Why so many divorce?

[sinikala]

Idiots are rampid in all countries

I wondered if that was a made up word ... but a quick search of Google gave such a great definition of rampid that it would've been rude not to post it.

[ajdias]

For those who care about the answers HS has a lengthy article with quite a few of them. Kudos to the writer:

Why do so many marriages end in divorce? One explanation that always comes up when talking about divorces is the alleged selfishness of people nowadays.
Alan Booth, Professor of Sociology and Demographics at the University of Pennsylvania studied more than 4,000 American married couples over 20 years. Similarities were found among people who split up casually, sometime several times in a row.
Booth says that these kinds of people were distant, not eager to meet their relatives, moving from one rental house or apartment to another, have no religious affiliation, and rarely thought about their children. They would take risks in their lives, and at the moment of separation, they often had a new sweetheart ready.
Such people could easily be called selfish, but on the other hand, they could also be seen as modern and typically urban.

Read the full article => http://www.hs.fi/english/article/The+my ... 5250832154

[bd_tkk]

It happens because most of the Finns ( Men or women) may not have the guts to make commitment to the marriage.

[Tiwaz]

In which case it could be said that not divorcing from bad marriage is sign of not having guts to stand up against peer pressure.

So which is the best one? Depends on case. Sometimes divorce is sign of not being able to go through the less rosy period of marriage. But often enough it is sign of not being masochist who would keep living in bad marriage just because others want "sanctity" of marriage preserved. Others who do not have to suffer the same.

[Jumpers]

Couples give up too easily, simple as that. A relationship is the same as everything else in life, you have to work at it.
It's the children involved I feel sorry for.

[hl_82]

It happens because most of the Finns ( Men or women) may not have the guts to make commitment to the marriage.

Nuh-uh. That's called "common-law marriage", very common here too.

Anyway, getting a divorce isn't all that simple, as opposed to getting one in the UK, for example. In some cases, the 6 month waiting period can be a good thing, in others it simply prevents people from moving on. Could be easier.

[Tiwaz]

It happens because most of the Finns ( Men or women) may not have the guts to make commitment to the marriage.

Nuh-uh. That's called "common-law marriage", very common here too.

Anyway, getting a divorce isn't all that simple, as opposed to getting one in the UK, for example. In some cases, the 6 month waiting period can be a good thing, in others it simply prevents people from moving on. Could be easier.

Has it occurred to you that this 6 month consideration period places absolutely no restrictions on couple?
You can, and often will, move AWAY from shared home during this 6 months.

Essentially, it does not prevent you from moving on. If you really want to, you can go your way.

IF this 6 month period somehow restricts you, it restricts your ability to remarry during it. But let's think about such scenario...

You are getting divorced but want to get married in 6 months after signing the papers? Yay! Speaks volumes of person in hand, namely that such person should not be married at all.

[prosenfi]

With divorce statistics showing that anywhere from 10% (Italy) to 54% (Sweden) of EU marriages end in divorce, it is probably fair to say that marriages end for all kinds of reasons (source: http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsWorld.shtml). Is it fair to say that some marriages end which could have been "fixed" with some well-placed/timed advice from family/friends/counselors/clergy? Sure, I have seen this. Safe to say that "easy divorce laws" are very important parts of helping women (and some men) out of abusive situations? Yes, I have also seen this.

Changing the law to make divorce harder might force some couples to get help that might save their marriages, but would be harmful to people whose health - and life - might depend on being able to quickly get 'untangled'. (And then there is the problem of people not being receptive the advice of the social worker if seeing the person is a divorce pre-requisite.)

More pre-marital counselling is not harmful, but I think that the counselling my wife and I received wound up focusing on things that would have never wound up being problems and ignored things that wound up being contentious. It is impossible to cover everything and people change so much between age 23 and even 30... All the same, I think any cold water that can be splashed in one's face ahead of time is potentially beneficial.

On the back end, I think that it is important for government to make available marital assistance so that couples that are 'in trouble' have access to assistance in resolving disputes. Where I now work the company has such program and encourages its use. I have seen people who are not so happy get help in resolving issues and become content again.

I have not yet arrived in Finland (T-minus 45 days), so I am not sure if counselling is something that is available and promoted. But because of abusive situations I have seen I would not want the government to make such a thing mandatory. Just if it were available and promoted that would be enough.

[Pursuivant]

Yeah, well I heard of another HBS divorce case, "Finnish women"... been there done that...
people, do not do what I have done
spent my life in sin and misery
sharing a house with a finnish woman

[Rip]

With divorce statistics showing that anywhere from 10% (Italy) to 54% (Sweden) of EU marriages end in divorce

These kind of statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt, as they probably just compare the number of divorces to marriages on some individual year or other short time period. The ratio is not very meaningful as the number of people getting divorced fore example in 2010 is not a subset of people getting married in the same year. In Finland we, until just a few years ago, we had had a long term trend of number of marriages going down (large factor here is of course the number of people aged about 20, which had it's maximum just after mid 1960's)



The year when the marriage law was largely rewritten, among other things removing the need to determining the guilty party for the divorce, was 1987. You could have guessed that from the graph.

The actual divorce rates (so far) for marriages, depending on the year when the people got married you can see in this graph. For me I guess it was bit surprising how many still divorce after 20 years: