(July 5, 2017 at 2:04 pm)Ben Davis Wrote:(July 5, 2017 at 12:00 pm)Astonished Wrote: And there's plenty wrong with divorce. Making your kids feel like shit, breaking apart a family, breaking a promise you made, having to live knowing you made a huge mistake and everyone who is aware of the 'd' word will be judging you and questioning your judgment. I mean, yeah, there's benefit to getting out of a shitty marriage but why not be more careful going in and make sure the risk is minimized?
...No one wants to address the roots of the problems, only the symptoms, and that's just foolhardy.
I have to say that's a very 'traditional' view of divorce and not really representative of the realities. Most often, children are happier once the breakup has occurred because it's worse to be in a dysfunctional relationship, rowing endlessly, than it is to leave it; it means an end to the breakdown of the spousal relationship and the beginnings of healing. You also seem to hold an idealistic view of the nuclear family and are ignoring the fact that it's an entirely recent concept, possible due to the cessation of familial death caused by modern medicine. As for the stigma to which you refer, that's becoming less and less common and certainly shouldn't be used as a rational for staying in a relationship. Would you really tell an abused spouse that they're better off taking it because of what the neighbours think?
Commonly, the root cause of a dysfunctional relationship is the people in it and likewise, the best solution is to remove them. Relationship counciling works by finding resolution to the arising conflicts and separation is a perfectly acceptable outcome.
I didn't realize that divorce held a negative connotation. I mean, I realized that it was viewed negatively in 1960, but I didn't realize that there are people still view it that way today.
One question that I have is whether or not the atheist divorce rate is lower because atheists are more comfortable living together without a formal marriage, such that when they call it quits, it doesn't count as a divorce. Maybe getting involved with the wrong partner and then realizing later that that person wasn't all they cracked up to be is really a human problem, not a theist problem.
