To secretly speculate about my friends' future divorces

[flossydog]

I don't share my thoughts out loud as it'd be mean and hurt trust if it got back to them, but I often find myself trying to guess which of the couples I know are most likely to split up.

Is that really bad?? Anyone else do this...?

Are you single by any chance?

I definitely bet they’ve had those conversations too, and if they’ve thought of us as being potential divorcees, that’s fine! I’m not precious about it 🤣 it’s harmless chit chat.

And the groups that don't tend to marry and hence the DR goes up are skewed to lower income or already divorced or those have children prior to marriage. The women who make up the cohort are exactly the women who need the legal protection of marriage the most as they sacrifice any financial development for child rearing and are vulnerable to relationship breakdown. Yet they have been sold a pup of 'it's only a bit of paper' or it '50 percent chance it will fail anyway'. You can add in the demonising of marriage as an institution and the hostility from the media portraying married people as boring and conservative and continually being told there is someone better that meets all 1003 of your non negotiatables out there, and low income women have been well and truly screwed over, again.

I would disagree with this actually. I know you were just being snide but it’s interesting to consider.

Sometimes it takes really good relationship skills to recognise that you’ve grown apart or whatever and getting divorced is actually a super-healthy idea. I can think of people who have done this that I would gladly listen to relationship advice from. And some others who are still married who I wouldn’t.

(not married or divorced myself but in a multi-decade relationship)

Yeah I do that.

Only been proved wrong once but they definitely should have divorced years ago.

Basically she wont leave the lifestyle and he doesnt want to lose what he would in a divorce. So he has affairs right left and centre, slags her off for being a lazy entitled alcoholic (in fairness, she is) and plays nice for their (now adult) kids.

She slags him off for cheating (again, in fairness....he really is), refuses to work despite no reason to not work and sort of plays nice for the kids until she gets pissed again and goes on a drunken rant about what an arsehole he is.

I think that they are both waiting for the other one to die.

ETA realise that that looks like it is all on her but it isnt. He was/is also a workaholic and hands off father who wanted the childfree life despite agreeing to have 2 kids...

Good question! I think we're both happy and secure in the relationship. We've been together 12 years and basically never fight (though having a child has introduced some tensions!) so I give us pretty good odds of growing old together.

I think this line of thought was sparked by a friend talking about her husband who she clearly loved but was also exasperated by. She said her ideal situation was that they lived in separate houses next to each other, but in another conversation she said this was basically what her own parents do and she thinks they should have divorced years ago. Which definitely made me go hmm.

I'm in my thirties and so are most of my friends. A couple I'd known since uni actually broke up at the end of last year and I suppose I didn't see it coming but it also didn't surprise me. I'd lived with them both over a decade ago, and one of them was quite immature and selfish at the time and that apparently hadn't changed much.

Relationships are funny things though. I know for certain lots of people thought myself and DH wouldn’t last when we met and announced a pregnancy within six months of meeting each other as we are very different people. However twenty years on, it is surprising to realise how many of the couples at our wedding have split over the years, including both his brothers, one of his groomsmen and both our mothers while we are still going strong and seen to have seen them all off. Some splits seem inevitable while others come as a complete shock.

I was commenting on why people didn’t come to our wedding because they decided we wouldn’t make it. It’s relevant to the post and the reason they gave for not coming. Not sure why you’re quite so offended.

@Playsillygameswinstupidprizes & @beasmithwentworth — I'm not single, I've been with my partner over a decade. I don't think I'm bitter, I genuinely wish my friends all the best and think on balance most will actually stay together. It's just, with the divorce stats and also the things my friends sometimes say about their relationships, I can't help but wonder!

Actually I remember when I was a teenager being really cynical. At 14, I remember when two friends of the family got together thinking, "oh they'll break up in no time". My parents divorced when I was a baby, my mum had had loads of failed relationships, so that's what I knew. Well this couple stayed together for years and I remember thinking that my cynicism was misplaced. But eventually it turned out the chap was having an affair and he left with the other woman. But really, just because my initial cynicism proved right in this one case, I realise it doesn't mean most committed relationships are like that.

When does that ever happen though?

I agree with those factors. I think the younger couples are more likely to split— they've got more time to move apart. But the main factor for me is whether they have the same level of emotional maturity, things in common, and whether there are any sources of resentment. Stuff like unequal burden of housework or childcare.

@flossydog But why do you think you’re the exception to your own rule? Surely you must think your friends think the same about you? Been together over ten years, relationship a bit stale at that long, then add kids into the mix. You’ve admitted it’s added tension.. said a few friends broke up last year that you didn’t see coming. That could be you by the end of the year. You say your happy and secure, never fight bad can imagine you live together a long time but you’re friends who you were shocked at breaking up probably thought the same thing. I predict you might be posting about a blindsided breakup pretty soon.

Pfffffft. I think a lot of you are holding a lot of store by ‘not getting divorced’ as some kind of ‘win’ at life.

IMHO plenty of my friends should have got divorced - including the ones in abusive relationships where the ‘D’H had so undermined the wife that she didn’t believe anyone could ever love her, or the one where the ‘D’H put the wife in hospital, or the one where the partner slept on the couch for eight years and refused to leave the house when the relationship broke down. those should have got divorced and all to the good, but unfortunately for my dear friends they did not.

I had wondered this. Whether thinking about other people breaking up would make it more likely I'd feel disatisfied with my own relationship. But in a way, it's been reassuring. I think we've got more in common with the friends that I think will stick together, and less with those I'm not sure about.

I was covering that with don't marry a dick head 😂😂

@Playsillygameswinstupidprizes Like I said, I think most of my friends will stay together, so I hope we're not the exception to that. Still, it could happen!

We recently went to visit a husband and wife who had been married a long time now and I remember thinking that I would not put up with how the guy spoke if I were in that relationship. Always correcting her. Do I think they'll split up? Maybe. Maybe not as she's put up with it for a long time already. Maybe it doesn't bother her? But it did make me think my own relationship had a lot more basic respect. We're not always bickering or telling each other the other is wrong, we apologise when we're ever impatient or curt. Stuff like that.

But then... does that make it more likely we'll split if we lost that basic respect? If I woke up one day (maybe when our kid is grown) and saw that we were always arguing and resentful, would I not want to make it work? I guess I'll have to wait and see, right. @girlwhowearsglasses is right, some couples really should split up, after all.

33 years in and married 28 years. These are the real signs it's going to go wrong, imo
Not being kind to each other. Financially and emotionally mean.
Not listening to a partner and correcting or belittling them, even in 'jest', especially in public.
An addiction that squashes all respect and love.
That's about it. I would say any relationship you know that has failed you would have seen those traits before it failed.

But you haven’t answered anything I asked and instead reflected on yet another friend who seems to have had marriage troubles in your opinion. You should maybe stop looking at your friends’s relationship and start looking at your own marriage. You really do seem to be projecting. If you’re unhappy then end it. And I wouldn’t wait until the kids are grown either as you’re just making yourself miserably for numerous years and the kids will pick up on it and end up miserable.

I see now you asked whether I think my friends wonder the same thing about me... maybe! But I think probably most would conclude that we're unlikely to split any time soon.

I genuinely am happy. Having a child means we're both more stretched, but we're also good at working together, talking to each other. I feel like we're on the same page. We put importance on much the same things. And there's still that spark between us. But we're also not wholly dependent on one another, we've both got friends and hobbies outside the relationship.

Funnily enough, I know this hasn't been your intention, but the more I talk about it here, the happier I am with where I'm at! Life is pretty good. And maybe it helps we've been lucky in various ways with work, money, etc. We've got a lot of slack. Besides having a child, we don't have a lot of the big things that put stress on relationships.

I wouldn't spend too much time on it!

Oh my mum told me once she did this about her kids…. three of us….

I didn’t respond and she didn’t elaborate further

made me feel yuk

100% I would feel the same if my mum said this to me. I know for a fact she didn't want the relationship to last at the beginning (I think she's now come around, but who knows what she could be secretly harbouring in her own heart)

I do this too, I think a lot of people do. Just keep it to yourself.

Just ignore them - this poster has been really weird throughout this thread and seems to have taken every post personally.

It’s bizarre. A nerve touched perhaps 🫢