Divorce rate

[Biffette]

No particular pattern in mine or my SO's family trees. Going further back to when divorce was less acceptable, his side was getting divorces and my side was only separating.

 

[auntiehill]

We've had one divorce in the family, and it was complete hell. On my husband's side it's all over the place. His parents have been together for 35 years, his aunt divorced and remarried the same person, his uncle divorced with very good reason. On the other side of his family some have been married for decades, some married multiple times.

There's no special formula and it makes me uneasy when I see people posting here about the lack of divorce in their families. There's an element of pride and accomplishment to it that's probably not conscious. But I don't think lack of divorce is necessarily an accomplishment. Some couples should get divorced. And we need to stop making people feel like failures for not staying in their marriages.

Yes, marriages take a lot of work and sacrifice at times, and I don't take that lightly. But staying married isn't always the better choice, and I think it's okay to recognize that.

No joke. My parents have been married for 60 years and really wish they'd divorced some time ago. It would have benefited my mother greatly. Now's she's stuck taking care of a man she doesn't really love; she just feels sorry for him.

My middle sister was married over 15 years, and her jackass husband just turned to her and said, "I don't love you. You and the kids need to move out." WTF? She gave up her career to stay home and be the best wife and mother she could. When they had problems, mostly caused by him loving his job and work buddies more than his family (he worked for free, 50 hrs a week, when they no money to buy diapers), she suggested counseling but he wouldn't participate because HE said there were no problems. So suddenly, he wanted his wife, his two grade school daughters and the months-old baby to just get out. Just like that. They sold the house, she found a new place, got a job, is out dating and having a decent life, all while raising three young kids.

He's now alone, barely employed, living in a tiny apartment, and after two years, still won't complete the divorce papers and barely sees his kids a few hours every other week---even though they live less than 30 minutes from him. He demanded visitation but hardly ever visits. I think he wanted the divorce, thinking he could be "free", in the midst of some mid-life crisis, but he seems to be regretting it or in some kind of denial. My sister will be fine, in fact, the divorce was probably a good thing for her, despite how painful. It's the two older girls who are really damaged by this. They're starting to really hate their father, because they can see how, even when he's with them, he acts like it's a chore. As for the baby, she's almost three and the father doesn't even deal with her. He makes the older girls take of her and they're only 12.

My other sister is the complete opposite. She was an alcoholic and drug addict for 25 years. She was supposedly clean (although we never really bought that) and wanted someone to take care of her. She married a guy she met in AA, who loved her and her son (fathered by ANOTHER guy in AA), but on their wedding day (I was the maid of honor), I asked her, "Do you really love him?" Right before she gets ready to walk down the aisle, she just shrugs and says, "Whatever." OY. She really took that guy for all he was worth. She finally went off on a bender and never came back. The guy bought a house for her, went into a HUGE amount of credit card debt, got attached to her son and raised him (and she never let him adopt) and then she left. She abandoned her child and her husband. And the verbal abuse she heaped on the man was unreal. She married him because he was a doormat. We---her family---BEGGED him to divorce her. The entire marriage lasted only two years---with the last 6 months being him dragging his feet in leaving her. They lived together about two years before they got married, too. So the biological father came back and took the boy, leaving the man with no son, no wife, no money and no house (they sold it for the divorce). My sister's been clean for 8 years now, my nephew is about to be 14. But no matter what else she does, I doubt I can ever stop thinking of her as being really evil.

 

[farmkid]

What you're looking for is the divorce rate for first marriages vs. the divorce rate for later marriages. For first marriages, the divorce rate is something like 30-40%, whereas for 2nd marriages is is 50 something or 60 something % and for 3rd marriages, it is over 70%. Overall, almost half of marriages end in divorce, but the majority of people who get married never get divorced while those who do get divorced once are likely to get divorced again if they remarry.

As for me, 15 years into my happy first marriage with no expectation to ever divorce.

Interesting, I wasn't aware of these statistics. Do you have a source/study for this? I'm actually really interested by this because I had no idea the rates were that different along first/second/third marriages.

There are statistics all over the internet. Here is one of the first sites I found that has some statistics, although documentation isn't as good as I would like. I'm sure you can find more in sociology journals or government reports if you want to go back to the source data.