SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The most common reasons given for the breakdown of marriages or live-in partnerships in Britain are communication problems and growing apart, according to analysis by UCL researchers of the latest National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3).
[...] Natsal is the largest scientific study of sexual health lifestyles in Britain. It is carried out by UCL, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and NatCen Social Research [sic]
Natsal is run every 10 years, and includes a representative sample of men and women resident in Britain aged between 16 and 74. Natsal-3 was carried out between 2010 and 2012.
The study focused on the responses of 706 men and 1254 women to questions about their reasons for breakdown of a marriage or cohabiting relationship in the past 5 years.
[UCL is, of course, University College London. It has as part of one of its faculties the above-mentioned school.]
I would have guessed footie.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:47PM (18 children)
Honestly, I'd like to know how "growing apart" isn't something that's completely normal with time. Maybe some people "grow together" as they age, but I think that's likely a minority of people. People change as they get older, it's inevitable. They develop different interests, different political views, different philosophies. And that's likely to lead to people "growing apart". So why pressure people to stay in relationships long after they've lost interest in each other? Marriage is an archaic and useless institution in the modern age.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:29PM (5 children)
> Honestly, I'd like to know how "growing apart" isn't something that's completely normal with time.
It is normal, if you neglect your relationship. "People change" is an anodyne observation. Relationships, like everything else in life, requires maintenance to keep in good shape. If you don't put in the effort to maintain it, of course it will fall apart.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:32PM (4 children)
It is normal, if you neglect your relationship. "People change" is an anodyne observation. Relationships, like everything else in life, requires maintenance to keep in good shape. If you don't put in the effort to maintain it, of course it will fall apart.
Again, pretty much how it came apart. Typical female emotional BS coupled with a clueless husband over a long period of time. Amicable divorce, we still are united in raising our son even if we live in different houses.
I'm a damn fool too, looking for a new one. :)
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:09PM (3 children)
Re-marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:51PM (2 children)
My goal is to never get another divorce, even if that means I never marry again. Even an easy one like mine still sucked and cost a bunch of money. I shudder to think what a knock-down drag-out one costs.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:15AM (1 child)
Why marry when you still can live together and make kids regardless?
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:43PM
Make kids? HELL NO. My refusal to make more kids was the main reason I got divorced in the first place.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:01PM (9 children)
So why pressure people to stay in relationships long after they've lost interest in each other?
Who is pressuring people to stay together? Most states in the U.S. at least have had no-fault divorce for decades. If you don't want to stay together, you don't have to. If you don't want to even have the commitment to someone in the first place, don't take a marriage vow.
That said, there are a lot of studies that show that companionship is important in old age to health, longevity, etc. There are mixed studies on (always) single people vs. married, but it is clear that divorced people generally don't live as long, have more poor health, etc. Yes, it's possible to form close relationships when you're older that aren't through marriage, but it's often a lot harder (particularly for men, who have the worst impacts by being single when older).
And I think part of what you bring up has to do with changing expectations about relationships... and frankly, irrational ones. Yes, people change over time, but if you make a commitment to caring for them, you likely have a different perspective than if view a relationship as simply a matter of convenience for as long as it's "easy." Other relationships aren't easy either -- relationships with parents, siblings, children, etc. can last a lifetime too, and people often find ways of navigating and maintaining those even if they "grow apart."
Lastly, while people may "grow apart" in terms of personalities and various choices, living together with someone ensures that long-term marriage almost always "grow together" in other ways. I look at my own parents, who never seemed to have a nice calm, rational relationship (heated arguments were commonplace while I was growing up), but in their old age, they have become caregivers for each other, complementing each other in important ways. Could you develop such a caring relationship with someone else as you age? Sure -- but inevitably you'll be "starting over" in a lot of ways, whereas in a marriage you may have decades of time invested in "getting used to" one another.
None of this is necessarily an argument that long-term marriage is best, but pretending it has NO benefits for older people to try to stick it out and try to make it work long-term is overstating your case.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:43PM (8 children)
Who is pressuring people to stay together? Most states in the U.S. at least have had no-fault divorce for decades
First, Mississippi at least does not allow no-fault or uncontested divorce. (No, I don't live there.)
Anyway, it's society that pressures people to stay together. We track divorce statistics, we decry the high divorce rate, the very article we're discussing here is trying to analyze the "problems" with marriage and how to "fix" them. What if the whole institution is just a bad idea, and "fixing" it is only perpetuating the problem?
That said, there are a lot of studies that show that companionship is important in old age to health, longevity, etc. There are mixed studies on (always) single people vs. married,
That's because it's too ingrained into our society. Maybe men would be better off if we got away from this idea, and they learned to form better relationships outside of the obsolete marriage model.
relationships with parents, siblings, children, etc. can last a lifetime too, and people often find ways of navigating and maintaining those even if they "grow apart."
In most cases these days, people don't live together in the same house with their parents, siblings, or (adult) children. It's a lot easier to get along with people when you don't have to live with them, or even talk to them more than once a week. It's also a lot easier when you don't have to comingle your finances with them.
I look at my own parents, who never seemed to have a nice calm, rational relationship (heated arguments were commonplace while I was growing up)
Yeah, that sounds like a great way to live and for kids to grow up.... /s
whereas in a marriage you may have decades of time invested in "getting used to" one another.
Sunk cost fallacy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @08:28PM (6 children)
Anyway, it's society that pressures people to stay together. We track divorce statistics, we decry the high divorce rate, the very article we're discussing here is trying to analyze the "problems" with marriage and how to "fix" them. What if the whole institution is just a bad idea, and "fixing" it is only perpetuating the problem?
Being unmarried is a significant correlation with poverty. For example [brookings.edu]:
The marriage simulation reduces the poverty rate among families with children by 3.5 percentage points, from 13 to 9.5 percent (figure 1). With a few exceptions, we find no shortage of unmarried men for these women to marry. The major exception is within the African-American population where there is a shortage of potential mates in some age and education categories. This shortage may be the result of the large number of young minority men who are incarcerated or dead or it may reflect the difficulty the Census Bureau has in finding and interviewing minority men in lower-income communities.
It's about as strong a correlation as education (13 to 11.1 percent). The top-down planners would be all over this, for example.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:45PM (1 child)
The marriage simulation reduces the poverty rate among families with children... With a few exceptions, we find no shortage of unmarried men for these women to marry.
So what's the problem? Why aren't they marrying if there's all these unmarried men around?
Maybe they should ask why an unmarried man would want to marry into a family with children. What's in it for him? It's great for the woman of course: an extra paycheck and someone to help raise her kids. But the guy isn't benefiting much: he now has a gigantic financial drain (have you seen the health insurance rates for a single man vs. a family with kids??), a wife demanding more money to spend on her kids, and huge demands on his free time. Raising kids is a lot of work. He'll get a small tax benefit from the kids, but if the wife works a similar-paying job now he has to pay a marriage penalty to the IRS. And of course he's assuming a huge amount of risk: divorce is very costly in most cases, and roughly half of marriages fail.
Sorry, I just don't buy it. These "researchers" are just cherry-picking data, looking at the cases where people got lucky and things worked out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @10:43PM
These "researchers" are just cherry-picking data, looking at the cases where people got lucky and things worked out.
They're looking at aggregate data from the US Census (for the year 2001) over a limited set of possible characteristics. So there's a variety of failure modes possible here (particularly correlation != causation), but cherry picking isn't one of them.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:27AM (3 children)
Not owning a Ferrari is also correlated with poverty. :P
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:18PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:23PM (1 child)
Encouraging marriage can very likely lead to even more poverty. Just look at how many divorces coincide with bankruptcy, and combine that with the 50% divorce rate. Why do you want more people to go bankrupt?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:58PM
Precisely , Make love not mortgage ;-)
Marriage and seeding cell donations are bad business. Besides being attached all the time might not be so good after all either.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:25AM
Perhaps people need to realize that love can't be put into a contract. If economic stability is the issue, perhaps a joint-venture Child rearing Inc is a better idea :p
And people should perhaps live separately but near with shared spaces for the children and without entangling finances. Enforced daily socialization is perhaps taking a too large toll when people are lacking personal space and time. Man huts and dito female ones may have their reason for existing in the first place.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:19PM (1 child)
I'll add a tidbit of experience here: Marrying an "exotic" partner means that you have a lower common cultural pool to draw from.
When things work, you expand that pool together, learning from each other.
If things take a bad turn, someone can hide in their own culture and language, building nearly impenetrable walls to shut the other out.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @11:08PM
but muh asian waifu