Death has been replaced by divorce

So there seems to be a lot of people who point to the rise in divorce rates throughout the country as evidence of marriage being valued less by the current generations of Americans. However I was reading an article on cracked which pointed out that marriages use to be far shorter than that of today. In fact most marriages ended in death, but this was due more to the fact that people didn't live as long as they do today. The real reason people fall out of love more often today is that they now live long enough to conclude that their marriages can't be sustained for another 40-50 years. Before increase in life expectancy people often died in their 20s and 30s leaving their partner single, and available to look for new people to have sex with and be in relationships with.

In my opinion this makes more sense than the idea of "Cultures losing family values" that we tend to hear about semi-regularly. At this point I have witnessed far too many people I know get married and they intend to stay married to really believe that marriage doesn't really mean all that much to them. However if 40 years were to pass and those same people were no longer able to enjoy each others company and were essentially shutting each other out it would be fairly understandable to me that they still believe in a strong relationship between two people, but that they no longer had that for themselves with their current marriage.

What do you guys think? Do people care less about marriage in this day and age or has the length of the commitment increased so much that the commitment just far less likely to remain true for people?

a couple of other links on this subject below.

http://www.neillneill.com/divorce-replaces-death-as-marriage-ender

https://books.google.com/books?id=pucEAQAAIAAJ&vq=death&pg=PA986&hl=en#v=onepage&q=death&f=false

Marriage takes a lot of hard work in order for it to prosper. Most couples don't want to make the effort and therefore give up too easily.

I agree that marriage takes hard work, but our society doesn't really have a clear cut definition on when that work has been done, and despite that fact people are still unhappy being together. Should they really need to remain unhappy for the next 40-60 years of their life because society tells them that they just don't want to make the effort to do so?

>The real reason people fall out of love more often today is that they now live long enough to conclude that their marriages can't be sustained for another 40-50 years. Before increase in life expectancy people often died in their 20s and 30s leaving their partner single, and available to look for new people to have sex with and be in relationships with.

It's not clear to me that this is the right explanation. Over the last 50 years, life expectancy in the US has risen by about 10 years, and marriage age has risen by about 5 years (sources: random graphs on google image search). Maybe the extra five years makes a difference and maybe there's lower death probabilities in early ages contributing to it, but I would be surprised if cultural acceptability of divorce weren't a big driving factor. Whether this is an indication of "losing family values" isn't something I really know.

I don't think anybody really does know about the "losing family values" aspect. It seems to be something that can't truly be measured.

What they really need to look at is whey they're unhappy. If they go into marriage with unrealistic expectations that everything is going to be rainbows and sunshine, then yes, they will be let down drastically. I believe that when two people come together in marriage, there is a bond that has been formed that is stronger than anything the world can throw at them. That's where the hard work comes in to play..."through good times and bad, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health..."

If they're not going to stand by the vows that they made, then they are being untrue to both themselves and their partner. And the marriage itself is built upon a lie from the start and will surely lead to unhappiness and ultimately divorce.

Life's maybe a lot more stressful on people now than it ever was. Once a husband could buy a nice house and raise a family pumping gas, now two partners with college degrees working full times sometimes share shitty one bedroom apartments together and are still drowning in debt.

Most marriages these days hardly last a decade or two. This 'life expectancy' argument works only for couples who actually have shared their fair share of years with each other.

I call BS, my parents have been together 47 years and I bet most of your parents are still together. People just divorce a lot these days because it's popular.

I think it's possible that in the past, the culture was so different that the marriage was more long. But it could be possible that anytime on mankind past, the marriage was never really long and that most people was divorcing and had a lot of partner even married.

I today believe that revolution is possible on earth and maybe very common through time. So it's why I said the first sentence of the paragraph over.

Don't know. We've been married for 21 years so far and have two kids. We're doing quite well now. But, we too were struggling early on. We simply decided to stick it out together.

I've seen a lot of younger folks not willing to persevere. It shows in their college classes where they'll slack off and drop courses repeatedly just because the courses got hard. They probably have the same attitude when it comes to relationships and career.

People get married for the wrong reasons, rush into marriage, or marry way too young. I've been married and divorced twice. Both times, while standing in front of the pastor and judge, I felt I was making a mistake. And I was.

I'm in a relationship now and this one feels a lot different. We're not married and we don't feel we need to be married to love each other. While it might be reasonable to get married down the road for tax purposes, there simply isn't any rush. I think most people do what I did the first two times.

First, and most importantly I think, are the legal changes that have made divorce progressively easier. Divorce laws became more and more and more lax until ultimately Reagan did away with the need to have any reason at all to divorce in 1969 in California, and all the other states followed suit. The divorce rate skyrocketed from 20% to 50% in a twenty year period. Before 1969 you had to have one of the reasons specified by law to get a divorce. The number of reasons increased over time, basically at the beginning of the 19th century your husband had to be beating you almost to death on a regular basis (you know, not just a few Irish love taps) to get a divorce, but by the end of the century you could divorce him for being a drunkard, a criminal, for abandonment, adultery, polygamy, etc.

Secondly, we have growing female economic opportunity. They don't need us, so if we're shitty they leave us. This is demonstrated by the drop in divorce rates during economic downturns like the Great Depression, when people just couldn't afford to get divorced.

I wouldn't say the decline of family values is next, so much as realignment of values. People used to view marriage as useful for different things than we do today. They had a different sense of their obligations vis a vis society. Today, you get married when you find "the one," and it is not seen as a societal must that once entered into is a horrible hellfire incurring sin if you choose to get out. Today, you might actually expect to be happy in marriage, 50 years ago it was more who need happiness when you have cough syrup.

I see people get divorced within 5 years.