To secretly speculate about my friends' future divorces

It's not unusual if you are in certain socioeconomic groups. If you are in the more middle to professional earning (not very high earning) it will spike late 50s to early 60s. This is when children are independent and finished school.

And what odds do you give your own marriage, @flossydog ?

And maybe it will be you and your husband? 😂

I'm with you OP. Frightening how often I'm proved right.

What do you get out of this. A sense of smug satisfaction if you are proved correct. Transferable skills to predict election outcomes or stock market returns.
It's a bit strange in my opinion. Divorce rate has nothing to do with the liklijood of success of marriages. It's just a ratio of number of divorces against number of marriages in any one year. The reason it has gone to nearly 50 perc is the falling marriage rate. 2022 was the lowest number of divorces since 1971 and 25 perc less than 2021 at 80k. Do you factor these trends in?

Wouldn’t necessarily say bad but I do think it’s a bit weird.

I’m in my late 40s and only one of my friends’ marriages has ended, which I think is probably statistically unusual! But they are the ones that I always thought I wouldn’t be surprised if they did divorce.

I do this and it's been scarily accurate so far...

I spend more time than I should hoping that one of my siblings will get divorced... 🤐

I have never once seen a relationship split coming. I have frequently sometimes stumbled away from a stay with a couple thinking 'how can they stand it', but they are never the ones that split. Or not yet, anyway (am late 50s).

It’s probably the ones guessing others divorces that are most likely to divorce, since it’s on their radar for some reason. Probably subconsciously projecting.

Do you think they do it to you

How old are you/your friends?
if you’d asked me when we were in our thirties which couples out of our closest friends would stand the test of time and which would split, I’d have got it completely wrong.
The friends who have always bickered constantly are still together…the ones who were super affectionate/attentive got divorced 🤷🏼‍♀️

I don't think it's something a happy person would do.

I do this too 😄

This is so awful and horribly smug. I can only assume to think like this you would need to benchmark those considered to be future divorcees as having worse relationships than your own. How can you know this?

Relationships are complicated and we only see the surface of most people’s relationships. Sometimes we might see deeper from one side, but rarely both. We don’t really know a couple’s unspoken language or joint aspirations, we don’t know their vulnerabilities or strength.

Basically, you can guess at best, and given divorce rates are so high, guessing might sometimes work out. You have to ask yourself though, why would you look at someone else’s relationship like that? Our thought patterns reveal more about ourselves than anyone else.

Sometimes it's the couples you most expect and sometimes it's the ones you least expect. But every time I think I'm lucky it's not me because often it's just a combination of circumstances rather than a lack of love or compatibility. So be careful because schadenfreude isn't a nice thing

I genuinely don't do this but I agree with pp that excepting the most obvious disasters it's not easy to predict anyway. I was recently surprised by a friend's split from her husband of 20 years, didn't see it coming at all and it's turned very acrimonious too.

I haven’t but thinking about it it is hard to predict anyway. The unhappy couples still seem to stay together for the long haul.
Also in a friendship group of 9 that I am in there is one of the women who has said some unkind things to me and done some low level not very nice things but not noticeable to others so I just tend to try and stay away from her rather than leave the group. She has treated her husband really badly over the years so you would assume he would be considering a divorce but I have just received an invite to a surprise party he is organising for her. He seems smitten even though she doesn’t seem to like him (or me). So I can’t predict it at all and the people I think should get divorced for their own wellbeing don’t seem to.

I've done this with family members and been spot on every time.

I don’t do this, however I have sat through 2 weddings thinking “I’ll give this less than 3 years” and was right with both. Never done it before or since those 2 occasions.

Some of our “friends” didn’t come to our wedding because we selfishly organised it for Reading Festival weekend (it was when my family could come over from USA). They apparently didn’t think it was worth it as my ex had gone round saying I was only marrying dh to her back at him… dh and I started dating 2 months after ex dumped me (after cheating multiple times) and we dated 3 years before marrying. Married 20 years with 3 dc and I still bloody love him.

We went to a very flash wedding where the groom put on this amazing light show (it was his line of work). I commented to dh it was really beautiful and romantic. Dh had a very different perception that groom spent a large chunk of the wedding faffing about on his light show project with friends that was all about him and practically ignored the bride. He was right. Groom had an affair within 2 years.

I'd keep that little hobby of yours to yourself.

I wonder who will get divorced, because it likely half of them will, but I don’t make guesses.

Me and DH every now and then try to guess who will end up divorced that we know. Being that there is a 42% divorce rate it is pretty likely several we know will end up this way (and we are in late 40's now).