Unloving marriages ending in divorce

[Ceramiq]

Sadly several long term marriages around me are ending in divorce at the moment. One of the recurrent themes seems to be that the marriages were entered into with goals of financial security/domestic labour/children/material comforts but that true love was never a feature - seduction and shared life goals perhaps, but not real true loving feelings for the other person. And so once children have grown up and flown the nest and all shared goals have been accomplished, the two people in question can't find anything to share to carry them forward (and indeed are pretty fed up with one another). The divorces are pretty acrimonious.

Should young people be given better education about love?

I don’t think young people need ‘educating’ about love but I do think that many people around me and within my circle have decided to get married and have kids because they think it’s ’the right thing to do’ rather than because they actually like each other.

Similarly, I also have a few friends who are single mothers now because they settled down with whoever they were dating around the time they were of childbearing age when it was obvious both to them and everyone around them that they weren’t well suited with their partner/husband.

As a society we seem to have abandoned the notion of personal responsibility and everyone is always looking for someone to blame. Sometimes it’s as simple as people knowingly making bad decisions.

I want to divorce my husband. I have never properly loved him.
My reasons were simply that I had two long term ( 5 years +) loving relationships that didn’t work out. Both we discussed marring before splitting. And a few casual boyfriends that fizzled out.
The first because of logistics- I didn’t want to stop my career and live in another country (which he had a fantasy career lined up).
The second because I knew deep down he didn’t love me as much as I loved him, although we had a child together.

My husband loved me, he’s kind, funny and well off and basically you only live once.
I’m not sure either of us would have found the person of our dreams. Although given our ages (50’s) he’s a catch, so he might. I don’t mind about being single