Why so many marriages fail in the US

[neil]

Marriages fail because the world changes. People didn't live this long in the past as they do now, so even a ten-year-old marriage in the past would have been a success. Today if someone gets divorced after fifteen, twenty, thirty, or even fifty years it's still considered a failure.

Interesting & good point.

[Thumpalumpacus]

This is laughably narrow-minded.

And keep yer goddamned religion out of our laws.

The rest of the post sems to be PIDOOMA from the OP.

I'm totally fine with you expressing your opinion about this & what I have to say, but I am not religious, and I actively support getting all aspects of religion out of laws, and the state/government.

That's great. But if you want to posit inequality as the basis for a sound marriage, I'll need to see more than just an unsupported opinion. The most successful marriages I've seen have been based on compromise in a partnership of equals.

[neil]

As a general trend in the USA, divorce rates have been going down since 2008.

I wasn't aware of this, but it made me curious about what the marriage rate is since (the year) 2000, and the graph I found has it trending downwards until about 2008, then surprisingly leveling off that year for a few years, then climbing slightly for about 4 years, followed by a more dramatic decrease for about 3-4 years and a sharp rise from 2020 to 2021.

[neil]

I'm totally fine with you expressing your opinion about this & what I have to say, but I am not religious, and I actively support getting all aspects of religion out of laws, and the state/government.

That's great. But if you want to posit inequality as the basis for a sound marriage, I'll need to see more than just an unsupported opinion. The most successful marriages I've seen have been based on compromise in a partnership of equals.

Yes, I'm not saying that such marriages don't exist; I pointed out in the OP that almost 17% of marriages are happy.

My point of contention - if you may want to call it that - is that divorce ought to be extremely rare - way, way less than 50%.

I have a similar sentiment about the prison population in the US; that itself ought to also be extremely low & the fact that that's so high means that our criminal & legal system is also, in a similar sense, a failure. BTW I'm also interested in exploring the role of religion being behind the shaping and forming of the nation's legal & system of criminal punishment, and what can be done to remove those religious aspects from this too.

[Mister Agenda]

Why ought divorce be rare? When it was rare, it was illegal. Maybe it's just found its natural balance when not prohibited.

[Thumpalumpacus]

That's great. But if you want to posit inequality as the basis for a sound marriage, I'll need to see more than just an unsupported opinion. The most successful marriages I've seen have been based on compromise in a partnership of equals.

Yes, I'm not saying that such marriages don't exist; I pointed out in the OP that almost 17% of marriages are happy.

My point of contention - if you may want to call it that - is that divorce ought to be extremely rare - way, way less than 50%.

I'm likely biased, as I was a kid from a broken home, but I think people change, and that the goal in a sound and lasting marriage should be to guide those changes into harmony rather than divergence. That's obviously not always going to happen, and I think religion could easily be as much a hindrance as a help in that process. Inequality implies that someone is getting stifled.

[neil]

Why ought divorce be rare? When it was rare, it was illegal. Maybe it's just found its natural balance when not prohibited.

Sure, what we have in the divorce rate is the result of its natural balance when not prohibited - that would go with the point or issue.

Regarding your question - technically divorce should be more than just rare, it shouldn't even exist; not for being illegal per se, but because a marriage is supposed to be a vow, to remain in it until death.

In practice, it's about whether or not the institution of marriage is feasible, practical, and successful. In any other situation I can think of, a failure rate as high as 50% would be considered unacceptable or very poor performance, for example a vehicle breaking down in the middle of the road half the time it's used.

If divorces were - say - no more than about 1 out of every million marriages, that's insignificant enough to deem the overall concept of marriage practically successful.

[no one]

People change. Plain and simple. If the parties involved no longer feel the way they once did, why should they remain together?

[neil]

People change. Plain and simple. If the parties involved no longer feel the way they once did, why should they remain together?

I don't know; I don't think they should remain together.

Which is worse when someone no longer want to remain with their spouse, getting divorced, or struggling to remain married?

[Mister Agenda]

In practice, it's about whether or not the institution of marriage is feasible, practical, and successful. In any other situation I can think of, a failure rate as high as 50% would be considered unacceptable or very poor performance, for example a vehicle breaking down in the middle of the road half the time it's used.

More like a vehicle breaking down after years of use, isn't it? We don't expect most vehicles to last for the rest of our lives.