the divorce rate is not 50%

[kosviik]

"you are more likely to die with your spouse... good luck"

Why did that sound like a threat?

[alzzzzstar]

divorce rates are shockingly uncomplicated

[nathanholmes]

important to note that the overall divorce rate is much higher than the % of people who will experience divorce. this is because there is a small number of serial divorcees that produce a lot of divorces

[JosephFlores-ynyi]

If Statistics are a threat to your Marriage, don't get Married then

[jeffenriquez]

The rate drops even more when you only calculate for first marriages.

[AliceNLi]

Also it's good to point out that the people who get divorced once often go on to have more divorces, skewing the stats of total number of divorces. A small percentage of problematic people could just keep getting divorced, thus taking up all of the divorce 'quota'

[bri_xu]

% married that divorced stat is women only. men typically have even lower divorce rates cuz they marry later and die earlier than women

[genzi]

That's exactly my problem. When I said I want to get married people bring me those statistics and their personal family drama. I always told them that in my family, people have very long and happy marriages or they stay single forever, because or we get the very best partner or we develop good friendships and good family ties (so we don't become dependant on toxic partners). Happy marriages are a product of effort and attitude, not luckiness. Is not a dice with 42% or 10% or 60% change of failing, if a choice of two persons to make it work...yes, of course, even the best couples can divorce, but their chances of that are much more less than 50%.

[mozzarella]

People act like divorce is a unavoidable disease ✋😭

[decline]

Divorce isn't even the worst outcome. Being trapped in an unhappy marriage, unable to leave because you can't afford to. Subjecting your kids to growing up in such a toxic environment. The thought of ending up like my parents makes me very cautious about marriage.

[zxqwerxz]

Its important to remember that divorce isn't the only symptoms of a failed or failing marriage. Plenty of married people feel no love, but don't get divorced because of the kids, religion, expectations, or just to stop the other half from getting half their shit. We just have no way of quantifying those groups.

[breensprout]

i'm unbothered by high divorce rates tbh. higher divorce rates tell me people have the ability to leave when they're unhappy.

[bri_xu]

Sources: CDC and Nathan Yau on FlowingData

[tisvana]

Why all the comments acting like someone’s holding them at gunpoint to get married.

Don’t get married if you don’t want to. Be open about it. Also don’t date long term with people who want that. I discussed marriage on a first date (before it honestly) because it was important to me. I am currently married and will hopefully remain so. Most people I know who divorced or ended up unhappy together weren’t honest about what they wanted and wasted each other’s time.

Like, if you want kids you’ve got a 10-20 year realistic span to do that (even with adopting as many agencies have minimum and maximum cutoffs), it’s stupid to waste people’s time in relationships if you know from the outset you’re mismatched.

[whatsup]

I was JUST thinking about that annoying statistic yesterday!
It's always wielded so misleadingly and unnecessarily cynically

[carlosizz]

That only accounts for official divorces, how many are separated or in miserable marriages. Relationship failure rates are north of 60% and it's only getting worse.

[papasalvo]

People always talk about a 50% divorce rate not realizing where that stat comes from.

For those curious it comes from news articles from a long ass time ago around the point in time where it was made legal for women to get no fault divorces. Prior to this if a woman was married but the relationship was awful for whatever reason (the top three being money, violence or infidelity) she vouldnt just divorce her husband there was a hole song and dance about ut that pretty much locked these women into the relationship unless she wanted to just pack up and leave one day.

So yea for a couple years divorces were high but it quickly tapered off and has never returned to those rates

[modernmasculinity]

PHEW….im so glad it’s “only” 42% and not 50%. Lmao

[michaelsorensen]

Not to mention, a small number of serial divorcees jack the stats for the rest of us.

My wife's grandparents were said to have been married and divorced TO EACH OTHER no less than 7 times. My wife's bio mom was said to have been married AT LEAST 3 times. She and I? We're still on our first marriages, and plan on keeping it that way. We currently have the longest running marriage of anyone between her bio mom and the sisters/half sisters she was raised with (we don't know all the half siblings, and are ok with that).

So if you look at her family for a case study, you assume over 90% of marriages have divorces associated with them, and that's just not the case.

[sbyrstall]

This is what I've been saying for over a decade. People have erroneously comparing the number of marriages and the number of divorces in the dame time period. These are two separate groups. In order to compute the real divorce rate, one needs to follow those who are married and find out how mant get divorced.