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Divorce rates were lower "back in the day" because women had far less options. Maybe we just aren’t all meant to find that one person and stay with them until

Divorce rates were lower "back in the day" because women had far less options. Maybe we just aren’t all meant to find that one person and stay with them until we die. Maybe, just maybe, we were meant to have a community to find meaning in beyond to the communities of family and work. Blasphemous thoughts for the formerly puritanical US, but worth considering nonetheless.

asynchronous 3y ago
Heaven forbid we value contentment in society, can’t have that now can we.
- pjc50 3y ago
  People need to distinguish better between commitment and coercion.
  - wruza 3y ago
    This coin has two playable sides.
  - hypertele-Xii 3y ago
    Voluntary commitment is self-coercion. All discipline is. The trick is, it's worth it. But some people are so allergic to external and internal control that they enter a never-ending self-destructive spiral of "personal freedom at any cost".
    - asynchronous 3y ago
      I actually really love this quote, I’m saving it. Thank you random citizen.
    - kibwen 3y ago
      > some people are so allergic to external and internal control that they enter a never-ending self-destructive spiral of "personal freedom at any cost" The sort of people you describe have no effect on the number of divorces, because they're not getting married in the first place.
- kibwen 3y ago
  You haven't known discontentment until you've seen an elderly couple like my in-laws who live in the same house while despising each other, yet refusing to divorce because it's against their religion. They don't do anything together, they don't speak beyond the absolute necessities, and they don't sleep in the same bedroom. The husband has been openly cheating on the wife for years (and she has evidence, because the husband of the woman he's cheating with tracked her down and mailed her photographic evidence). She calls my partner all the time lamenting how awful her life is and how she can't wait for him to die so she can be free. Don't lecture us on the contentment of marriage without acknowledging what the other side of the coin is. This was the reality of marriage before divorce was normalized.
quietbritishjim 3y ago
This is a straw man. The comment you're replying to never made a mention of divorce rates increasing over time. They only talked about divorce rates increasing with respect to number of previous partners.
- marricks 3y ago
  If it was a formal debate sure, I'm more riffing on the original comment. I should have said something like "relatedly." I would agree having dozens of short relationships and not being able to commit to something, even just a core set of friends, probably isn't great. So person I replied to is perhaps right there. But idealizing a young marriage I think is stupid and should be criticized and is directly related to 1950's housewives not being able to leave their relationships.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
And marriage rates are down significantly too [0] because... you don't have to? I was born in the 80's and I grew up with nothing but cynicism and pessimism about relationships and marriage; even then it was something like "40% of marriages end in divorce", or that most relationships don't last and that the few that do and get glorified / romanticised is survivorship bias. It made me think "What is the point?". Add that with a load of repeated messages that men are shallow and horny pigs that objectify and abuse women, it really wasn't encouraging. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "It made me think "What is the point?"." That sounds a bit like, "what's the point in life if we all die?" You can still enjoy a relationship, even though it might not be for forever - because nothing really is.
- pixl97 3y ago
  There is a particular problem with that statistic... It is most likely when you think of 100 individuals and see that statistic that 40 of those individuals are getting divorced. Instead it could be something like 5 of those people were responsible for half the divorces.
WentFullRetard 3y ago
[dead]
globular-toast 3y ago
Maybe we aren't supposed have peaceful, advanced societies. Maybe we are supposed to be swinging in trees and constantly at war with the neighbouring tribe.
- brabel 3y ago
  Great reply :) but really, why people so often think "we're supposed to be" anything at all? Life seems totally random. We're not supposed to be anything, we just make it all up as we go. Money, happiness, love... we make it all up on top of our basic emotions (you could claim emotions guide what "we're supposed to be" in which case your reply is the conclusion we arrive at).
  - recursive 3y ago
    Indeed. "Supposed" implies the existence of a supposer. "Supposed" by who, exactly?
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Think of the idea of a self reinforcing meme. If people think we are supposed to be, then we will be. "By force if necessary". Typically individuals that fall too far out of what society expects may be culled by one means or another leading to a cultural definition of 'supposed'.
nottorp 3y ago
> the formerly puritanical US formerly? Just look at the majority of comments for this article.
alfnor 3y ago
Historically, most males never got to reproduce. https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success As soon as you remove our self-imposed social rules, we revert to our natural instincts, where a few males copulate, but rarely bond, with the majority of females. This leads to unhappy bonds where some of the less desirable males take care of females and offspring that is not theirs, while the rest of the males just get angry at the world and start fighting. A great way to build an army (e.g. Daesh) is to promise angry young involuntarily celibate males a bunch of virgins. You can also use their dissatisfaction to make a bunch of money, with the promise that they are becoming more desirable as they consoom more product (see Andrew Tate). > We predict that imposing monogamous marriage reduces male reproductive competition and suppresses intra-sexual competition, which shrinks the size of the pool of low-status, risk-oriented, unmarried men. These effects result in (i) lower rates of crime, personal abuse, intra-household conflict and fertility, and (ii) greater parental investment (especially male), economic productivity (gross domestic product (GDP) per capita) and female equality. https://theconversation.com/society-wide-benefits-of-monogamous-marriage-6908 https://theconversation.com/society-wide-benefits-of-monogam...
commandlinefan 3y ago
> we just aren’t all meant to find that one person and stay with them Maybe so, but if we can agree on that, we need to work on making divorce less of a life-destroying event (in particular for the man).
- kibwen 3y ago
  > (in particular for the man) Prenups are legal in all 50 states; use them and normalize them. As for child custody, men have even odds of being granted custody when they bother to contest it. However, they bother to contest it a depressingly low percentage of the time.
valval 3y ago
Maybe, just maybe, man and wife till death do them part is a solution to a problem that has long been forgotten, and countless civilisations have fallen after adopting the attitude you project in your hypothesis.

asynchronous 3y ago

Heaven forbid we value contentment in society, can’t have that now can we.

pjc50 3y ago
People need to distinguish better between commitment and coercion.
- wruza 3y ago
  This coin has two playable sides.
- hypertele-Xii 3y ago
  Voluntary commitment is self-coercion. All discipline is. The trick is, it's worth it. But some people are so allergic to external and internal control that they enter a never-ending self-destructive spiral of "personal freedom at any cost".
  - asynchronous 3y ago
    I actually really love this quote, I’m saving it. Thank you random citizen.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    > some people are so allergic to external and internal control that they enter a never-ending self-destructive spiral of "personal freedom at any cost" The sort of people you describe have no effect on the number of divorces, because they're not getting married in the first place.
kibwen 3y ago
You haven't known discontentment until you've seen an elderly couple like my in-laws who live in the same house while despising each other, yet refusing to divorce because it's against their religion. They don't do anything together, they don't speak beyond the absolute necessities, and they don't sleep in the same bedroom. The husband has been openly cheating on the wife for years (and she has evidence, because the husband of the woman he's cheating with tracked her down and mailed her photographic evidence). She calls my partner all the time lamenting how awful her life is and how she can't wait for him to die so she can be free. Don't lecture us on the contentment of marriage without acknowledging what the other side of the coin is. This was the reality of marriage before divorce was normalized.

quietbritishjim 3y ago

This is a straw man. The comment you're replying to never made a mention of divorce rates increasing over time. They only talked about divorce rates increasing with respect to number of previous partners.

marricks 3y ago
If it was a formal debate sure, I'm more riffing on the original comment. I should have said something like "relatedly." I would agree having dozens of short relationships and not being able to commit to something, even just a core set of friends, probably isn't great. So person I replied to is perhaps right there. But idealizing a young marriage I think is stupid and should be criticized and is directly related to 1950's housewives not being able to leave their relationships.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

And marriage rates are down significantly too [0] because... you don't have to? I was born in the 80's and I grew up with nothing but cynicism and pessimism about relationships and marriage; even then it was something like "40% of marriages end in divorce", or that most relationships don't last and that the few that do and get glorified / romanticised is survivorship bias. It made me think "What is the point?". Add that with a load of repeated messages that men are shallow and horny pigs that objectify and abuse women, it really wasn't encouraging. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces

hutzlibu 3y ago
"It made me think "What is the point?"." That sounds a bit like, "what's the point in life if we all die?" You can still enjoy a relationship, even though it might not be for forever - because nothing really is.
pixl97 3y ago
There is a particular problem with that statistic... It is most likely when you think of 100 individuals and see that statistic that 40 of those individuals are getting divorced. Instead it could be something like 5 of those people were responsible for half the divorces.

WentFullRetard 3y ago

[dead]

globular-toast 3y ago

Maybe we aren't supposed have peaceful, advanced societies. Maybe we are supposed to be swinging in trees and constantly at war with the neighbouring tribe.

brabel 3y ago
Great reply :) but really, why people so often think "we're supposed to be" anything at all? Life seems totally random. We're not supposed to be anything, we just make it all up as we go. Money, happiness, love... we make it all up on top of our basic emotions (you could claim emotions guide what "we're supposed to be" in which case your reply is the conclusion we arrive at).
- recursive 3y ago
  Indeed. "Supposed" implies the existence of a supposer. "Supposed" by who, exactly?
- pixl97 3y ago
  Think of the idea of a self reinforcing meme. If people think we are supposed to be, then we will be. "By force if necessary". Typically individuals that fall too far out of what society expects may be culled by one means or another leading to a cultural definition of 'supposed'.

nottorp 3y ago

> the formerly puritanical US formerly? Just look at the majority of comments for this article.

alfnor 3y ago

Historically, most males never got to reproduce. https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success As soon as you remove our self-imposed social rules, we revert to our natural instincts, where a few males copulate, but rarely bond, with the majority of females. This leads to unhappy bonds where some of the less desirable males take care of females and offspring that is not theirs, while the rest of the males just get angry at the world and start fighting. A great way to build an army (e.g. Daesh) is to promise angry young involuntarily celibate males a bunch of virgins. You can also use their dissatisfaction to make a bunch of money, with the promise that they are becoming more desirable as they consoom more product (see Andrew Tate). > We predict that imposing monogamous marriage reduces male reproductive competition and suppresses intra-sexual competition, which shrinks the size of the pool of low-status, risk-oriented, unmarried men. These effects result in (i) lower rates of crime, personal abuse, intra-household conflict and fertility, and (ii) greater parental investment (especially male), economic productivity (gross domestic product (GDP) per capita) and female equality. https://theconversation.com/society-wide-benefits-of-monogamous-marriage-6908 https://theconversation.com/society-wide-benefits-of-monogam...

commandlinefan 3y ago

> we just aren’t all meant to find that one person and stay with them Maybe so, but if we can agree on that, we need to work on making divorce less of a life-destroying event (in particular for the man).

kibwen 3y ago
> (in particular for the man) Prenups are legal in all 50 states; use them and normalize them. As for child custody, men have even odds of being granted custody when they bother to contest it. However, they bother to contest it a depressingly low percentage of the time.

valval 3y ago

Maybe, just maybe, man and wife till death do them part is a solution to a problem that has long been forgotten, and countless civilisations have fallen after adopting the attitude you project in your hypothesis.