@compmom That’s an interesting perspective. I only mentioned my circle of friends to explain why I posed the question, and I only mentioned how close we are to explain why I am so confident that they stay married by choice rather than necessity. But, if this helps, we are very far from ‘normalcy’. We are first-generation immigrants who came here in our early 20th. No language, no possessions, no money, no completed education, no support system. So, this is a very self-selected group where each couple faced a lot of hardship and challenges, and supported each other through all those year. That’s why we remain so close, and perhaps that’s why the marriages stayed so strong. Which spouse continues on the vacations when someone does divorce? IF this indeed happens, I hope that both spouses would. Per upthread posts, not all divorces are bad.
A few years ago, as my H and I neared our 25th anniversary, I thought about how interesting it was that no one in our circle had divorced. Of course I knew people who had divorced, at work, or acquaintances, but I was still kind of smug in thinking it hadn’t touched us.
Bam. in the space of about a year, three of our good friend couples broke up. All due to infidelity (by the man). It definitely threw me for a loop.
I was looking for some data on divorce and socioeconomic status, as I have heard that there is far less divorce in the upper middle class and beyond. Which might be a reason the OP has seen little of it. Around the time kids were in HS and just beyond I knew couples who were divorcing. However now that many of my friends are in their 60s, with marriages having lasted decades, and we are getting towards 10 years of empty nest, I am not hearing of divorces at all.
Of course I have been divorced for decades-one of the early ones, when my girls were 5, though most of my friends are married, and my few single friends had marriages that broke up when the kids were in middle or high school.
jaylynn, yes, divorce sends shock waves through a community. I still miss some of the men I was close to when we were all couple friends.
I think some divorce decisions depend on how one thinks friends will support him/her her, as a single. If they’ve seen other singles around them maintain the friendships and social life with their couples friends, it can look less fearsome.
Interestingly, H and I attended a concert tonight ( seeing our S) and saw old acquaintances that are now a couple.He was married to his ex for over 20-30 years and we had no idea they were divorced.
My sister and her ex divorced after 30 years. He traded my sister in for a much newer (younger) model.
H and I have discussed this many times. When we first married, over 30 years ago, my H kiddingly asked for a renewable contract. I said no way you jerk. Now I ask for one every anniversary. He says no way.
We have read and have kind of come to the conclusion that marriage was introduced to society when people only lived to be 40 or 45. Even if wed at 15, you’d likely be dead after 30 years of marriage. IOW, marriage evolved from a time people would not be together for more than 20-30 years at best.
So we as a society need to teach couples how to be together for 30-60 years or marriages should come with rewnewable 10 year contracts!!
I dunno, I have mostly enjoyed aging with my H and the different stages of life we’ve weathered together so far. He has been my rock when I had a bleak medical diagnosis over 17 years ago. I’ve been here for him thru his tough challenges and we’ve enjoyed watching our kids grow.
I can see some marriages that are having challenges and others that seem to improve with age. We are hoping to be one of the latter.
<<<
As I like to say, it takes two to tango but only one to trip the other one and cause both to fall to the floor.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
Very clever.
.
OT, but I’ve read that is not strictly true. Average age of death might be 45, but that included the huge numbers who didn’t make it out of infancy or early childhood. Most people who made it to adult lived to old age, though maybe not the average old age we do.
In my marriage, it seems like we got along much better after about 25 years. We know each other’s flaws and got tired of hashing the same old issues over and over again - they just don’t seem that important. Of course, that could be due to the mental illness and tragedy in my family that have put everything into perspective.
@Momofadult - I’m there right now. H retired three weeks ago. There’s an age difference so I still have 10 - 12 years in the workforce. So far, so good, but thanks for the heads-up. We’ve both been going to our internist for 20+ years and I know he wouldn’t hesitate to speak up either.
We know a few divorced middle-aged couples. Some probably should have divorced within a few months of their wedding but stuck it out until the children were grown up. One married couple I knew split up in their 50’s because of drinking and infidelity (the two went together in this case – the guilty party was a very nice and well meaning person but couldn’t control his own behavior). I know one couple who I am guessing probably divorced because the difference in age was too great (only one of them was middle aged when they divorced). This last couple is still each other’s best friend.
One of the divorced middle-aged people that I know remarried in their 60’s. At the reception I overheard a stranger on an elevator talk about “there is a geriatric wedding going on in the hotel”, where in fact since I knew both people I also knew that this was one of the most wonderful couples I have ever seen get married.
My wife and I got married relatively late (just barely early enough to have children). I married her because I couldn’t imagine living my life with anyone else, and I couldn’t imagine living my life without her. I still feel the same way after 25 years.
I never imagined when I married 26 years ago that I’d be divorced. I didn’t have friends that were divorced. We had what I thought was a great marriage for the first 15 years. Then it became a struggle because we weren’t wanting the same things. It took me 7 years to see that. And another couple of years to realize the pain of staying was greater than the pain of leaving. And divorce is painful. I have wonderful family and I moved states to a job that allows me to fully spport our D in college. I was a SAHM for the majority of time. Life is a journey. I have zero doubts I made the right decision.
There are some interesting thoughts and replies on this thread. This is kind of thread is probably why I still read College Confidential. I know longer need or listen much to college admission advice for my kids. We’ve made our choices and, so far, no regrets. So a thread like this about topic that is so universal is really interesting to me.
I think if you really want to examine an issue like this you can’t oversimplify it down to platitudes. You can, but what I’m saying is, if you really want to attempt to understand the issues involved being overly simplistic is a waste of time. For example, the marriage broke up because of infidelity. Okay. Great. That explains it, right? Well, not really. That is a rubber stamp cliche answered to avoid really thinking about the issues at length just to move on and conquer. One of the ladies I work with is divorced. It was a rough painful humiliating divorce for her. She hardly even spoke about it but one of the few people she confides to shared what happened later to the rest of us.
She got divorced because her husband, Greg, “cheated on her her.” She felt betrayed. She didn’t trust him anymore. Blah blah blah. That was pretty much the entire story. The guys I work with who know her, and we all knew Greg a little also from various parties over the years, had a completely different take on it when she wasn’t around and the cold hard truth could come out. She didn’t exactly take care of herself yet she wants to act shocked when her husband strayed? Let’s just say Greg got plenty of support when the women weren’t around and being PC wasn’t required. Another of my co-workers, a male, is much more blunt when talking about his ex-wife. She was one hundred and five pounds when I met her, he likes to say, and then …
You can figure out the rest.
He wasn’t going to put up with that. He stays in shape. He works out. As far as I can tell, he looks great for a guy his age. He is far happier now no question about that.
My marriage has survived even though we are not one of these perfect couple who has a bunch of similar interests and spends every second together looking at sunsets. I think underlying all the hell that can be associated with being legally tied up and bound with one person for the rest of your life, what could possibly go wrong there, is finances. When my wife and I met, at a bus stop in Coral Gables, neither one of us had a nickel. It has been kind of amazing to have two kids and to build a sold financial foundation all at the same time. As I said, we are not soul mates. I sometimes think about the road not traveled and I am sure she does too. But in our case our differences make us better not worse. Her strengths compliment and cover up my weaknesses and vice versa. The thought of us not being together would stun our kids and the people who know us. It would literally send shock waves around our little world. We are, I think, kind of the rock couple that others look up too as making it work.
Humor helps. I’ve grown to really appreciate the things about her that I wished I could change earlier in our relationship. I also like to joke that I’m the only person on earth who has married the same person 3 or 4 times because we’ve lost paperwork and did informal marriages that in her mind didn’t count and frankly can’t even remember if some of our marriages even happened or not or if we are remembering them just for fun. She moved in right after she became pregnant so when we in fact legally married in this state or that state never really mattered to either of us.
And I did a lot of things wrong over the years. She forgave me or didn’t spend much time worrying about it in the first place. I’m not sure what we did is much of a blueprint for anyone else. The one thing I would say, and I think my kids see this clearly, is if you want it to last you can’t be only focused on YOUR issues and concerns. If you aren’t making decisions for the whole team, whatever that is, you are being selfish and that radically increases the chances it will fracture.
Wow, just wow @GoNoles85
What a cliche, she got fat so it’s ok for me to cheat. Lies men tell themselves
H and I are still together after almost 28 years, but after some of the experiences we’ve had, I can understand why some couples aren’t. We through a * very * rough patch 5 - 6 years ago. I was unemployed for 18 months, right when S1 left for college. Then H started to have recurring health issues. My unemployment was about to run out so I had to take the first thing that came along, which paid $10,000.00 less. I was miserable there for six months before taking another job for the same pay but much better benefits. I went from the frying pan to the fire with a nightmare of a boss. We got behind on our mortgage and were one payment away from foreclosure. And to top it all off, my dad passed away. Things got better - I transferred to another department with an infinitely better boss and H’s military pension kicked in so we were financially stable again. It took me some time to regain my self-esteem and sometimes I still wonder how we made it through. I’ve definitely learned no to take anything for granted.
Those middle aged divorces make me sad. Seems like they made it through all the hard stuff, raising kids, making money, and then don’t get to enjoy the good part. They don’t get to sit back and enjoy what they built.
H and I aren’t soul mates, either. I chose him because he is smart and capable of growth and change and he compliments me. (Yeah, those complementary traits drive me crazy.) It hasn’t always been easy and I have wondered whether I’d be better off on my own. But like some of the posters above note, we have grown together and been through a lot together and now we just know each other so well that being married is much easier. As we move into this next, empty nest/getting older phase, I am excited. Things we do well together: travel, remodel (I can’t believe this one, but those complimentary skills come in handy here), overcome health issues, support each other trying new things.
A suggestion for anyone who knows someone contemplating a divorce, in the middle of one, or already divorced: that person’s self-esteem is probably already in the toilet, so please resist the urge to tell the person he or she should have tried harder to stay married. I was married for 31 years, my ex was the only person I ever dated, he was the only person with whom I’ve been physically intimate, we went through a lot together, and I’ll probably be alone for the rest of my life. I’ve been divorced for almost a year, and every day I think, many times, about what I did that caused him to not want to be with me. So, be kind to your “broken-up” friends.
GoNoles, and then if you want to take it further, what happened to make the weight pile on? Was he there with the kids, supportive, etc, or self involved, blaming and silencing when she mentioned a need, and running off to work out? There is always far more to a picture, and you are right that cheating is a symptom, but often the causes are many layered and the blame is in both courts.
In my own case, I blame the '60/70s expectation that we are in control of our lives and it is going to be perfect. I was imperfect, damaged from my own childhood growing up with divorce, busy with kids and he was verbally abusive. His affair that ended things was a symptom, not the cause.
Marriage is a rough road, and I am in admiration of those who persevere despite setbacks and get to this point of being able to enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of hard work with reasonable expectations.
Maybe they finally want to enjoy life? Separately 
Rosered55- very good advice (about what not to say to a divorcing person). It’s probably the toughest thing they’ve ever done. I know it was for me.
On the whole role model idea, both me and my ex had parents who stayed married til one of them died. Both marriages were full of abuse (physical and verbal). So that was our role model.