Pondering marriage longevity

[thenorthernluce]

Recently, I’ve been thinking about what makes a marriage last or break down. My own parents divorced after 20-odd years and three children. They are now both in their early 70s, and got married in the mid-70s after a year (six month “courtship” and six month engagement).

I got married two years ago after being with my husband five years, and we’d lived together for three years prior to the engagement. We had our first child a year ago and my husband’s love, support and sheer brilliance as a father have made me love him even more now we’re parents.

I was talking to my Mum and her closest friend the other day. Her friend was asking how my husband and I had adjusted to parenthood. I told her there had been huge difficulties, of course, but we were very happy on the whole, and our relationship had thrived. This led to a discussion about their experiences of becoming parents in the 70s/80s and how it changed their relationships with their husbands.

My Dad always told my mum that one of the many reasons for his infidelity while they were married was due to my Mum ignoring him and putting all her physical and emotional energy into the children, so they rarely had time as a couple, so he sought this elsewhere.

My Mum visits us monthly and always babysits one night so my husband and I can have a date night. This is so important to us and I’m grateful my Mum can do this. She and her friend told me they never did this when the children were young as it seemed so self-indulgent and wasteful (eg of money for a babysitter that could have been better spent elsewhere). They both commended me for giving a degree of priority to spending time with my husband alone.

This got me thinking about whether it’s a generational thing between my cohort and my parents’ - was it the “done” thing in the 70s/80s to be so all-encompassed as a parent that you didn’t have as much time for your spouse? Is my generation more selfish in that respect? Was my grandparents’ generation better than my parents’ in terms of children slotting into their lives versus taking over, to the detriment of a marriage? Is that why divorce was less common then more common and now less common (if it even is??)?

Just my ponderings of a Monday evening! I’d be interested to read what others think.

I always thought past generations didn't divorce as much because it was shit for single mums. Stigma, financially, no child care ect staying miserable and married better of the two evils

That's really interesting because I get the impression it was the other way round back in the day (I think my parents were probably your grandparents' generation). Of course we were important as children but we fitted in with their lives which didn't revolve around us. There was little, if any, helicopter parenting. We made our own way to activities - if they were too far we just didn't go. School holidays we made our own entertainment (which included me a friend sharing a pair of roller skates - literally one each - round town one summer!). There were holiday clubs but I only went to a couple. There was none of the micro-planning which leaves parents feeling guilty that they've had a PJ day and ironically most Mums were at home most of the time as housewives. I know the highlight of my Mum's day was when my Dad came home from work. I don't have DCs but it seems that Dads are a lot more involved with their children now whereas back then parenting was definitely women's work during the working week at least.

I also think they didn't expect married life to be a bed of roses. Who's to say whether that was better or worse?

A friend of mine became the third wife of a much older man (30+ years older). He hardly knew his children from his first marriage, his idea of fathering was signing cheques. But he couldn't do enough for the children from his second marriage so things have changed even in one man's marital lifetime.

As DontCallMeCharlotte said, I thought it was the opposite! My parents had both sets of grandparents on tap for babysitting and I stayed at my grandmothers every Saturday night while they went out together. They also had regular weekends away together. My parents however still have their jobs and social lives so we don’t have babysitters as readily available.
My parents still divorced, despite the regular ‘date nights’.

I think men are (generally, there will be exceptions both ways) more involved now and have more understanding of what parenting is like. My mum (in her 60s, divorced) says that men did a lot less around the house/with children and also expected to be more controlling within rheir marriages. She thinks a lot of her friend divorced in their 50s because they were depressed at how unequal their relationships were. Not that all of us in Gens X and Y have perfectly equal relationships, but there's a greater expectation of it.

Sorry for the muddled thoughts, I'm pretty tired!

I wonder if the fact that many people live together before getting married affects this change. GP generation divorce was akin to social suicide. Parents generation on the whole got married without knowing each other’s silly bad habits (my DH always seems to scatter socks, for example) but divorce has been an option. Our generation live together and find out before marriage if they’ll drive each other nuts (and my have a wider sample of earlier failed relationships to judge against on average?).

Clearly gross generalisations here...

Been with my DP for 20 years, we don't have date nights, it wouldn't occur to me. DC are 11yrs and 9yrs, I think we've only been out maybe 3 or 4 times together without them in the evening. And we're happy!