'Till Death Do Us Part...Or A Divorce

I feel like there should be a coin flip after the "I do's". An interesting article in the NY Times:

More than half the Americans who might have celebrated their 25th wedding anniversaries since 2000 were either divorced, separated or widowed...

What I found a little interesting were the last two paragraphs:

Among men over 15, the proportion who have never been married was 28 percent for whites, 45 percent for blacks, 39 for Hispanic people and 33 percent for Asians.

Among women over 15, it was 22 percent for whites, 44 percent for blacks, 30 percent for Hispanic people and 23 percent for Asians.

I guess that is the equivalent of saying the percent of people that never marry in their lifetime. I tend to agree with that seven-year itch theory and I've heard as well that if people make it past their 10 year anniversary then there is a good chance that they will stay together beyond that. I would say that probably for the majority of people there is that "honeymoon" period were everything is fine and dandy followed by few rocky years by which at around year 7/8 is where the decision is made. It was brought up in a conversation I had with some friends that because people know that divorce is an option, people are more likely to marry knowing full well that it is not necessarily until "death do us part". I wonder of the percent of marriages that do stay intact, how many actually only stay together because filing for a divorce would incur substantial financial costs and emotional impact on the family whereby the decision to stay together unhappily outweighs those costs of actually getting a divorce. I also wonder if there is a correlation between the length of a marriage and the average age of the two people involved. For example, are younger couples more likely to divorce after the same years being married as an older one?

Buy Low, Divorce High

I couldn't come up with a catchier title than the article so I decided to use it. Wow, what an interesting article. I was thinking about extracting quotes and commenting like I did on a previous post, but I found that I would probably highlight the entire thing.

I read another article that stated 75% of divorces in the U.S. are initiated by the woman! The article (which I can't seem to find at the moment but will look for it) also stated that 54% of American marriages end in divorce, 60% of Americans dislike their job, and 65% of Americans are obese. Now, I'm not going to guarantee the preciseness of any of these percentages, but I don't really see them being too far off. By the way, it was around July 4th when I read this article and the author wrote the sarcastic piece ending with "oh its great to be an American. Happy Birthday America".

I'm going to use that Star War's quote again: "Passion clouds judgment". Why not sign a prenup? According to this article when marriage is on the mind, divorce of course is the last thing on the mind. That's obvious. But, people change, situations change. Think about it. In every other facet of our lives when we enter a high-stakes agreement/deal there is usually some sort of insurance involved. Own a car? Do you have insurance? Own a home? Do you have insurance? Have a kid? Do you have insurance? Get married? Did you sign a prenup? The thinking is "oh, of course not. Not us. Divorce? Neeever". The simple fact of the matter is that you never know what is going to happen in the future. Step out of love for a minute and think.

I honestly don't see why more people don't sign prenups. Think about it: 54% chance of divorce. I feel like there should be a coin toss at the end of marriage ceremonies. I honestly don't know why that number isn't higher. I would guess it is due to the fact that some people cannot fathom the cost of divorce, both monetarily and emotionally on the family so they would rather stay unhappily married than divorced. Is going into a marriage likely to be a successful endeavor? I don't know about you, but I don't generally partake in activities where it is shown that a greater than 50% failure is to be expected and if you do fail you lose 50% of your belongings. Do I condone divorce? Well I generally agree that people should maximize their happiness. Let's try the example thing again.

Imagine instead of saying "I want to marry this man" or "I want to marry this woman" you say to yourself "I want to marry ". Replace the word "man" or "woman" with anything. I know, I know, you can't compare a human with an inanimate object. Stick with me here for a minute. Choose anything. It could be your job, your car, anything. Give it some thought. I'll wait.

Did you find a good word? If you did, I'd like to know. Can you name any single thing that is not physically attached to you that you would want to have for the rest of your life? Let's say that you did find something, and say that you do want to maximize your happiness. Suppose that over time the thing you chose became less and less appealing and that you are becoming less happy/satisfied. Now if you saw something else that you could get that you would consider an upgrade, and would make you happier, would you go for that upgrade and leave the original thing?

Ok, let's take the flip side and say you are completely satisfied and happy with the original. If you saw the upgrade would you still not go for it? Or would you say, no, I have the original so I'm going to stick with it now matter how much those others could make me even happier. That is one of the points made in the article. I'm not trying to make divorce sound like a good thing or a bad thing. I just think that it is human nature to try to maximize your own happiness. If that means making a change then that means making a change.