Marriage problems and divorce

[ThatAdeptTiger]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and can’t quite get my head around it. Why do people get married, make those vows, and then end up divorcing? I saw that around 42% of marriages in the UK end this way, which just feels incredibly high.

I don’t mean this in a judgmental way at all. I know life isn’t straightforward and relationships are complicated. People go through all sorts, stress, depression, menopause, life pressures, health issues and all of that must put a huge strain on even the strongest relationships. But I suppose that’s part of what I’m wondering… what changes? Do people go into marriage without really understanding what it takes, or do things just evolve over time in ways you can’t predict? Maybe more importantly, why does it feel like people don’t (or can’t) talk things through and fight for their marriage anymore? Is it that communication breaks down beyond repair, or that people are less willing to stay and work through issues than in the past?

I’d genuinely be interested to hear different perspectives, especially from people who’ve been through it. What actually happens between “I do” and deciding to walk away?

I think quite honestly nobody can see into the future, and it's slightly unrealistic to think that you, or your partner could/should be the exact same person at say, 50 as you were at 25. People change and evolve, personally, environmentally etc.

Also the reality is that you don't actually know how you, or your partner, and the pair of you together are going to navigate very difficult circumstances until it actually happens. You can hypothesise but sometimes you have no idea until you're actually presented with it, by which time it's kind of too late if you don't see eye to eye.

Also, more generally I think life is too short to be unhappy out of duty. Yes marriage is important for a whole host of reasons, but so is your own happiness. If an unmarried pair split after 20 years it seams to go more unnoticed than a divorcing couple.

As somebody who has gone full circle with this, I welcomed the no fault amendment. People's marriages break down for a million different reasons, but leaving for your own sanity/happiness shouldn't be scrutinised or regarded as 'failure'.

Even just becoming parents changes you in ways you could never expect. People say how hard having children is, but until you actually have them you can’t even begin to imagine how hard it is and the ways in which it’s hard and the ways it changes you and your relationship.
I’m not the same person my husband married. He’s not the same person I married. I meant every word of my vows on the day I married him and thankfully we are still very happy (as happy as two incredibly sleep deprived parents with little to no time together can be that is!) but in five years? Ten? Fifteen? As we move through the new seasons of our life? Who knows? I don’t know who I’ll be in the future or who he will be, or what our hopes and dreams will be then or whether they’ll still align.
I obviously hope we’ll still be together and happy in the future, but to say that because I made vows years ago we will be or must be together is as naive as the me five years ago who said things like “my kids will never do/eat/watch…”
And that’s just with becoming parents. Life throws other things at you, like illness, redundancy, death. You can’t expect life not to change people. But it doesn’t take away that you said vows and that on that day you meant them.
Maybe vows should be more like driving licenses and renewed every ten years, I don’t know 😁

Most modern weddings don’t have those vows. The last time I heard all that gumpf was 1992. Most vows these days are very different and often self-written. People aren’t breaking vows to want to exercise agency and leave someone when things aren’t working out.

If you say so. I would say the traditional vows are 80% of the ones I’ve heard in the last three decades.

People change. Life events hit. My late husband responded to difficult life events by diving into a bottle, and he became someone I no longer recognised. I clung on for far too long before finally choosing to put my children first.

No, I've never heard anyone say traditional vows either. Only ever on TV.

Well I got married to someone I was compatible with, who was fun, supportive, I got on well with his family, made me laugh and I loved. Looking back I know I overlooked things that now have become big things. His ' glass half empty' used to overridden by my sometimes too ' glass half full' but has turned into prolonged periods of severe depression. His work moaning went from an irritation to the situation we are in now where he cannot hold down a job for more than a few months. He is doing nothing to help himself just taking a cocktail of medication. I have done everything I can for 3 years to hold everything together, to support my teenage children etc. I have given enough. I will give more because now my children are doing their GCSEs and A Levels. Will I keep doing it for the rest of my life when my children have left home? No. His father suffered depression and was an alcoholic. His mother enabled and protected him. I feel this has contributed to my husband's anxiety and depression now. Will I sacrifice my children's future and theirs and my mental health on the altar of his depression because I made marriage vows before they existed? No.

I honestly think it's mostly men at fault. I got married and was very happy for a while. Then I found out that my H was trying to cheat on me all the time. He tried it on with all my friends and even female relatives. Then he did sleep with my best friend. 20 year marriage over.

Now married to someone else for 17+ years. No cheating. Still happy.

I have a theory, that a lot of men who marry young, have a mid life crises around 40 and realise they are missing out on sampling a variety of vaginas. They get restless and end up cheating. I've seen this play out more times than I can count - it's always the men!

Firstly we did not get married in a religious ceremony, so it was just a declaration that we wanted to marry. So not everyone makes specific vows.
Secondly, people now live much longer.
If you research your family tree you will find umpteen people who died young. My grandmother was widowed twice, her first husband was 35, her second at 57. He was 15 years older than her. We aren't really meant to spend 50 years with one person, it's beyond a reasonable life span. And within that time we change and maybe grow apart.

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There are a lot of decisions people make in their lives with very good intentions, hoping it'll work out - moving to a new place, starting a new job/business, changing career etc. Because we can't predict the future, some of those deicisons work out and some of them don't. Marriage is exactly the same. So many variables affect marriage -there are two people involved, plus children, plus families, health, money etc and there are so many opportunities for things to go wrong. The fact that millions make it work and live happily together for years is very impressive. The fact that millions don't is to be expected.

I think the convention of marriage is so ingrained in society that people expect it after a certain amount of time and some people will think something is wrong if you say you don't want to get married, it could be the logical next step in a relationship. My husband and i were together for 9 years before he proposed and another 6 before we actually married and we had to deal with the usual questions; 'Don't you want to get married?' Don't you believe in marriage?' Why are you waiting so long?' Marriage is personal and it's not for everyone but it's really nobody else's business. I think people get married too quickly because it's expected and not neccessarily what they want and even worse people get married in a vain attempt to fix a damaged relationship when it's already past repair and becoming tied to the that person will only make things worse and divorce is inevitable. If he asked me I would had said yes to marrying my husband after two years but would I be as happy and still with him now if we had married so quickly when I was still working him out and finding his little quirks endearing rather than annoying.

Was your best friend a man?