Aibu to wonder if divorce statistics don't really apply where I live?

[Aliceinbogna]

I'm separated from my eldest DC's father and moved to a tiny seaside village.

I was having lunch with a group of mums and they were discussing a recent separation of someone they knew which they felt was slurping when they all began saying, 'my husband would never cheat' or 'i cant see us getting divorced.'

They are all in long, stable marriages, some married to their high school sweet hearts. I cant see any of them divorcing or any strange stuff happening. Am I being unreasonable in believing this?

I grew up in a city where divorce rates are high and this place feels like a bubble!

Am I being naive and idealistic?

For there to be a second marriage to break down, a first one must also have broken down too, no?
We will, I hope, be celebrating our Silver Wedding later this year and got married (first time for both) when we were both 35. Our only child left home to go travelling and then to university two and a half years ago. I hope we don't divorce but who knows what might happen?
In our circles of friends, there is a huge mix - never married, been single for a long time, divorced once or twice, co-habiting long-term, married longer than we have been.. Apparently, some professions lend themselves more to serial marriages than others (Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome is one I hear a lot about).

our the rate Of second marriage breakdown is higher.

I think it's about 50% whereas on average the risk of first marriage breakdown is about a third.

It means that your risk of a first marriage breaking down is less than a second.

Depends how you define a 'long shagging around period' really. If it involved cheating on a succession of partners then I'd agree with you. If it involved fully immersing yourself into uni life, a career, a few relationships interspersed with some mutually respectful ons and flings then If beg to differ.

You are forgetting about the group of married once who do not divorce.

Take 100 couples married once. Approx 30 will divorce. That gives a risk of 30/100 for a divorce rate, or the risk.

Now say 20 of those remarry.chances are 10 will go onto have a second divorce. 10/20 is a much higher risk than 30/100

Millionprammiles that's what I was thinking - divorce due cheating is probably evenly distributed geographically etc. etc. etc. but what people will put up with in terms of not being 100% deliriously happy is different in different communities/ groups.

Just as some people put up with too much in terms of being unappreciated/ downtrodden/ miserable/ constant fighting rumbling on for decades, other people have unrealistic expectations of permanent mad passionate love and delirious happiness and give up too easily when 5+ years in things have become a bit routine and perhaps hard work with kids and bills to pay and a few bumps in the road with redundancy or financial problems or a child with problems etc. (fair enough when both parties want out and there are no children, but not always so clearly the right decision when there are school age children for example).

I don't think immersing yourself in uni life means shagging around. Yuk. You don't know what you might catch!

^Fun and regrets you will laugh about at some point?

Schwabischeweihnachtskanne
I reckon hearing probably does factor in a high number of divorces! God know me and DH argue enough about me turning the heating up and him turning it down!!!!

For there to be a second marriage to break down, a first one must also have broken down too, no?
No, the first marriage may have ended with the death of a spouse

I was worried about the slurping too. I was thinking some poor chap was facing divorce for drinking his tea in an ungainly manner.

Why would you do something in order to regret it?

We have this unique bubble in our area OP. Its a naice area so mortgages tend to be high and parents of young children are older than national average. Most parents here with primary school children are in their 40's. A couple from the school recently split and it was very much a shock and unusual.

I think because of these people waiting until they were older to settle and start a family, it may be that they are more stable and sure of their relationship? or maybe they're just mortgaged up to the eyeballs and can't afford to separate!

Good point, sparechange. I've led a sheltered life.

Skimmed thread but in OPs case i think it's a blend of age and social circle.

These days (internet ect) it's unlikely that there's any parts of the country in some sort of old fashioned bubble with regards to monogamy. Hooking up with someone else has never been easier, and folk are folk where ever you go.

Wait for them to get into their late 30s early 40. IME that's when any cracks in a marriage widen. Especially child hood sweetheart type ones.

It makes perfect sense that there will be 'bubbles' of low divorce rates, because divorce is highly concentrated amongst particular demographics. I am similarly ensconced in a near divorce-free bubble, and I would be absolutely rocked to the core if my husband left me. We're so deeply embedded in one another's affairs that it seems impossible.

I'm in my 30's and in my group of close friends 3 are divorced already (2 from husbands cheating, the other the husband was a waste of space. So a third of us. Quite a few really but closing in on the national average!

I read an article recently about divorce rates falling - fairly sure it was in the Times just before Xmas so behind paywall, but google brought up similar from the Telegraph (but without the reference to 2008 weddings being the strongest marriages, which I'm desperately trying to recall!):

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12011714/Divorce-rate-at-lowest-level-in-40-years-after-cohabitation-revolution.html

I don't have any divorced friends. We're all around 40-45. I've been with DH for 20 years now; most of my friends have had similar length relationships. We all lived with our partners before marrying them (in my case, 10 years!). If you don't get married till the 7 year itch has passed, there's a greater chance of a successful marriage 😉 None of us had DC till after marrying, though, so you'd imagine that the stress factors would still be there. Maybe the relationships withstand the stress better, having been together as a couple for some time first? We'd been through house moves, redundancies, family bereavements, illnesses, major operations, etc before getting married so I guess we were reasonably strong before marrying and having the DC.

That said, both of us come from families where the parents married much younger and had DC in early 20s, but are either still together or separated only by death - so the cohabiting theory wouldn't apply there. Of our friends, only one has divorced parents, but the second marriage of the parent who remarried is now 30+ years...

None of us had DC till after marrying

I believe this reveals a constellation of traditional tendencies that probably translates into lower divorce rates.

A lot of my friends have just seperated recently in their 40's - a lot.

Back in my little home town, divorce is less commin. Thinking of me and my sibblings, our parents, my husbands sibling and parents, sil and bil families etc - no divorces.

That's about 17 marriages. Whether they are all happy and should be together is another matter.

We had been together fir 22 years when we had our last baby!

they all began saying, 'my husband would never cheat' or 'i cant see us getting divorced.

Yep - said all that. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence and hints from his best friend "you are so trusting" I still said it.

He did and we did. Nice middle class area. A lot of people stayed married despite being desperately unhappy.

My university consort are late 30s and DHs' are early 40s, none of our friends have got divorced yet. Quite a few took a long time to settle down though, rather than jumping into marriages at an early age (which would maybe be more likely to end in divorce?).

I wouldn't be surprised about any relationship ending though, you never know what's going on for anybody behind closed doors.

DH and I are 46/47.

Relatively few of our friends are divorced and relatively few of our DC's friends'parents are divorced (though some of them are second time arounds).

Obviously, there are exceptions, but they are exceptions.

The key factors seem to be that the adults are mostly well educated, well off, married relatively late.

Of my girlfriends who are divorced, two married men much less well educated and on lower pay than them. One married a class A nut.

Yep - married and happily married are obviously not the same thing, with a few exceptions where things have been rocky even before the couple actually got married it sometimes (totally non scientifically) looks from the outside as if the people who end up divorcing are the ones who appear to the rest of us least likely to!

Hmm I also agree with the PP who said woman are divorcing in their 50's now. That didn't used to be a thing; now it is. I'm late 20's and most of the friends I grew up with; their parents have divorced/split in the last decade. I know it's not all cheating; only one girl's parents had that, but the dad worked away a lot and I guess it just happened.

Most of our mothers just got sick of infantile men behaving like an overgrown child after their children had long since flown the nest Certainly in my scenario, and talking to old friends at weddings etc; the drive seems have have fallen on the mother and the reasons have been that the husband's behaviour is no longer diluted amoung 3 or 4 people, the husband has behaved like an overgrown teen and not done anything for himself/sulked and whined/made life difficult, or they've just grown apart.

Our parents married in their late teens and early 20's, that's 30 plus years together. People are also living longer and realising after their kids leave home when they're late 40's/early 50's, that they could still (touch wood!) live on for another 30/40 years quite happily. The thought of remaining with that person is too much, for some.

Divorce is also easier than it used to be too. My mum and my friend's mums have made a decent amount in the 90's with their respective partners in the housing boom; so when the time has come to divorce, it's also financially viable. Lots of them have come into inheiritance, which may have paid off the mortgage and then had money left over. They can, even after the costs of the solicitors etc, when everything is split down the middle, go and buy a nice new home somewhere else and go and live a happy life.

My hometown is a small place in the South of England, not really near a major town like London or Bristol or anything. Quite countrified and regular, nothing special. So hardly city dwellers

I don't think these women are immune. Marriage is not a commodity to be smug about. You either have one, or you don't. You can work as hard as you like; but as soon as one person stops working at it; that's it. If you don't both want it; it's done.

I'd actually say my parents were pretty smug about their marriage going back about 5 or 10 years. I never realised the full extent of what went on behind closed doors, and how much unhappiness was hidden. Yet my parents would both tut at other's divorce news like 'such a shame... you've got to WORK at it...Thrown it ALL away...'.

My Nan has always said along and happy marriage is much like the secret to a long and happy life. There isn't one. It's more luck than judgement