Marriages don’t last anymore because..

He's going to be that "the divorce came out of the blue 😱" guy

I had no idea she was unhappy! I mean there was that constant high pitched whining in the background but I just blotted it out, like when the washing machine says Service Wash Needed, you don't listen to the opinions of your domestic appliances do you?!

I don’t agree that @Chiseltiphas nailed it. I think most men have always been and continue to be self centred, putting themselves first. Women have worked hard and developed to achieve ‘equality’ however men haven’t grown and developed at the same rate. When you both work full time (regardless of pay) relationship should be team work as regards childcare/housework etc but (see the zillions of threads in Relationships) it invariably isn’t. Men/society seem to have expected women to work full time and still carry on doing all other free work at home. Women not doing this is not self centred it’s self respect and self preservation.

I disagree with this vehemently. A couple both working and using wraparound care can be absolutely fine - my late husband and I were fine in the days when our marriage was still good (before life and addiction, by which time our DC were teens). All it needs is for men to pull their weight at home. And all too often they still don't, even when both in the couple are working full time hours.

I think it's a good thing that people can walk away from a relationship that isn't working - but what I will say is that you do need realistic expectations of what relationships are. Expecting the rosy haze moonlight and flowers phase to be forever is setting yourself up to fail.

A lot of people don't marry so it is very easy to just walk away at the first problem for men and women. Often the woman is then left with nothing.

I think people who get as far as getting married probably have a much better chance of staying together because they made a real commitment and it requires more effort to separate physically and financially.

This. There's an awful lot of men who want it both ways.

Your colleague sounds like they have swallowed the standard conservative rhetoric on this, that its because people no longer want to "work on their marriage" etc. (For my money "working on a marriage" is usually code for "keeping your mouth shut and swallowing poor behaviour to keep the peace", so i don't see this as a bad thing.

At heart you're correct: until fairly recently marriage was the most realistic path to economic security for most women, now its much easier for them to be economically independent so they no longer need to put up with shit for their own economic wellbeing (and their children's). This is also a good thing in my view.

There's also a big moral/religious element to it: in the past divorce was considered shameful (particularly for the woman) for religious reasons and in some communities was actually impossible. And until recently women were significantly disadvantaged economically by divorce. Again, I think it's good that the stigma around divorce has been eroded. I don't want people to be publicly shamed for the fact their marriages have failed.

It is also the case that fewer people get married nowadays than 50 years and they tend to get married older, so those people who have gone to the trouble of getting married are probably more likely to work at staying together. So the marriages which do take place are probably more "stable" than they were historically.

I think of marriage at heart as a form of economic insurance for women who can't or don't want to work while they are bringing children up. It has no moral, emotional or spiritual significance for me. I've always worked and been financially independent and getting married for me would be a highly risky financial move. So I can't get too exercised about its decline.

How do they make better choices? I'm talking about the women who are picking men that on paper appear good but are lying. Even the police have trouble and they have training. How is a woman (assuming young enough to have children) meant to do better than the authorities?

Also I would argue that many women are choosing better by not having children at all. If you can't tell and will be judged if it doesn't work out then why bother?

It’s no longer expected for people to stay in abusive relationships.

I remember my MIL telling me that my FIL had been abusive throughout their 60 plus years of marriage but that it wasn’t the done thing to leave so she stayed. She was telling me because she suspected that her son was abusing me (he was but we had obviously never discussed it) and she didn’t want me to be on my deathbed (as she was) having put up with a lifetime of abuse. She wanted me to know that I didn’t have to put up with it and that I had choices that she never felt that she had. She was amazing.

What can I do to support them, is a lovely notion, however, men just don't think like this because they aren't conditioned to. Years ago males were expected to provide financially for their families, but even that has broken down.

I did my best to love and support my ex throughout our long marriage. Didn't stop him buggering off with someone else - and I don't have tiktok! What a ridiculous stereotype you painted in your post!

Marriage is actually quite hard to get out of, splitting assets and creating two households out of one in a cost of living crisis is very off putting. So I think many couples are staying married who would rather not! It's much easier to split if you aren't married and statistics show the separation rate for unmarried couples is much higher.

So I think the reasons for staying married have shifted since a couple of generations ago. When my parents were kids (they are 80ish now) it was relatively rare and socially scandalous to get divorced. Of course women were also less likely to have careers and independent income so they were often financially trapped too.

As society shifted and women earned their own income more, divorce rates rose. However as cost of living/austerity has increased, the divorce rate has also decreased. Some marriages are stuck in an austerity trap, without which they wouldn't still be limping on.

My mum (like your colleague) bangs on about people not being bothered to work at their marriages. But she actually means women aren't prepared to put up with crap any more (and they should). A lot of men are happy to have a wife who contributes financially but still expect a traditional marriage in other ways - with the woman covering the majority of cooking, cleaning, childcare and the man being the head of the household, everyone taking his surname blah blah. Women now have careers and jobs and it's usually men who dont want "to work" at pulling their weight with the other stuff. It's hardly surprising that women think "hang on a minute, I earn a good salary, i do all the kid stuff, all the mental load, most of the domestic stuff, so what's the point of that selfish arse parked on the sofa?" More women than men instigate divorce and that remains the position today. If my husband had that attitude I would have divorced him years ago.

So you are both right. But your colleague should perhaps consider further the lack of "work" some men put into their marriages compared to their wives.

My aunt (psychologist/counsellor) would probably agree with this to some extent. I recall her expressing the view that married people have unrealistic expectations of each other these days. She wasn't talking about the apportioning of childcare or household tasks but rather what she perceived as being a tendency to expect a partner to be able to meet ALL of one's emotional needs. Whereas in days gone by, she felt people were more realistic about this and would go to their mothers for one type of support, their friends for another type of support, and their spouses for a different type of support yet again.

My grandmothers (born 1913 and 1918) told me they perceived a 'good husband' to be someone who was hard-working and didn't drink away his earnings. That was it. Probably not beating the crap out of his family would have run a close third but I don't recall either of them mentioning it. So expectations of one's spouse also appear to have been LOWER. And of course, men didn't expect women to be shaved from top to toe, or complain that they didn't want to do threesomes/anal/strangulation because "everyone else is doing it". So there's that too.

My split happened because he became increasingly lazy - both in the house (actually he probably was always this lazy, it just didn't show as much until there were kids) and in the relationship - eg. going the entire day without even exchanging 2 words with me, then wanting to wake me up for sex in the middle of the night, and have a lie-in to catch up on his sleep whilst I got up with the kids.

And because I kept working, burning myself out at the time and wondering if I should be doing this, I had the freedom to tell him to get lost when I discovered that my reluctance to have unfulfilling sex with a man who ignored me and expected me to do all the housework meant he'd started sleeping with other women when on work trips.

Among my friendship group, the women in unhappy marriages are only staying in them because they can't see a way out, because they've all given up jobs when they had kids, and now would struggle to support themselves.

I think you’re both right and I also think there’s even more factors at play than both of your arguments.

Yes, you’re right, women have more independence, money & options now, they don’t have to stay in shitty marriages. Although I do think cost of living, especially now, this is probably less relevant, we see so many threads here from women who simply can’t afford to leave.

Yes, he’s right, I do think relationships have become disposable, people have become disposable. Look at online dating for proof of that, “matching” with hundreds of people, messaging 10+ at a time, dating multiples, ghosting etc. There is less incentive to work at something when with the tap of a finger there are 20 people waiting in your messages.

But I also think there are other things, social stigma has reduced I would say, divorce isn’t a dirty word so much as it once was. We now have no fault divorce so there isn’t so much of a blame game. Lots of factors really.

I expect more from both men and women. While I agree it’s a father’s responsibility to take care of his children, I expect women to make better choices in the father of those children - that’s their responsibility. The welfare state enables bad choices and poor judgment and foists the problem onto other taxpayers.

I'm not surprised that your colleague is a man.

I'm sure there are plenty of men who need to believe that the divorce rate has skyrocketed because "people" no longer put in the effort they used to, rather than because women no longer have to put up with them.

Im 60. My parents met young ( 12 and 14) and were each others only partner ever. My father did National Service after the war then teacher training then , when I was a toddler and my brother was a newborn, he started at University followed by a masters degree. By then they had 3 children. My mother looked after us , my father focused entirely on his career . The marriage wasn't always happy but , after my mother had dealt with bringing up the 3 of us with very little money,there was no way she was leaving my father once they were financially comfortable. Neither of them could have afforded to live as they did in their 40s, if they'd split and she wasn't going to allow someone else , with the career she hadn't had, to come along with their own money and enjoy the benefits of my father's professional career that she had put up with so much to support . They were both born in the 30s when divorce was a social disaster and that was always there. No one on either side of the family had ever divorced. My marriage ended with my husband's affair and my parents were appalled that there would be a divorce. I had known something was going on for while but , if I tried to speak to my mother about it, she would shut it down. Her mantra was always ' you get married, you stay married' . I've been very happily married to my second husband for 22 years in December. She remains quietly appalled that I divorced my first husband. Societal pressure to remain married in previous generations was huge. The shame for women as single mothers was huge. My best friends father left her mother in the 70s. She said they just didn't speak about it and she felt deeply ashamed. Her mother was looked down on because she was raising children alone . Things have changed hugely. The past is a different country.

Everything that you wrote is absolutely right OP. A lot of people stayed in marriages that were marriages only on paper, didn't they? There are still a few of those around, now in fact.

Also there was shame around divorce back then. My father's parents were divorced, it was quite unusual at the time and I know the family felt shame around it and never spoke of it.

Now I'm older and separated myself, I have a lot of admiration for my grandmother for taking a stance. He had an affair; she was a tough woman. They had 5 teenagers, some still at home at the time.

It did all result in me never meeting my paternal grandfather though which is a shame because accordingly to all he was a lovely person but had been affected by something he experienced during WWII. I think that he felt guilt and shame as well. Thank goodness things have changed in all respects around separation.

Somewhere between the two.

Women have lost patience with men who are basically looking for a replacement mother and sex.

Men who won't change their working hours, do their own laundry, let alone their kids. Yet they don't earn enough to be a breadwinner.

I have some empathy for men working 60 hours a week to bring home the equivalent of 2x salaries and and a wife working around those hours (e.g. a hospital doctor where the shifts are unpredictable) and it seems understandable that he wants a hot meal and some clean socks for the next day BUT [eta - he is bringing home the salary that means she doesn't also work a paid job out of the home] and many men seem to want this while working for barely minimum wage. Suck it up, buttercup, that of you aren't bringing in 2 salaries and sharing half with your wife, you can't expect your wife to be grateful to work a job and run a home around you.

Oh please. How do you pick when so many people lie? How many men do you think are looking at child sa? How many of them are in forums sharing how they secretly abuse women? There was a recent crackdown of one with like 70k men in it. Imagine how many others there are. You can't tell just by looking at most of them. We need to stop blaming women and expect more from men.

I do agree that they should be held accountable for child support with more legal action though!

Plenty of women on Mumsnet waiting for a proposal that never comes. It's not just women who don't want to get married.

@PrincessFairyWren I think you nailed it it here saying that men now mostly expect the 1950s wife values about cooking and housework, but society has removed the notion of them being responsible family men.

Many men now behave this way imo.

And why has that relationship become unhealthy?

Because the people involved have lost perspective.

Lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates are completely because women don't have to take that shit anymore

I guess if you look at the situation 50 or so years ago if you got pregnant you were pressured to marry. We don't have that pressure now, so fewer people who aren't suited are forced to marry.

Marriage (the ceremony etc) is bloody expensive too. I really can't be arsed to get married and have been coupled up for over 15 years now with children. Years ago it wouldn't be socially acceptable. I do feel some people destroy their relationship with excessively stressful weddings that cost a bomb (sometimes via loans) and pressure the relationship before they marry, so although it seems like they haven't tried in their marriage, the cracks were there before, and they were committed due to the effort and money they may have already put in.

I don't think the woman's finances have much to do with it. Certainly in the town I live in the average wage is not enough financial freedom for families to split. It is much easier financially to stay coupled up and work on the relationship in this day and age. Housing costs and bills prohibit people divorcing at the moment.