Marriages don’t last anymore because..

[PictureImperfect]

Had a debate with an colleague about why divorce seems so much more common now.

They said that in past generations, couples stayed together because they wanted to work through things and were more committed to making relationships last. I said I think it’s mainly because women have more freedom and independence now. Yes, most of the childcare still falls on women, but that was even more true in the past. Back then, loads of women didn’t have the opportunity to work full time and build careers like their husbands, so they relied on them for financial stability. Now that women can provide their own stability, they’re simply less likely to tolerate an unhappy marriage.

To me, that just seems like basic common sense but my colleague laughed and said I was completely wrong. According to them, people today just can’t be bothered to put in the effort and treat relationships as disposable. They also scoffed when I said women still don’t have the same opportunities as men.

It’s had me thinking, I honestly thought this was just obvious, but now I’m wondering what others think. AIBU, or is my colleague?

@RhaenysRocks

But those two things, especially the children, are massive. Would you still have your own happiness as top priority if you had children who would quite like to grow up in a together family that rubs along ok?

Its a fair question.

On the economic point: I think staying with someone you don’t like or respect for money is always a bad idea. If that’s what is keeping a marriage together there’s no question that its always better to leave. Find your own economic path, even if the material rewards are far lower. This is why I believe becoming a SAHM is almost always a bad idea. It makes you so vulnerable.

The second question is harder. If you have small (infant) children I still think it’s best to leave because staying models a poor template for healthy human relationships. I left my husband when my daughter was 3, precisely because I knew it would be harder if she was 12 or 15. I can see there is some merit in sticking with a boring or unfulfilling but otherwise OK marriage until children have left home.

But for me those are the only two real justifications for legally yoking two people together for life.

100%.

My DGP care for each other like two old trees growing side by side. But my GF is relentlessly stubborn and controlling. My GM likes to give the illusuon that she has control but the reality is she never worked and my GF holds the purse strings and calls the shots. I’ve seen how this has worn my GM down over the years. Walking on eggshells just to keep the peace. It breaks my heart to think how much freer and happier her life could have been if she had been able to be single, living for herself rather than constantly yielding to my irrational GF.

This. It was only 50 years ago that the law changed to allow women to have a mortgage on their own. When my parents married in 1959 they opened a joint account. The bank manager looked at my father and said " Do you want your wife to have access to the account" . My father was at teacher training college at the time so wasn't earning a salary. My mother was a legal secretary ( they lived with her in laws) so the only money coming in was hers and it was perfectly legal for the bank to stop her having any access to it.
My mother's cousin married in the 1970s. His wife became pregnant very quickly so almost from the start of the marriage she was preparing to stop work and have a family. She still to this day doesn't have a bank account of her own . Her salary as a nurse was paid into her husband's bank account from the start and now her pension is paid into his account. They are in their 70s. She has no idea about their finances. Horrifying to us today but perfectly normal when they started.

Today, marriage is an uneccassary legal prpcess that shockingly still removes women's rights to be married

What?

My DH worked more hours than me and eared more. But he also sacrificed my career for his. He wouldn’t pick up the kids from childcare (I’d ask and he would forget). Couldn’t manage basic parenting of the kids he had begged me to have.

Then one day I needed to be picked up from the hospital after a general aesthetic and he wasn’t sure if he could manage it (I checked his work diary and he didn’t have that much on). He wasn’t indispensable, just extremely self centred.

Working long hours doesn’t excuse anyone of basic decency towards their loved ones.

Divorce was a big thing years ago, you just didn’t. You married for life and that was it. not always a good thing, but then I do believe couples worked through things rather than give up. I know some things can’t be worked through, I divorced my first husband. I was really made to feel bad about it from my family they didn’t like having a divorce in the family even though he hit me, and then cheated.

people live together rather than marry, so just split rather than divorce.

i do think a big reason though is that people want the perfect marriage, they believe that everything will be wonderful and partners will always be loving and perfect. They watch media feeds about the perfect supposed life others lead and assume they will have the same. When they find that actually life does have its shit bits they are angry and instead of working to improve they just throw in the towel and walk away

basically, marriage is like everything else in life these days - disposable

My parents divorced in the 1960s. I think two competing, demanding careers were part of the reason. Childcare was never easy.

If you skim posts on here from women struggling with their DHs while raising infants, there’s always a stream of replies that say nothing more than, “Don’t give up your job.” It’s what we’ve learned from the past: women stepped back from their careers and became trapped. I think it’s a rose tinted view to say couples were more resilient. No - women had no choice but to become resilient, no matter how much of an arsehole their DH was.

But you still have to look at the dynamics etc. Why isn't marriage as common? Are those getting married taking longer to commit, i.e. living together beforehand which is now obviously more socially acceptable, so only the fully committed couples are getting married these days, so obviously more likely to stay together. Whereas a few decades ago, did people "rush into" marriage without being fully convinced they were right for each other, because living together was frowned upon? Also how do same-sex marriages fit into the comparatives as, of course, that was legally impossible until relatively recently, so current marriage/divorce statistics including same sex marriages can't be reliably compared to, say, 30 years ago when it wasn't legally possible.

It was 10 years since meeting until me and DH got married and we'd been engaged for 5 years. We didn't even live together. We bought our first house together to move into upon marriage and started planning children once married. Yes, very old-fashioned - that's us! But we've now been together 38 years. For, I'd say, 9 of those first 10 years, we were definitely "together" in all ways just short of marriage and living together. We did literally everything else as a committed couple. We were 100% certain the "marriage" would survive, because we'd survived all sorts in the early decade (close family deaths, redundancies, serious health conditions, etc). Looking back, pretty sure that we could have married, bought a house and had children 5/8 years earlier and still be together.

During those 38 years, we've seen our siblings marry and divorce, neighbours marry and divorce, work colleagues marry and divorce, and the one thing in common with nearly them all was going head long into committment without properly knowing eachother, i.e. my sister was engaged after 6 months, married after a year, and then suffered a decade or two stuck with bringing up kids until she finally left and divorced her husband. I told her at the time he was wrong for her and they were moving too quickly, but she batted me off saying she was "innn luuuuvve"! DH's brother did exactly the same - almost indecent haste to get married and then it all fell apart within a couple of years.

I think it's a good thing that it's now socially acceptable to live together before marriage as it gives more "breathing space" to get to know someone before committing to marriage. Though I don't really think that buying a house together nor having children together too soon is good as having children together is a more serious commitment than getting married as children are for life and you're stuck co-parenting with someone for your child's entire life!

My parents were married for over 60 years. After the gloss wore off, they realised they really weren't suited to each other at all. Mothers didn't work in those days or maybe a part-time job when the children were teenagers. It was just economically unviable to split up. Men stayed because they didn't want the mother of their children and their children to be left near destitute as there simply wasn't enough money to run two households. There weren't the social welfare benefits that exist today.

My mother was part of the generation of women hooked on valium - our local doctor had most of the unhappy housewives in the suburb on some cocktail of antidepressants. When a new GP took over, I can't imagine what he felt when he realised what he'd taken on - most of his client list were simply on another planet. He said rather weakly to my mother that she should try to cut down. My mother did eventually get off them but it wasn't easy. She was pretty much legally stoned for many years and had memory gaps.

My grandmother probably had it much worse. She died in her forties of tuberculosis. I am not sure where my grandfather was but it was my uncle, her then fourteen year old son who was with her when she died and attended to reporting the death of his mother and the death certificate. I imagine my grandfather was on a bender at the time and I don't think it was grief about the death of his wife either that caused it.

I think people leave now because they can. In the old days, if he kept a steady job, wasn't incredibly tight with money and didn't beat you, you were considered lucky. And divorce wasn't that easy to get in those days either - if a woman was divorced for adultery, she would likely lose all custody of her children. The mother of one of my contemporaries never saw her two sons from her first marriage ever again. My mother encouraged me to qualify for a well-paid job, keep my own money separate and marry when I was older than she was when she got married at 21. I got married at 29 and picked a good one. I think your friend OP is very ill informed about the "good old days".

If you have small (infant) children I still think it’s best to leave because staying models a poor template for healthy human relationships. I left my husband when my daughter was 3, precisely because I knew it would be harder if she was 12 or 15.

This exactly. My ex became abusive as soon as ds was born. The contempt and undermining started in the maternity unit, to the point the senior midwife asked "if there was anything I needed to tell her". I was stunned. By the time ds was 1 I knew we were leaving. No way was ds growing up watching that.

…because women aren’t prepared to put up with men’s shit any more and can make their own money.

that’s obviously a very simplified version but I agree with you OP, that’s what it boils down to.

I think there are a multitude of reasons why marriages fail and most of us will pick the reasons that reinforce their views of life.
personally I think Human being are inherently selfish creatures (regardless of gender) all you have to do is look at things like climate change, poverty, war, genocide etc to recognise that.
traditionally men were in positions of power so they could then use those levers of power to make sure their needs were met, as women move into more position of power and responsibility they will do the same, (that’s generally been my experience) as humans we need some form of pressure on us to put a stop to our selfishness and think in a more altruistic way, this has previously come from religion, society, financial pressure.
marriage requires lots and lots of compromise over a long period of time, without the previous pressure, our natural tendencies to be selfish and social media etc amplifying these selfish tendencies inevitably leads to the failure of marriages.
not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, humans have invented and produced some amazing things on the back of our selfishness, but also done terrible things

Fair comment, but some women DID keep working back in the day too. My mother never stopped working, and that was in the 60s. I remember my best friend's Mum at primary school also worked. Both full time too!

Of course, lots of mothers worked part time too, i.e. in shops, pubs, offices, and self employment like dress-making, etc, and of course, farmers' wives typically always worked.

I’ve never felt hindered by raising my own children, it was a privilege.

IMO, it's because women have changed, but men haven't. Even women who are very family focused work, bringing in a huge part of the family income. As a result, they expect more equity. Not to have to do all the domestic labour. Not to do 99% of child rearing. Definitely not to have to take care of another adult.

Whereas men ideally would like the woman to shoulder most of the domestic burden, while also working and contributing a full-time wage. This equation is played out on MN pages day after day, year after year. And eventually women work out life is easier without a lazy husband.

The couples that stay together EITHER have some degree of settlement on this issue OR the woman accepts she will never get that equity.

Selfish men are risking their life satisfaction now. Because as we all know, married men are happier and live longer than single men.

Divorce rates are actually declining. That’s a statistical fact. Anecdotally one of theories is that couples are taking their time before getting married maybe living together first finding out if they’re compatible. So a lot of marriages that would have ended in divorce are not happening in the first place

Women are now allowed to earn their own money, take out their own loans, have access to contraception, can initiate divorce.

Men are no longer women’s jailers (though we still have quite a way to go)

basically, marriage is like everything else in life these days - disposable

I agree and I'd go further: All relationships seem to be disposable these days, romantic or otherwise. Casual sex. Ghosting. People using dating apps for hookups and thinking that’s OK (it's not, it's cheap and tacky and thirty years ago if they'd existed you would have got a reputation as such for doing so). People treating others as someone just to hook up with for their own fun and gratification. People who can't be bothered to respond to well-meaning messages because "a phone is for my convenience, not theirs". People who see friendly communication as an unwanted intrusion. People dispensing with their friends as soon as they find a partner and are too busy getting laid to remember they have them. People who only want friends who bring “fun” to their lives and don’t stick around to support them in bad times because it's "too draining". People who see no use for their friends once they have children and “my little family”, yet expect them to still be there pathetically waiting in the wings when the kids are older and they're bored and decide it's time to pick them back up again.

This is why marriages fail - because people are like this now. No compromise at any point. No comprehension that other peoples' feelings exist.

When, and why, did people become so awful, and so self-centred?

Likewise. We thought long and hard about whether to have a child/(ren). We probably spent 2 or 3 years properly discussing it and planning it, on and off. We're "planners and thinkers" so pretty much considered all implications. We'd discussed, at great length, our respective roles/responsibilities, how working around a child would fit with our work and social lives, etc. Basically, every aspect planned with military precision (my father was in the RAF so I grew up with that mindset). If either of us had thought for one second that a child would be a "hindrance" to either of us, we'd not have had a child! We knew it would be hard and would limit our options for 18+ years, but we saw that as a privilege and decided to embrace the excitement of doing new things that opened up to us through the different ages of a child. People who regard kids as a hindrance (male or female) really shouldn't be having them!

Definitely. I learned this from my mother (and other women). Plunged into poverty after divorce whereas father went on to live a very comfortable life.

No way EVER was I not going to work. Being a SAHM is a recipe for poverty. The sociological term, 'The feminisation of poverty' is based on SAHM post divorce. Consequently, post divorce, I'm on a par with my ex. And I didn't get child support out of him.

Sad, but true!

Haven't read the whole thread, but these are my thoughts.

The understanding of a greater variety of behaviour constituting abuse means that people are less likely to accept it as normal and acceptable - both experiencing it, and seeing another person victimised. It's no longer - 'well, you've still got all your teeth, and you can cover up the bruises with make up, so suck it up buttercup'.

In line with this, people are more knowledgeable and concerned about that the potential consequences are for children witnessing and experiencing abuse and poor behaviour in a marriage, and more motivated and more supported to leave when it is present.

That's what I was trying to say in my earlier post. Because living together is now socially acceptable, people can "try before you buy" and it's easier to walk away before you get stuck with the commitment of marriage. (and hopefully before other commitments such as having children together and buying a house before marriage/civil p'ship).

@Badbadbunny yes, that is a fair point. I was with my DH for six years before we got married and we've been happily married for 22 years. Although, my parents were together for a year before getting married and they're been happily married for 57 years now!