divorce was decidedly not amicable so I don’t know what that’s like.
    - throwawayboise 6y ago
      Right, so if I interpret you correctly, you were in the situation of living with two parents in a bad relationship, and the divorce added additional stress of having two different houses, visitation/custody complexity, and possibly additional fights between the parents about those issues. So the alternative of having one home and more access to both parents could be better for the child even if the parents don't get along with each other well.
      - psyc 6y ago
        That is exactly what I mean, yes. If both parents sincerely want what’s best for the kids, that should take priority and thus the bar should be accordingly high for divorce until the kids are grown, whatever you feel grown means. Higher than the parents just wanting to “live their best life”. As I recall, I didn’t take my parents’ daily fighting, even my mom screaming and throwing things, as much to heart as some might think. I’m glad you used the word access because that’s precisely what I valued most, and the biggest loss. Second to that was the devastating financial strain (2 apartments, 2 cars, etc but same income).
        6y ago
- hogFeast 6y ago
  If you could measure what would have happened if parents stayed together then yes. But parents break up for a reason, and trying to put that back together makes zero sense. In the US, a large minority of single parents have fathers who have spent time in jail...is it a good idea to put a child into that environment? Probably not. And the main issue with single parents is income/income instability (which is why there are focused benefits in many countries for single parents). As ever, an income issue gets classed as something else.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    > In the US, a large minority of single parents have fathers who have spent time in jail...is it a good idea to put a child into that environment? Very well could be a good idea. If the father was in jail because of some youthful drug offenses, it could very well be that he could still be a devoted and loving parent and no danger whatsoever to the child.
zionic 6y ago
> but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? How is this even a question, never the less the most upvoted comment? No, divorce is not a healthy end to a marriage.
- minitoar 6y ago
  I disagree. There are two ends to a marriage that I am aware of — death and divorce. Suppose the marriage was one of mental and physical abuse, but ends in death. I think it may have been healthier for that particular marriage to end in divorce.
- DC1350 6y ago
  Why not? Sometimes things just don’t work out. It’s obviously worse than staying together and being happy about it, but it’s a sunk cost fallacy to think you should always repair your marriage instead of finding a new partner.
  - mizzao 6y ago
    > repair your marriage instead of finding a new partner. There are two ways to think about this. The first is that once your car gets too broken to repair, you should just ditch it and get a new one. The other is that once your arm/ankle/hip/liver has problems, you should just transplant a new one instead of doing physical therapy/exercise/eating healthier/drinking less. In my experience, marriage is much closer to the latter situation than the former. If you're curious what those "fixes" are for the latter, see https://www.gottman.com/product/the-seven-principles-for-making-marriage-work/ https://www.gottman.com/product/the-seven-principles-for-mak....
    - geofft 6y ago
      This analogy would work better if organ transplants, prosthetics, etc. weren't a real thing and the medically right answer in many cases. If your hip needs replacement, no amount of eating healthier will cause it to no longer need replacement. There are, of course, many situations where divorce is not the right answer for that situation, just like there are many situations for which a hip replacement is not the right answer. But it is within the set of potential right answers across all situations. There's no sense in trying to replace what is easily repairable, and there's also no sense in spending your life trying to repair what needs to be replaced. And it's totally possible to go through life where neither you nor anyone you know ought to get a divorce - just like it's totally possible to go through life knowing nobody who needs a hip replacement, but that is hardly evidence that the procedure is the wrong answer for everyone!
softwaredoug 6y ago
I agree. Also not to get too autobiographical, but life was much easier for me and my siblings after divorce than having to deal with constant fights. Divorce can be a positive outcome, especially if it can be done amicably.
- foogazi 6y ago
  > Divorce can be a positive outcome This doesn’t pass the universality test - would it be positive if all marriages ended in divorce? Lots of “bad” outcomes become good given circumstances, but they are still not universally good: “Amputation can be a positive outcome, especially if gangrene has started”
  - nwienert 6y ago
    You’re emotionally tying yourself to Christian theology and claiming it as universal. If most people married just to have children and raise them, then divorced, that doesn’t seem bad in the slightest, especially given that’s the likely the original motivating force behind marriage anyway.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    The universality test itself doesn't pass the universality test. Would it be positive if everything good needed to be good all the time? Sunlight makes you feel good, gives you vitamin D, and warms you up. Too much sunlight gives you skin cancer. Sugar is necessary for life. Too much sugar gives you diabetes and obesity. Water is the basic building block of life. Too much water causes electrolyte imbalances that can lead to dangerous cardiac arrythmias. Very few good things actually do pass the universality test, which suggests that the test itself may be flawed.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Is anger and strife a healthy outcome to a public vow?
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  No, that's why the spouses should get a divorce :).
analyst74 6y ago
This is an interesting perspective. People tend to associate single-parenthood as source of many problems based on statistics. But I wonder if those are simply correlation and not causation. i.e. people with certain traits are more prone to get divorced, and it could be those traits, and not divorce itself causes most other issues in their children. But it's easier to measure divorce rates than personality traits.
- drjasonharrison 6y ago
  More likely the traits of both people. There are people who study the factors that predict divorce. https://www.gottman.com https://www.gottman.com
- nullsense 6y ago
  It's both.
al_chemist 6y ago
> isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage Isn't bankrupcy a pretty healthy outcome to a business? Isn't death a pretty healthy outcome to life? Isn't coup a pretty healthy outcome to a country? Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program?
- yread 6y ago
  > Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program? I don't know much about the other ones but segfault is definitely healthier than a buggy program being allowed to write at address 0 or continuing arithmetics after division by 0.
  - ThePadawan 6y ago
    > continuing arithmetics after division by 0 IIRC it took PHP quite many versions to get there (if it even has).
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  > Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program? Pardon the snark: http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/318 http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/318
  - da_big_ghey 6y ago
    Hah, I remember reading a comment a while back about a HFT firm. The guys there wanted to use Java but couldn't deal with GC latency spikes, so they just bought a ton of ram, turned off the GC, and re-booted the servers every day. >> Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program? Found the Erlang user.
- xref 6y ago
  > Isn't bankrupcy a pretty healthy outcome to a business? Absolutely, especially when the alternative is financial ruin because you didn’t take legal remedies available to you. People get caught up in absolutes because they fit in a nice box, but most of the time life is messier.
jwlake 6y ago
Nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure.
devlopr 6y ago
Not the healthiest of outcomes but could be healthier than others. Kind of like saying the most healthy outcome is getting fired or rage quitting. It could be but once you found the job you signed a contract for life for, retiring is the healthiest outcome.
- williamdclt 6y ago
  The parent didn't say "most healthy", they said "pretty healthy". I think we all agree that the "most healthy" outcome is to be happy and fulfilled as a couple forever. > Kind of like saying the most healthy outcome is getting fired or rage quitting I don't agree, a closer analogy (keeping in mind that all analogies have limits) would be to say that a _pretty_ good outcome to taking a job is to quit. Which doesn't seem particularly controversial, there's plenty of situations where quitting is a perfectly reasonable and healthy choice, even if you don't have an abusive relationship with your workplace.
purple_42 6y ago
I think it depends. Financially, if you're a man, no. Most family law courts favor women. Relationship-wise, if you're a woman, no. Odds are if you're getting divorced as a woman past her 30s, it'll be harder for you to find a partner as opposed to when you were in your 20s (when the woman should be finding a potential husband). Especially if you're a single mother. High-quality men have no desire to raise someone else's kids. So, imo, divorce can be so lose-lose unless the man and woman are both past 50s. At that point, the kids are grown up and both partners are hopefully financially secure without the need of one another.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  > High-quality men have no desire to raise someone else's kids Generally I agree. There are exceptions, especially if the biological father is totally out of the equation. A friend married a woman who already had a kid. Father had vanished, had no interest. He legally adopted the kid, and they had several more together, he considers them all as his own.
- room500 6y ago
  > it'll be harder for you to find a partner as opposed to when you were in your 20s (when the woman should be finding a potential husband) I feel like we just went back in time 80 years. No, women don't need to spend their 20's finding a husband. They can have also go to school, volunteer, have friends, start a career. You know - the things men can do. > High-quality men have no desire to raise someone else's kids What does this even mean? Let me guess - you are a high-quality man? This comment is so backwards.
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    This isn't a gender thing. Just because you don't agree, the GP's comment isn't any less valid. Part of that is culture and malleable, part is just biological facts (being an old parent just sucks). Most Men spend their 20s thinking about finding a wife, too.
    - room500 6y ago
Thorentis 6y ago
That's like saying isn't death a healthy outcome for a cancer patient? Sure, it's what happens to many people that get cancer. But getting cancer in the first place is not "healthy", and so death caused by cancer is not "healthy". If marriage is nothing more than a legal contract - which sadly for many people it is, then why even bother making vows such as "until death do us part"? All for show? Why not just put a time-clause for when the contract expires so that you can decide whether to sign a new one? A highly utilitarian, and in my opinion, tragically sad view of marriage, but that is essentially what it has become for many people.
- sneak 6y ago
  > That's like saying isn't death a healthy outcome for a cancer patient? The end of a marriage (where both participants continue living) and a cancer death, are not comparable. Your "if you're not going to stay in a bad marriage until you physically die, what's the point of marriage?" viewpoint where marriage is permanent xor utilitarian is a false dichotomy. Divorce doesn't mean that the participants failed, or that they entered into the marriage simply out of utility.
  - CountSessine 6y ago
    Divorce doesn't mean that the participants failed, or that they entered into the marriage simply out of utility. On the contrary, by their own measure, it is a failure. No one gets married anticipating or wanting a divorce. Everyone wants it to last forever. That's why the comment you responded to suggested a time-bounded contract. Which no one wants. Have you ever gone through a divorce? Mine was amicable, but even then it was the worst thing I've ever experienced.
    - sneak 6y ago
      > No one gets married anticipating or wanting a divorce. I think the existence of reasonable precautions such as prenuptial agreements indicates that this statement is false: many people enter into a marriage with the full knowledge that it may end before the death of one of the partners (presumably contrary to their desire at the time). I think that counts as "anticipating". Heinlein put it well: "We always marry strangers."
csomar 6y ago
It's not a healthy outcome to marriage. You don't get married to be divorced later. The problem is that our society has out-advanced marriage but people still did not realize it (although marriage rate are trending lower). Marriage made sense when the population was sparse, the parents needed workforce, and the woman needed protection. Most of that doesn't apply today. Marriage is mostly a "reliquat" from former society's traditions.
rayiner 6y ago
> Not to get too autobiographical here, but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? So not 100% the most helpful thing to measure. Do you have any evidence of this? As someone from a Muslim country, my family universally has stayed in bad marriages. My wife, an American, has a family rife with divorce. (Not just her parents, but the whole community. Many people don’t really realize this—among those with college degrees, almost 80% of marriages will last 20+ years. But among those with just a high school diploma, it’s just 40%. In lower middle class communities, kids with parents who are divorced are the norm.) It’s not clear to me which one is better for the parents. But unhappy parents seems superior to divorced ones for the kids. The financial and structural disruption on kids from divorce is massive. It’s not just individual, it’s the whole community. In the lower middle class communities where my wife’s family is from, divorce is the norm. And I can see kids suffering from the disruption, and wanting stability, but having no role models and no guidance because most people around them are divorced. This is obviously anecdotal. I’d be curious to see data—to my knowledge this hasn’t been studied rigorously. To me, the notion that “divorce is a fine outcome for marriage” is something that is counter intuitive enough to require some evidence.
- deleted 6y ago
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- aflag 6y ago
  Why was financial disruption worse than the emotional disruption of a bad marriage? I guess not having enough to eat is worse than an abusive marriage, but do people get into that much financial trouble from divorce usually? What about child support? I find it hard to imagine a child growing up in a house with two parents who treat each other like shit is worse off than one with a single parent, but who knows?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > Why was financial disruption worse than the emotional disruption of a bad marriage? I guess not having enough to eat is worse than an abusive marriage Look, I’m not talking about abusive marriages. For people without a college degree, 60% of marriages will end before the kids are independent and in their own two feet. Most of those don’t involve involve abuse. > but do people get into that much financial trouble from divorce usually? Yes. For the average middle class family, having to split into two households is incredibly financially disruptive. Most middle class couples aren’t in a position where one person can take over the housing payment alone. That means moving, potentially changing schools, etc. And there’s a ton of other shared expenses that each parent now has to pay separately. > What about child support? For a non-college educated man making the median $36,000 a year, child support here in Maryland works out to $567 per month. That doesn’t come close to offsetting the support of the other householder.
xyzelement 6y ago
Sorry about your situation, but no. It's healthier than some of the worst outcomes but it's far from the top. A marriage is an enterprise two people join in together, and then go through life doing the really important work of raising children and supporting each other. Ideally this is accompanied by deep love and passion etc. Short of that, it's done with deep mutual commitment and appreciation of the other person and the work you're doing together. Way shittier down the line are relationships plagued with resentment and mistrust, that in my experience have more to do with what the people bring into the relationship than their partner (basically: if both people are sane and enter thoughtfully into the marriage, you should not end up here.) Once you're in that mode, where you don't have it together to work it out and grow together, sure divorce is happier than eternal rancor and abuse, but it's super-down the line. I think this is important to understand because once you do, you're much more thoughtful about what you're getting into in the first place. I guess it's easier said for me because I married in my later 30s and had the life experience and introspection to know what I want and need and to appreciate my wife (who is different than me in ways that a less mature version of me might resent rather than appreciate)
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  > Once you're in that mode, where you don't have it together to work it out and grow together, sure divorce is happier than eternal rancor and abuse, but it's super-down the line. This might be a bit of a trope, but it is at this exact moment that some couples have kids (like my parents did). Having not been born yet, that was not very down the line from my point of view at all.
throwaway5392 6y ago
Yes, divorce is a good thing, if it's warranted. I created a new account in case this gets indexed somewhere. I am in my 30s and my own parents are still married, but they should have gotten divorced a long time ago. They never did, "because of the kids" and it pains me. They are fucking miserable. I have not seen them lovingly kiss each other in at least 3 decades (I only remember once when I was a toddler). They do not have intercourse of any kind, sleep in separate bedrooms, fight constantly, my dad has been having affairs (unsure if my mom knows about them, I doubt it would change anything if she did), all because they are too ashamed to get divorced, and at this point, they're too old to do it. Of course looking in from the outside they seem like a happy couple - always went to social functions together, etc. But on the inside, definitely not. I always wonder once you take out the marriages that end in divorce, how many of the ones left are like my parents - happy on the outside, fucking miserable on the inside. In my own experience, the vast majority of friends' parents have been divorced, sometimes multiple times, and I already have friends my age who were married and divorced. Needless to say, I am in no rush to get married, even in my 30s. I do have relationships when it's right, but I don't let society tell me if or when I should be getting married, if ever. It's way too big a risk to my personal happiness.
- thgaway17 6y ago
  Unfortunately, my marriage resembles that of your parents. My only counterpoint to your belief that they would be happier if they divorced, is to suggest you may be minimizing they value they get from stability and certainty. There’s value in knowing who’s going to care for you when you get cancer, even if there’s a lot of animosity now.
  - valarauko 6y ago
    I agree, though context is important too. Getting separated at 80 would likely mean a severe drop in their quality of life, for the remainder of their days. Getting separated at 50 much less so, especially for the man (usually). At 40, the perceived value of that stability and certainty is probably not worth the unhappiness.
williamdclt 6y ago
> isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? It's a bit of a provocative way of saying things, but I am surprised at how conservative (in the social sense, not political) the other comments are, defending traditional family values and arguing that divorce is always a failure Divorce can _absolutely_ be a healthy outcome to a marriage. If your marriage doesn't work after a time, the healthy option is to stop it. You can argue that you should try to "save your marriage"... but if neither you or your partner really wants to, why would you have this duty to try and salvage it rather than move on? At least if you don't have kids, as divorce tends to have bad impact on them apparently, although I think it's mostly because they're brought up in a society that teaches that divorce is failure and that a family is a mom and a dad. Of course nobody is saying that divorce is "the most healthy" outcome, it's just "pretty healthy" in a whole range of situation, though not all. And there's divorce and divorce: sometimes it involves incredible drama, fighting and stress (not very healthy, although staying married probably would be worse in this case), and sometimes it's smooth, shake hands and go your own way. Anecdotally: my parents divorced when I was ~15. It was smooth as far as I could see, although I imagine that unfun things happened that led to this. It made absolutely no difference to me, and I saw them bloom and be happier than I ever saw them: my father went from being a 9-5 robot to doing sports, be involved in local associations and take an unexpected interest in african art. My mom started doing photography and developped a passion for dance. I entirely credit their divorce for how much happier and interesting they got!
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  I haven't read anything about divorce always being a failure (or not yet). If you get all your input from non-engineering journalists, comedians, talking heads, etc, you may never encounter any differing opinions; just as if 100 years ago you'd have believed divorce is always bad from those same people, and been surprised at what engineers said about how it can be occasionally a good thing.
renewiltord 6y ago
There are worse outcomes but it is a poor outcome. It is best viewed as the best worst-case exit strategy.
lovelyviking 6y ago
>but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? Could be and then it would mean marriage is not ‘healthy’ in the first place? Which could be by the way. What if it’s so by design? I mean it’s very difficult to come up with one design that works for ‘all’. Not a trivial task I would say and isn’t it destine for failure?
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
> Not to get too autobiographical here, but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? i guess it isn't very healthy for the kids. http://marripedia.org/effects_of_divorce_on_children_s_health http://marripedia.org/effects_of_divorce_on_children_s_healt...
- graphpapa 6y ago
  The intended comparison is presumably not be to all marriages, but to marriages which are strained enough for divorce to become a question. I don’t know what good data on that would look like. Perhaps ‘Outcomes for children of parents who went to marriage counselling’ Even then, couples that get counselling are probably a healthier subset of all marriages than would make for an ideal reference.
dqpb 6y ago
It’s a healthy outcome for a bad marriage.
anm89 6y ago
Define healthy. It's explicitly the outcome almost every married couple agrees they don't want upfront. So something has failed by that point. It's not unhealthy in the sense that no one gets sick or physically injured I suppose? This is definitely one of the more bizarre things I've ever seen written on here.
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  I meant that compared to 40 more years of resentment, divorcing and possibly finding a healthier relationship seems worthwhile.
Geminidog 6y ago
There’s really bad statistics for the children of divorced parents. It may be healthy in your some cases but it’s damaging to the child.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

A single parent household leads to worse outcomes for children in pretty much every single metric you can think of.

mistersquid 6y ago
> A single parent household leads to worse outcomes for children in pretty much every single metric you can think of. Divorce does not always result in single-parent households. Divorced parents can and do remarry.
- ben_w 6y ago
  While true — in addition to your point about remarriage, I’ve met a couple who legally split because same sex marriage didn’t exist at the time and one of them was trans — you should probably show the frequency rather than existence of such groups.
deleted 6y ago
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DC1350 6y ago
There’s a huge difference between single mom with a baby daddy that ran away, and a shared custody agreement between two people who are both in the picture. “Single mom” stories and statistics are usually about the former. I’m not sure how much worse the latter is compared to a two parent household
- deleted 6y ago
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- throwawayboise 6y ago
  It's a better situation, but still not ideal. A lot depends on the custody terms and how well the two parents get along.
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ThePadawan 6y ago
From a financial standpoint, probably. Children not encountering lies, strife, or emotional disattachment on a daily basis anymore seems a significant improvement, however.
- psyc 6y ago
  Having lived many years in both a miserable, acrimonious two parent household, and a post-divorce situation - my personal opinion is the latter is, unintuitively, far more harmful long term for the kids. But the former is so much worse for the parents that I don’t think it’s worth it to, say, stay together until they leave the nest. If that were possible without total loss of sanity, I think it would be better. But the divorce was decidedly not amicable so I don’t know what that’s like.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    Right, so if I interpret you correctly, you were in the situation of living with two parents in a bad relationship, and the divorce added additional stress of having two different houses, visitation/custody complexity, and possibly additional fights between the parents about those issues. So the alternative of having one home and more access to both parents could be better for the child even if the parents don't get along with each other well.
    - psyc 6y ago
      That is exactly what I mean, yes. If both parents sincerely want what’s best for the kids, that should take priority and thus the bar should be accordingly high for divorce until the kids are grown, whatever you feel grown means. Higher than the parents just wanting to “live their best life”. As I recall, I didn’t take my parents’ daily fighting, even my mom screaming and throwing things, as much to heart as some might think. I’m glad you used the word access because that’s precisely what I valued most, and the biggest loss. Second to that was the devastating financial strain (2 apartments, 2 cars, etc but same income).
      - 6y ago
hogFeast 6y ago
If you could measure what would have happened if parents stayed together then yes. But parents break up for a reason, and trying to put that back together makes zero sense. In the US, a large minority of single parents have fathers who have spent time in jail...is it a good idea to put a child into that environment? Probably not. And the main issue with single parents is income/income instability (which is why there are focused benefits in many countries for single parents). As ever, an income issue gets classed as something else.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  > In the US, a large minority of single parents have fathers who have spent time in jail...is it a good idea to put a child into that environment? Very well could be a good idea. If the father was in jail because of some youthful drug offenses, it could very well be that he could still be a devoted and loving parent and no danger whatsoever to the child.

zionic 6y ago

> but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? How is this even a question, never the less the most upvoted comment? No, divorce is not a healthy end to a marriage.

minitoar 6y ago
I disagree. There are two ends to a marriage that I am aware of — death and divorce. Suppose the marriage was one of mental and physical abuse, but ends in death. I think it may have been healthier for that particular marriage to end in divorce.
DC1350 6y ago
Why not? Sometimes things just don’t work out. It’s obviously worse than staying together and being happy about it, but it’s a sunk cost fallacy to think you should always repair your marriage instead of finding a new partner.
- mizzao 6y ago
  > repair your marriage instead of finding a new partner. There are two ways to think about this. The first is that once your car gets too broken to repair, you should just ditch it and get a new one. The other is that once your arm/ankle/hip/liver has problems, you should just transplant a new one instead of doing physical therapy/exercise/eating healthier/drinking less. In my experience, marriage is much closer to the latter situation than the former. If you're curious what those "fixes" are for the latter, see https://www.gottman.com/product/the-seven-principles-for-making-marriage-work/ https://www.gottman.com/product/the-seven-principles-for-mak....
  - geofft 6y ago
    This analogy would work better if organ transplants, prosthetics, etc. weren't a real thing and the medically right answer in many cases. If your hip needs replacement, no amount of eating healthier will cause it to no longer need replacement. There are, of course, many situations where divorce is not the right answer for that situation, just like there are many situations for which a hip replacement is not the right answer. But it is within the set of potential right answers across all situations. There's no sense in trying to replace what is easily repairable, and there's also no sense in spending your life trying to repair what needs to be replaced. And it's totally possible to go through life where neither you nor anyone you know ought to get a divorce - just like it's totally possible to go through life knowing nobody who needs a hip replacement, but that is hardly evidence that the procedure is the wrong answer for everyone!

softwaredoug 6y ago

I agree. Also not to get too autobiographical, but life was much easier for me and my siblings after divorce than having to deal with constant fights. Divorce can be a positive outcome, especially if it can be done amicably.

foogazi 6y ago
> Divorce can be a positive outcome This doesn’t pass the universality test - would it be positive if all marriages ended in divorce? Lots of “bad” outcomes become good given circumstances, but they are still not universally good: “Amputation can be a positive outcome, especially if gangrene has started”
- nwienert 6y ago
  You’re emotionally tying yourself to Christian theology and claiming it as universal. If most people married just to have children and raise them, then divorced, that doesn’t seem bad in the slightest, especially given that’s the likely the original motivating force behind marriage anyway.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  The universality test itself doesn't pass the universality test. Would it be positive if everything good needed to be good all the time? Sunlight makes you feel good, gives you vitamin D, and warms you up. Too much sunlight gives you skin cancer. Sugar is necessary for life. Too much sugar gives you diabetes and obesity. Water is the basic building block of life. Too much water causes electrolyte imbalances that can lead to dangerous cardiac arrythmias. Very few good things actually do pass the universality test, which suggests that the test itself may be flawed.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Is anger and strife a healthy outcome to a public vow?

ThePadawan 6y ago
No, that's why the spouses should get a divorce :).

analyst74 6y ago

This is an interesting perspective. People tend to associate single-parenthood as source of many problems based on statistics. But I wonder if those are simply correlation and not causation. i.e. people with certain traits are more prone to get divorced, and it could be those traits, and not divorce itself causes most other issues in their children. But it's easier to measure divorce rates than personality traits.

drjasonharrison 6y ago
More likely the traits of both people. There are people who study the factors that predict divorce. https://www.gottman.com https://www.gottman.com
nullsense 6y ago
It's both.

al_chemist 6y ago

> isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage Isn't bankrupcy a pretty healthy outcome to a business? Isn't death a pretty healthy outcome to life? Isn't coup a pretty healthy outcome to a country? Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program?

yread 6y ago
> Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program? I don't know much about the other ones but segfault is definitely healthier than a buggy program being allowed to write at address 0 or continuing arithmetics after division by 0.
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  > continuing arithmetics after division by 0 IIRC it took PHP quite many versions to get there (if it even has).
ThePadawan 6y ago
> Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program? Pardon the snark: http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/318 http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/318
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  Hah, I remember reading a comment a while back about a HFT firm. The guys there wanted to use Java but couldn't deal with GC latency spikes, so they just bought a ton of ram, turned off the GC, and re-booted the servers every day. >> Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program? Found the Erlang user.
xref 6y ago
> Isn't bankrupcy a pretty healthy outcome to a business? Absolutely, especially when the alternative is financial ruin because you didn’t take legal remedies available to you. People get caught up in absolutes because they fit in a nice box, but most of the time life is messier.

jwlake 6y ago

Nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure.

devlopr 6y ago

Not the healthiest of outcomes but could be healthier than others. Kind of like saying the most healthy outcome is getting fired or rage quitting. It could be but once you found the job you signed a contract for life for, retiring is the healthiest outcome.

williamdclt 6y ago
The parent didn't say "most healthy", they said "pretty healthy". I think we all agree that the "most healthy" outcome is to be happy and fulfilled as a couple forever. > Kind of like saying the most healthy outcome is getting fired or rage quitting I don't agree, a closer analogy (keeping in mind that all analogies have limits) would be to say that a _pretty_ good outcome to taking a job is to quit. Which doesn't seem particularly controversial, there's plenty of situations where quitting is a perfectly reasonable and healthy choice, even if you don't have an abusive relationship with your workplace.

purple_42 6y ago

I think it depends. Financially, if you're a man, no. Most family law courts favor women. Relationship-wise, if you're a woman, no. Odds are if you're getting divorced as a woman past her 30s, it'll be harder for you to find a partner as opposed to when you were in your 20s (when the woman should be finding a potential husband). Especially if you're a single mother. High-quality men have no desire to raise someone else's kids. So, imo, divorce can be so lose-lose unless the man and woman are both past 50s. At that point, the kids are grown up and both partners are hopefully financially secure without the need of one another.

throwawayboise 6y ago
> High-quality men have no desire to raise someone else's kids Generally I agree. There are exceptions, especially if the biological father is totally out of the equation. A friend married a woman who already had a kid. Father had vanished, had no interest. He legally adopted the kid, and they had several more together, he considers them all as his own.
room500 6y ago
> it'll be harder for you to find a partner as opposed to when you were in your 20s (when the woman should be finding a potential husband) I feel like we just went back in time 80 years. No, women don't need to spend their 20's finding a husband. They can have also go to school, volunteer, have friends, start a career. You know - the things men can do. > High-quality men have no desire to raise someone else's kids What does this even mean? Let me guess - you are a high-quality man? This comment is so backwards.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  This isn't a gender thing. Just because you don't agree, the GP's comment isn't any less valid. Part of that is culture and malleable, part is just biological facts (being an old parent just sucks). Most Men spend their 20s thinking about finding a wife, too.
  - room500 6y ago

Thorentis 6y ago

That's like saying isn't death a healthy outcome for a cancer patient? Sure, it's what happens to many people that get cancer. But getting cancer in the first place is not "healthy", and so death caused by cancer is not "healthy". If marriage is nothing more than a legal contract - which sadly for many people it is, then why even bother making vows such as "until death do us part"? All for show? Why not just put a time-clause for when the contract expires so that you can decide whether to sign a new one? A highly utilitarian, and in my opinion, tragically sad view of marriage, but that is essentially what it has become for many people.

sneak 6y ago
> That's like saying isn't death a healthy outcome for a cancer patient? The end of a marriage (where both participants continue living) and a cancer death, are not comparable. Your "if you're not going to stay in a bad marriage until you physically die, what's the point of marriage?" viewpoint where marriage is permanent xor utilitarian is a false dichotomy. Divorce doesn't mean that the participants failed, or that they entered into the marriage simply out of utility.
- CountSessine 6y ago
  Divorce doesn't mean that the participants failed, or that they entered into the marriage simply out of utility. On the contrary, by their own measure, it is a failure. No one gets married anticipating or wanting a divorce. Everyone wants it to last forever. That's why the comment you responded to suggested a time-bounded contract. Which no one wants. Have you ever gone through a divorce? Mine was amicable, but even then it was the worst thing I've ever experienced.
  - sneak 6y ago
    > No one gets married anticipating or wanting a divorce. I think the existence of reasonable precautions such as prenuptial agreements indicates that this statement is false: many people enter into a marriage with the full knowledge that it may end before the death of one of the partners (presumably contrary to their desire at the time). I think that counts as "anticipating". Heinlein put it well: "We always marry strangers."

csomar 6y ago

It's not a healthy outcome to marriage. You don't get married to be divorced later. The problem is that our society has out-advanced marriage but people still did not realize it (although marriage rate are trending lower). Marriage made sense when the population was sparse, the parents needed workforce, and the woman needed protection. Most of that doesn't apply today. Marriage is mostly a "reliquat" from former society's traditions.

rayiner 6y ago

> Not to get too autobiographical here, but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? So not 100% the most helpful thing to measure. Do you have any evidence of this? As someone from a Muslim country, my family universally has stayed in bad marriages. My wife, an American, has a family rife with divorce. (Not just her parents, but the whole community. Many people don’t really realize this—among those with college degrees, almost 80% of marriages will last 20+ years. But among those with just a high school diploma, it’s just 40%. In lower middle class communities, kids with parents who are divorced are the norm.) It’s not clear to me which one is better for the parents. But unhappy parents seems superior to divorced ones for the kids. The financial and structural disruption on kids from divorce is massive. It’s not just individual, it’s the whole community. In the lower middle class communities where my wife’s family is from, divorce is the norm. And I can see kids suffering from the disruption, and wanting stability, but having no role models and no guidance because most people around them are divorced. This is obviously anecdotal. I’d be curious to see data—to my knowledge this hasn’t been studied rigorously. To me, the notion that “divorce is a fine outcome for marriage” is something that is counter intuitive enough to require some evidence.

deleted 6y ago
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aflag 6y ago
Why was financial disruption worse than the emotional disruption of a bad marriage? I guess not having enough to eat is worse than an abusive marriage, but do people get into that much financial trouble from divorce usually? What about child support? I find it hard to imagine a child growing up in a house with two parents who treat each other like shit is worse off than one with a single parent, but who knows?
- rayiner 6y ago
  > Why was financial disruption worse than the emotional disruption of a bad marriage? I guess not having enough to eat is worse than an abusive marriage Look, I’m not talking about abusive marriages. For people without a college degree, 60% of marriages will end before the kids are independent and in their own two feet. Most of those don’t involve involve abuse. > but do people get into that much financial trouble from divorce usually? Yes. For the average middle class family, having to split into two households is incredibly financially disruptive. Most middle class couples aren’t in a position where one person can take over the housing payment alone. That means moving, potentially changing schools, etc. And there’s a ton of other shared expenses that each parent now has to pay separately. > What about child support? For a non-college educated man making the median $36,000 a year, child support here in Maryland works out to $567 per month. That doesn’t come close to offsetting the support of the other householder.

xyzelement 6y ago

Sorry about your situation, but no. It's healthier than some of the worst outcomes but it's far from the top. A marriage is an enterprise two people join in together, and then go through life doing the really important work of raising children and supporting each other. Ideally this is accompanied by deep love and passion etc. Short of that, it's done with deep mutual commitment and appreciation of the other person and the work you're doing together. Way shittier down the line are relationships plagued with resentment and mistrust, that in my experience have more to do with what the people bring into the relationship than their partner (basically: if both people are sane and enter thoughtfully into the marriage, you should not end up here.) Once you're in that mode, where you don't have it together to work it out and grow together, sure divorce is happier than eternal rancor and abuse, but it's super-down the line. I think this is important to understand because once you do, you're much more thoughtful about what you're getting into in the first place. I guess it's easier said for me because I married in my later 30s and had the life experience and introspection to know what I want and need and to appreciate my wife (who is different than me in ways that a less mature version of me might resent rather than appreciate)

ThePadawan 6y ago
> Once you're in that mode, where you don't have it together to work it out and grow together, sure divorce is happier than eternal rancor and abuse, but it's super-down the line. This might be a bit of a trope, but it is at this exact moment that some couples have kids (like my parents did). Having not been born yet, that was not very down the line from my point of view at all.

throwaway5392 6y ago

Yes, divorce is a good thing, if it's warranted. I created a new account in case this gets indexed somewhere. I am in my 30s and my own parents are still married, but they should have gotten divorced a long time ago. They never did, "because of the kids" and it pains me. They are fucking miserable. I have not seen them lovingly kiss each other in at least 3 decades (I only remember once when I was a toddler). They do not have intercourse of any kind, sleep in separate bedrooms, fight constantly, my dad has been having affairs (unsure if my mom knows about them, I doubt it would change anything if she did), all because they are too ashamed to get divorced, and at this point, they're too old to do it. Of course looking in from the outside they seem like a happy couple - always went to social functions together, etc. But on the inside, definitely not. I always wonder once you take out the marriages that end in divorce, how many of the ones left are like my parents - happy on the outside, fucking miserable on the inside. In my own experience, the vast majority of friends' parents have been divorced, sometimes multiple times, and I already have friends my age who were married and divorced. Needless to say, I am in no rush to get married, even in my 30s. I do have relationships when it's right, but I don't let society tell me if or when I should be getting married, if ever. It's way too big a risk to my personal happiness.

thgaway17 6y ago
Unfortunately, my marriage resembles that of your parents. My only counterpoint to your belief that they would be happier if they divorced, is to suggest you may be minimizing they value they get from stability and certainty. There’s value in knowing who’s going to care for you when you get cancer, even if there’s a lot of animosity now.
- valarauko 6y ago
  I agree, though context is important too. Getting separated at 80 would likely mean a severe drop in their quality of life, for the remainder of their days. Getting separated at 50 much less so, especially for the man (usually). At 40, the perceived value of that stability and certainty is probably not worth the unhappiness.

williamdclt 6y ago

> isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? It's a bit of a provocative way of saying things, but I am surprised at how conservative (in the social sense, not political) the other comments are, defending traditional family values and arguing that divorce is always a failure Divorce can _absolutely_ be a healthy outcome to a marriage. If your marriage doesn't work after a time, the healthy option is to stop it. You can argue that you should try to "save your marriage"... but if neither you or your partner really wants to, why would you have this duty to try and salvage it rather than move on? At least if you don't have kids, as divorce tends to have bad impact on them apparently, although I think it's mostly because they're brought up in a society that teaches that divorce is failure and that a family is a mom and a dad. Of course nobody is saying that divorce is "the most healthy" outcome, it's just "pretty healthy" in a whole range of situation, though not all. And there's divorce and divorce: sometimes it involves incredible drama, fighting and stress (not very healthy, although staying married probably would be worse in this case), and sometimes it's smooth, shake hands and go your own way. Anecdotally: my parents divorced when I was ~15. It was smooth as far as I could see, although I imagine that unfun things happened that led to this. It made absolutely no difference to me, and I saw them bloom and be happier than I ever saw them: my father went from being a 9-5 robot to doing sports, be involved in local associations and take an unexpected interest in african art. My mom started doing photography and developped a passion for dance. I entirely credit their divorce for how much happier and interesting they got!

robertlagrant 6y ago
I haven't read anything about divorce always being a failure (or not yet). If you get all your input from non-engineering journalists, comedians, talking heads, etc, you may never encounter any differing opinions; just as if 100 years ago you'd have believed divorce is always bad from those same people, and been surprised at what engineers said about how it can be occasionally a good thing.

renewiltord 6y ago

There are worse outcomes but it is a poor outcome. It is best viewed as the best worst-case exit strategy.

lovelyviking 6y ago

>but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? Could be and then it would mean marriage is not ‘healthy’ in the first place? Which could be by the way. What if it’s so by design? I mean it’s very difficult to come up with one design that works for ‘all’. Not a trivial task I would say and isn’t it destine for failure?

MichaelMoser123 6y ago

> Not to get too autobiographical here, but isn't divorce a pretty healthy outcome to a marriage? i guess it isn't very healthy for the kids. http://marripedia.org/effects_of_divorce_on_children_s_health http://marripedia.org/effects_of_divorce_on_children_s_healt...

graphpapa 6y ago
The intended comparison is presumably not be to all marriages, but to marriages which are strained enough for divorce to become a question. I don’t know what good data on that would look like. Perhaps ‘Outcomes for children of parents who went to marriage counselling’ Even then, couples that get counselling are probably a healthier subset of all marriages than would make for an ideal reference.

dqpb 6y ago

It’s a healthy outcome for a bad marriage.

anm89 6y ago

Define healthy. It's explicitly the outcome almost every married couple agrees they don't want upfront. So something has failed by that point. It's not unhealthy in the sense that no one gets sick or physically injured I suppose? This is definitely one of the more bizarre things I've ever seen written on here.

ThePadawan 6y ago
I meant that compared to 40 more years of resentment, divorcing and possibly finding a healthier relationship seems worthwhile.

Geminidog 6y ago

There’s really bad statistics for the children of divorced parents. It may be healthy in your some cases but it’s damaging to the child.