I’m a huge proponent of divorce. I grew up in a dysfunctional household where my parents stayed together. Their relationship was not healthy, nor were the individuals in it. My mother was physically and emotionally abusive. My father was distant and, when present, was focused on placating her. When my own marriage of 16 years ran into problems that were seemingly intractable, I finally realized I did not want similar for myself, my then-wife, or my kids. I spent several years trying to mend things, but I was the only participant. I have no regrets over leaving, it was best for everyone.
As a culture, we are moving away from upholding institutions for their own sake at the cost of individuals who may be harmed by them. I see marriage as no exception.
While it is true that some marriages aren't fixable, my opinion is that people jump way too quickly to the divorce option in our culture. As such, I think that we (as a whole society) need the "try to make it work" message more than we need the "it's ok to not stick around" message.
It took me a long time to be able to be thankful that my partners didn't perpetually try to fix the structurally unsound relationships in either of my marriages. I can put up with about anything, in a sense. I am grateful they could not.
I spent about 20 years in those two relationships, and it wasn't until I got out that I realized how broken all that was.
This is such a weird thing to say. It's like saying one is a huge proponent of homicide. But then it turns out that they mean homicide when it's to protect a small child from a murderous predator. By itself the statement is just a bizarre statement of values.
Some marriages are bad, and should never have happened (I'm a proponent of people not going into clearly bad marriages, though many do). More often than not those marriages had two selfish people who will never find happiness. But divorce is no magical solution, and enormous numbers of people who choose that option regret it. Because the grass isn't always greener, and you don't suddenly regain youth, and your life isn't suddenly wonderful and free of obligation, etc. Which is clearly what this article is about, and not about abusive or broken relationships.
There's a bit of a Reddit meme that people post their "my partner forgot to put their yogurt cup in the recycling" and 90% of the replies are some variation of "lawyer up, hit the gym, dump their ass" type commentary, and it's just comical. Misery loves company. Miserable people are like Sirens of greek mythology, and their greatest hope is to encourage others to be as miserable.
>As a culture, we are moving away from upholding institutions for their own sake
Divorce rates are at like a 50-year low so this is a strange statement to make.
>Divorce rates are at like a 50-year low so this is a strange statement to make.
There's a reason divorce rates are low: go check out the statistics for marriage rates. They're really low too. In short, people just aren't getting married as easily as they did decades ago. You can't get divorced if you don't get married in the first place.
>This is such a weird thing to say. It's like saying one is a huge proponent of homicide.
That's because you're being pedantic. Obviously, the OP is advocating divorce for highly troubled marriages, not all marriages. Which marriages are and aren't salvageable is a matter of debate of course, but you could have understood the OP's meaning if you had read the rest of the post.
The ratio of divorces to marriages is lower than any point since the 1970s. Fewer marriages are ending in divorce, and this is all ignoring that divorces are lagging so the effect is even more pronounced.
> Obviously, the OP is advocating divorce for highly troubled marriages
It actually isn't obvious. Stating that you're a proponent of divorce without qualifiers sounds like something that a jaded spinster would say. But regardless this whole sidetrack is in relation to an article that really obviously is talking about marriages falling apart over silly things, not abusive or actually broken relationships, but invariably we get caught up in tut tut exception commentary.
As a culture, we are moving away from upholding institutions for their own sake at the cost of individuals who may be harmed by them. I see marriage as no exception.