Several years ago, the New York Times heralded the good news that divorce rates* were not quite as high as had previously been thought. Instead of almost sixty percent, the Times assures me that the chance of me divorcing my first husband are closer to forty percent, less if I am past my mid twenties, educated, employed, and in no particular rush to have children. Because the 60/40 divorce statistic has traditionally been calculated by averaging the annual number of new marriages against the annual number of new divorces. Obviously, this produced an inaccurate result, as the people getting married in a given year are not, by and large, the same people getting divorced.
Fast forward to an article I read at UPI today, which points me to the Marriage Calculator at Divorce360.com to calculate my odds for getting a divorce by comparing my relationship to the success rates of similar relationships. Better yet, with some tinkering it allows you to view the progressive strengths and weaknesses (through the lens of divorce probability) through the course of a relationship. How cool is that?
The highlight of this article, for me, was this: "Different types of people face different divorce rates historically." Your chances of divorce lessen the more education you have and increase the younger you marry, Stevenson explained.
...Which is the type of sense I'm used to NOT hearing in any kind of article about divorce, where the 'D'-word is spoken about as if it usually contains a large element of chance, like a coin flip. I also don't understand why whatever advice people have for avoiding it is meant to take place AFTER marriage, and is (nonsensically) predicated on the assumption that you made a good choice in the first place.
I agree that there are plenty of dumb ways to screw up a marriage, and a lot of good relationship skills that can be developed afterwards, but I wish people would talk LESS about "preventing divorce" and MORE about "effectively evaluating your partner and partnership PRIOR to any expensive legal/festive developments."
This actually cuts to the heart of a lot of my agitation about 'marriage' in general. Anyone -even me- could walk into nearly any bar and walk out with someone who can be wrangled into a marriage in six-to-nine months if that's where you put your energy. That is more then enough time to plan a lavish party for all, but not half enough time (in my mind) to lay the foundation for an enduring partnership, evaluate said foundation, and most of all, evaluate yourself.
Yes, that is a massive time commitment, but we are talking about the rest of your life if you do it right. And you can cut so much time and wasted energy off the front end if you know what your desires and expectations are to begin with, set them high, and are willing to walk away if they aren't met. That doesn't mean "don't compromise"... you can/should/will compromise with a partner. But you can't compromise with a jerk and you should never compromise yourself. And that drops a lot of responsibility back on the individual, to set wise, relevant, and realistic expectations.
...Holy crow, see how conservative I am?
Wow, that was a digression.
As we've said before, divorce isn't the problem. It's the solution to the problem of irresponsible marriage choices, and irresponsible choices made within marriage.
*The articles I reference are describing heterosexual partnerships, for obvious reasons. In my sweeping and dogmatic pronouncements about how other people should handle their significant partnerships I'm talking about everybody.
('Happy Chicago People Celebrating', Picture Courtesy of Official Friend Of CitizenGirl, Lauren)
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