10 ms·

> 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

by 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!
    - Carlton2082 6y ago
      The analogy works even better because organ transplants are sometimes necessary and sometimes not. Although GP started off defining a binary, I don't think they are thinking in black and white. A charitable reading of the GP implies the nuances you express.
  - ThePadawan 6y ago
    I like this metaphor because it fits with the generation of my parents! That's also the generation of people who don't go to the hospital because anything hurts. They go to the hospital 5 years later for something unrelated, when it's discovered it's 4 years too late to do anything about it.
  - k4c9x 6y ago
    Doesn't matter which situation is closer, they're both nothing like a marriage. There are more than 2 ways to think about it. If marriages are like a car, then there's also the option to ditch it and not get a new one. If it's like a critical body part, someone is way too dependent. Also, those relationship advice books focus on minor issues, not one where someone isn't willing to change, and certainly not willing to read a book like that, and instead demands the other just "love them for who they are".
    - robertlagrant 6y ago
      > If it's like a critical body part, someone is way too dependent This is unhelpfully extending the metaphor into a straw man. It's simple enough to see the point.
  - room500 6y ago
    What about a situation where one party wants to make it work and the other doesn't? In your example, your ankle is under your control - if you want to exercise it, you can. Your ankle doesn't actively sabotage your body (or if it does spread infection/etc, amputation is often used). A marriage depends on two people working together to build a life together. If one person is not willing to put in that effort, the marriage fails.
    - throwawayboise 6y ago
      Yes, it's a two-way street. That is why both partners say the vows.
- cat199 6y ago
  > Why not? Because marriage is intended as an act of lifetime committent to what is seen as a positive relationship, and so failing this original intent can never be a measure of success.. Preferable to 'failing' in the sense of staying in a 'failed marriage' (where the 'positive relationship' is no more positive) perhaps, but both of these are 'failures'.
  - k4c9x 6y ago
    That's the fairy tale definition. For many, it's just a legal term.
    - Falling3 6y ago
      Referring to a "lifetime committ[m]ent to what is seen as a positive relationship" as a fairy tale is pretty ridiculous.
      - k4c9x 6y ago
        The oaths made in a typical marriage are impossible, dangerous ideals that, once made, can guilt people into sticking to bad situations. Bad people don't tend to go around being bad unless they think they can get away with it. Once someone has pinky swore to dedicate their life to them, no matter what they might do, the true colors come out. I've seen it too many times, the idea does more harm than good. Life-long good marriages exists, I hope to achieve one myself, but the silly oath doesn't help them in any way, and it makes the bad ones worse.
        Falling3 6y ago
        > The oaths made in a typical marriage are impossible > Life-long good marriages exists I'm sure you have this reconciled somehow, but it sounds contradictory to me.
        k4c9x 6y ago
        Impossible was a poor word choice. I meant like no one could honestly make the promises, because no one can predict how people and situations will change over a life time. Maybe if the oaths contained an "unless you become an asshole" clause, they'd be more valuable.
- rufus_foreman 6y ago
  >> Sometimes things just don’t work out If you're married to someone you don't want to be married to, sure sometimes things just don't work out. If you're a kid and your parents failed marriage is destroying your life, I don't think "sometimes things just don't work out" is the answer.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  > it’s a sunk cost fallacy to think you should always repair your marriage I guess if you discount the "for better and for worse" part of the vows you take to one another....
guerrilla 6y ago
Why not? If you don't get along the its better to end it than force it. That was the parents meaning. Do you have a counterargument?
- cgriswald 6y ago
  That’s not how divorce works. It’s not an end if you have kids. It’s the beginning of something different. But you’re still tied together. So now you have twice the expenses, half the time with the kids who now need you more than ever, more reason to fight with each other, and possibly even more resentment, all compounded by your own personal feelings of loss and failure. Yay, what a win for everyone involved. Also, realize that people don’t generally get to a divorce by talking things out and figuring divorce is the only option. Even if they do talk things out it’s usually only after divorce is inevitable.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    > ...more reason to fight with each other Is this often the outcome of divorce? I imagine that spending more time apart should reduce the total volume of conflict
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      Note the ‘if you have kids’ beginning to the reasoning
seanmcdirmid 6y ago
Divorce is the healthy end to a failed marriage. The unhealthy thing in a marriage is it being failed, and we use divorce as a proxy for that (although not all failed marriages have ended or ended in divorce).
mattcwilson 6y ago
It strikes me that GP is observing that legal divorce is happier than abuse, detachment, resentment, cold war, etc. I think they have a point.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  Better than abuse and resentment, yes; healthy, no.
  - andys627 6y ago
    What are some characteristics of a healthy end to a marriage?
    - da_big_ghey 6y ago
      Marriages aren't supposed to end except in death. It's right there in the vows. They are a serious commitment, and I think many take them lightly without realizing that they are intended to be lifelong.
      - xref 6y ago
        As nwienert said better elsewhere in the thread: “You’re emotionally tying yourself to Christian theology and claiming it as universal.”
        da_big_ghey 6y ago
        No, marriage in America is based on Christian theology and by extension so is the legal framework around it, which is why divorce is so difficult. That's factual, not emotional.
        staticman2 6y ago
        Marriage is based on whatever the humans in the marriage want it to be based on. The legal system is constantly evolving in 50 stages. Your understanding of the legal system lacks nuance, probably because you are repeating something you heard a partisan say.
randomdata 6y ago
Divorce is merely the end of the business relationship of a marriage, not necessarily a social end to the relationship. It should be as healthy as ending any other business relationship.
eplanit 6y ago
Not an ideal ending, as it negates the fundamental promises of the marital contract. However, it's two peoples' (plus kids maybe) lives at stake. Staying together in a dysfunctional marriage can damage all those lives (with downstream repercussions on even more people). In those circumstances, a divorce can lead to much healthier outcomes. In those cases, is the tragedy that the marriage ended, or would the tragedy be if it remained?
- foogazi 6y ago
  > Staying together in a dysfunctional marriage Who wants to have a dysfunctional marriage? That seems like a bad ending too So we can add ‘dysfunctional marriage’ to divorce as undesirable outcomes of marriage
  - scsilver 6y ago
    People who cant afford to divorce.
tubularhells 6y ago
Reminder: a lot of us in this community are autistic and have problems when it comes to expressing ourselves.
- noblethrasher 6y ago
  Probably not as many as you might imagine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1884326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1884326
  - tubularhells 6y ago
    >Sorry. You need to have both Javascript and Flash enabled to view this content. Lol.
tartoran 6y ago
> How is this even a question, never the less the most upvoted comment? No, divorce is not a healthy end to a marriage. I think the original comment was referring to divorce being a better outcome in a failed relationship. There are a lot of failed relationships that continue to raise their kids in a disfunctional way and that is not good. A couple who divorces and are on good terms afterwards when raisig their children is way healthier.
belorn 6y ago
Here is a more fun question: What is the optimal reproductive strategy that also maximizes the chance that the children also reproduce? I will add as an established fact that daughters has a higher base chance of reproductive success than sons, but sons have higher base variance. Game theory should always be asked when biology is involved. I am not sure myself on the answer, but it seems more plausible than the article's "teenage girls are annoying" theory or the speculated "son preference" theory. If there is an optimal strategy, such a strategy may result in a small biological effect which makes parents look for a new chance of reproduction once the majority of child investment is done, resulting in the statistical data that shows 20.12% becoming 20.48%.
- blabitty 6y ago
  Not being snarky at all but isn't the answer to this always going to reduce to "have as many offspring with as many partners as possible"?
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    Maybe not? It doesn't much matter if you have a lot of offspring, if the offspring don't survive and reproduce. It's an optimization problem of having enough offspring and being able to ensure that they survive to adulthood.
    - alexvoda 6y ago
      The key is to apply the strategy of the cookoo bird and have others care for your offspring out of their own interest. I remembered a case of of a obstetrician impregnating multiple patients but a Google search(1) easily proved this was not an isolated case as the first few links are all separate incidents. (1) https://www.google.com/search?q=obstetrician+used+own+sperm https://www.google.com/search?q=obstetrician+used+own+sperm As immoral as this strategy sounds I admit it is probably the most effective strategy from an investment/returns pov. It is cheaper than becoming Genghis Khan(2) and the effect is comparable. (2) https://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-has-competition-1.16767 https://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-ha...
LocalH 6y ago
A divorce is a much more healthy end to an abusive marriage than the other options. Your blanket statement "divorce is not a healthy end to a marriage" is patently false.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  And your suggestion that “divorce isn’t bad because I can think of worse things” is logically flawed.
  - LocalH 6y ago
    I'm not saying divorce can't be bad. I'm saying that it's not inherently an unhealthy end to a marriage, because there exist clean divorces and nasty marriages.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
adkadskhj 6y ago
It is a healthy end, if the couple wasn't right from the beginning or if they became different people. It's unfair to expect two humans to remain compatible their entire lives. We evolve massively. A person i would have married at 18 is not the same i'd marry now. Which isn't to say that difficulty should be met with break ups. Rather, it's to say that some marriages should end. Both parties would be better off. Other marriages would be better served to have problems met, worked through, and the couple made stronger as a result. It is a healthy end. If it's a bad marriage.
- citizenkeen 6y ago
  Exactly. Divorce can be a healthy end to an unhealthy relationship. Can be. But if you're divorcing, you're already at an unhealthy state.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Amezarak 6y ago
  Marriage is about growing and adapting with the other person. "We changed" as a reason for the end of a marriage is an admission of failure to work at the relationship over its course. Of course you changed. The whole point is to grow and change together, until you die. People don't just become incompatible. Something went badly wrong for that to happen. It's increasingly common nowadays - nuclear families tend to be more atomized, rather than integrated into an extended family, which increases the stress on the relationship, and many people simply don't prioritize their marriage, but instead their career, kids, or lifestyle. And of course, the modern social environment is more full of distractions and temptations than ever.
  - catlifeonmars 6y ago
    If the assumption is that the only source of change is internal to the relationship, sure. There are many sources of change that are external to two partners in a marriage, it’s not unreasonable to think one person may diverge from another to the point where a having a healthy, close, intimate relationship is unhealthy.
karaterobot 6y ago
I think the way the commenter worded it, it sounded like they thought a couple just entering into marriage might sit down and talk about the healthiest outcomes of their marriage and say: "Well, we could stay deeply in love for the next 50 years, or we could get divorced tomorrow. Either way, both equally good options." But that's probably not what they meant.
dimgl 6y ago
Agreed. I can’t believe what a massive cultural shift I’m witnessing. Divorce is in no way shape or form a “healthy end” to a marriage. The point of marriage is that it doesn’t end. It is a lifelong commitment. People evolve and so too should marriages.

by 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!
  - Carlton2082 6y ago
    The analogy works even better because organ transplants are sometimes necessary and sometimes not. Although GP started off defining a binary, I don't think they are thinking in black and white. A charitable reading of the GP implies the nuances you express.
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  I like this metaphor because it fits with the generation of my parents! That's also the generation of people who don't go to the hospital because anything hurts. They go to the hospital 5 years later for something unrelated, when it's discovered it's 4 years too late to do anything about it.
- k4c9x 6y ago
  Doesn't matter which situation is closer, they're both nothing like a marriage. There are more than 2 ways to think about it. If marriages are like a car, then there's also the option to ditch it and not get a new one. If it's like a critical body part, someone is way too dependent. Also, those relationship advice books focus on minor issues, not one where someone isn't willing to change, and certainly not willing to read a book like that, and instead demands the other just "love them for who they are".
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    > If it's like a critical body part, someone is way too dependent This is unhelpfully extending the metaphor into a straw man. It's simple enough to see the point.
- room500 6y ago
  What about a situation where one party wants to make it work and the other doesn't? In your example, your ankle is under your control - if you want to exercise it, you can. Your ankle doesn't actively sabotage your body (or if it does spread infection/etc, amputation is often used). A marriage depends on two people working together to build a life together. If one person is not willing to put in that effort, the marriage fails.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    Yes, it's a two-way street. That is why both partners say the vows.
cat199 6y ago
> Why not? Because marriage is intended as an act of lifetime committent to what is seen as a positive relationship, and so failing this original intent can never be a measure of success.. Preferable to 'failing' in the sense of staying in a 'failed marriage' (where the 'positive relationship' is no more positive) perhaps, but both of these are 'failures'.
- k4c9x 6y ago
  That's the fairy tale definition. For many, it's just a legal term.
  - Falling3 6y ago
    Referring to a "lifetime committ[m]ent to what is seen as a positive relationship" as a fairy tale is pretty ridiculous.
    - k4c9x 6y ago
      The oaths made in a typical marriage are impossible, dangerous ideals that, once made, can guilt people into sticking to bad situations. Bad people don't tend to go around being bad unless they think they can get away with it. Once someone has pinky swore to dedicate their life to them, no matter what they might do, the true colors come out. I've seen it too many times, the idea does more harm than good. Life-long good marriages exists, I hope to achieve one myself, but the silly oath doesn't help them in any way, and it makes the bad ones worse.
      - Falling3 6y ago
        > The oaths made in a typical marriage are impossible > Life-long good marriages exists I'm sure you have this reconciled somehow, but it sounds contradictory to me.
        k4c9x 6y ago
        Impossible was a poor word choice. I meant like no one could honestly make the promises, because no one can predict how people and situations will change over a life time. Maybe if the oaths contained an "unless you become an asshole" clause, they'd be more valuable.
rufus_foreman 6y ago
>> Sometimes things just don’t work out If you're married to someone you don't want to be married to, sure sometimes things just don't work out. If you're a kid and your parents failed marriage is destroying your life, I don't think "sometimes things just don't work out" is the answer.
throwawayboise 6y ago
> it’s a sunk cost fallacy to think you should always repair your marriage I guess if you discount the "for better and for worse" part of the vows you take to one another....

guerrilla 6y ago

Why not? If you don't get along the its better to end it than force it. That was the parents meaning. Do you have a counterargument?

cgriswald 6y ago
That’s not how divorce works. It’s not an end if you have kids. It’s the beginning of something different. But you’re still tied together. So now you have twice the expenses, half the time with the kids who now need you more than ever, more reason to fight with each other, and possibly even more resentment, all compounded by your own personal feelings of loss and failure. Yay, what a win for everyone involved. Also, realize that people don’t generally get to a divorce by talking things out and figuring divorce is the only option. Even if they do talk things out it’s usually only after divorce is inevitable.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  > ...more reason to fight with each other Is this often the outcome of divorce? I imagine that spending more time apart should reduce the total volume of conflict
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Note the ‘if you have kids’ beginning to the reasoning

seanmcdirmid 6y ago

Divorce is the healthy end to a failed marriage. The unhealthy thing in a marriage is it being failed, and we use divorce as a proxy for that (although not all failed marriages have ended or ended in divorce).

mattcwilson 6y ago

It strikes me that GP is observing that legal divorce is happier than abuse, detachment, resentment, cold war, etc. I think they have a point.

da_big_ghey 6y ago
Better than abuse and resentment, yes; healthy, no.
- andys627 6y ago
  What are some characteristics of a healthy end to a marriage?
  - da_big_ghey 6y ago
    Marriages aren't supposed to end except in death. It's right there in the vows. They are a serious commitment, and I think many take them lightly without realizing that they are intended to be lifelong.
    - xref 6y ago
      As nwienert said better elsewhere in the thread: “You’re emotionally tying yourself to Christian theology and claiming it as universal.”
      - da_big_ghey 6y ago
        No, marriage in America is based on Christian theology and by extension so is the legal framework around it, which is why divorce is so difficult. That's factual, not emotional.
        staticman2 6y ago
        Marriage is based on whatever the humans in the marriage want it to be based on. The legal system is constantly evolving in 50 stages. Your understanding of the legal system lacks nuance, probably because you are repeating something you heard a partisan say.

randomdata 6y ago

Divorce is merely the end of the business relationship of a marriage, not necessarily a social end to the relationship. It should be as healthy as ending any other business relationship.

eplanit 6y ago

Not an ideal ending, as it negates the fundamental promises of the marital contract. However, it's two peoples' (plus kids maybe) lives at stake. Staying together in a dysfunctional marriage can damage all those lives (with downstream repercussions on even more people). In those circumstances, a divorce can lead to much healthier outcomes. In those cases, is the tragedy that the marriage ended, or would the tragedy be if it remained?

foogazi 6y ago
> Staying together in a dysfunctional marriage Who wants to have a dysfunctional marriage? That seems like a bad ending too So we can add ‘dysfunctional marriage’ to divorce as undesirable outcomes of marriage
- scsilver 6y ago
  People who cant afford to divorce.

tubularhells 6y ago

Reminder: a lot of us in this community are autistic and have problems when it comes to expressing ourselves.

noblethrasher 6y ago
Probably not as many as you might imagine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1884326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1884326
- tubularhells 6y ago
  >Sorry. You need to have both Javascript and Flash enabled to view this content. Lol.

tartoran 6y ago

> How is this even a question, never the less the most upvoted comment? No, divorce is not a healthy end to a marriage. I think the original comment was referring to divorce being a better outcome in a failed relationship. There are a lot of failed relationships that continue to raise their kids in a disfunctional way and that is not good. A couple who divorces and are on good terms afterwards when raisig their children is way healthier.

belorn 6y ago

Here is a more fun question: What is the optimal reproductive strategy that also maximizes the chance that the children also reproduce? I will add as an established fact that daughters has a higher base chance of reproductive success than sons, but sons have higher base variance. Game theory should always be asked when biology is involved. I am not sure myself on the answer, but it seems more plausible than the article's "teenage girls are annoying" theory or the speculated "son preference" theory. If there is an optimal strategy, such a strategy may result in a small biological effect which makes parents look for a new chance of reproduction once the majority of child investment is done, resulting in the statistical data that shows 20.12% becoming 20.48%.

blabitty 6y ago
Not being snarky at all but isn't the answer to this always going to reduce to "have as many offspring with as many partners as possible"?
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  Maybe not? It doesn't much matter if you have a lot of offspring, if the offspring don't survive and reproduce. It's an optimization problem of having enough offspring and being able to ensure that they survive to adulthood.
  - alexvoda 6y ago
    The key is to apply the strategy of the cookoo bird and have others care for your offspring out of their own interest. I remembered a case of of a obstetrician impregnating multiple patients but a Google search(1) easily proved this was not an isolated case as the first few links are all separate incidents. (1) https://www.google.com/search?q=obstetrician+used+own+sperm https://www.google.com/search?q=obstetrician+used+own+sperm As immoral as this strategy sounds I admit it is probably the most effective strategy from an investment/returns pov. It is cheaper than becoming Genghis Khan(2) and the effect is comparable. (2) https://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-has-competition-1.16767 https://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-ha...

LocalH 6y ago

A divorce is a much more healthy end to an abusive marriage than the other options. Your blanket statement "divorce is not a healthy end to a marriage" is patently false.

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
And your suggestion that “divorce isn’t bad because I can think of worse things” is logically flawed.
- LocalH 6y ago
  I'm not saying divorce can't be bad. I'm saying that it's not inherently an unhealthy end to a marriage, because there exist clean divorces and nasty marriages.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

adkadskhj 6y ago

It is a healthy end, if the couple wasn't right from the beginning or if they became different people. It's unfair to expect two humans to remain compatible their entire lives. We evolve massively. A person i would have married at 18 is not the same i'd marry now. Which isn't to say that difficulty should be met with break ups. Rather, it's to say that some marriages should end. Both parties would be better off. Other marriages would be better served to have problems met, worked through, and the couple made stronger as a result. It is a healthy end. If it's a bad marriage.

citizenkeen 6y ago
Exactly. Divorce can be a healthy end to an unhealthy relationship. Can be. But if you're divorcing, you're already at an unhealthy state.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Amezarak 6y ago
Marriage is about growing and adapting with the other person. "We changed" as a reason for the end of a marriage is an admission of failure to work at the relationship over its course. Of course you changed. The whole point is to grow and change together, until you die. People don't just become incompatible. Something went badly wrong for that to happen. It's increasingly common nowadays - nuclear families tend to be more atomized, rather than integrated into an extended family, which increases the stress on the relationship, and many people simply don't prioritize their marriage, but instead their career, kids, or lifestyle. And of course, the modern social environment is more full of distractions and temptations than ever.
- catlifeonmars 6y ago
  If the assumption is that the only source of change is internal to the relationship, sure. There are many sources of change that are external to two partners in a marriage, it’s not unreasonable to think one person may diverge from another to the point where a having a healthy, close, intimate relationship is unhealthy.

karaterobot 6y ago

I think the way the commenter worded it, it sounded like they thought a couple just entering into marriage might sit down and talk about the healthiest outcomes of their marriage and say: "Well, we could stay deeply in love for the next 50 years, or we could get divorced tomorrow. Either way, both equally good options." But that's probably not what they meant.

dimgl 6y ago

Agreed. I can’t believe what a massive cultural shift I’m witnessing. Divorce is in no way shape or form a “healthy end” to a marriage. The point of marriage is that it doesn’t end. It is a lifelong commitment. People evolve and so too should marriages.