What does your Aspie mind think about Divorce Rates?

[Soup]

@ King_Oni: Interesting post about meth users & Anhedonia: I didn't know that this occurred! Sounds like a miserable state to be in.

"... but society apparently cannot keep up with the dynamics over the course of 50 years, let alone over dynamics within the last decade...I totally agree with looking to reasons, but actually I find those reasons somewhat superficial..."- King_Oni

You hit this one out of the ballpark,IMO. that preoccupation with superficialities is what got many couples into financial deep $H!T in the 1st place! The 1st superficial folly is often that big splashy wedding that the couple went into debt to pay for. A $5,000 gown for the bride, tons of flowers, limousines for everyone...I've seen weddings held by normal working class people that cost in excess of $25,000! Then they pi$$ their wedding money away on a 2 week 5 star honeymoon trip to Bora Bora. Had they spent a fraction of that on the wedding & put the rest into a down payment on a house, they wouldn't have begun their marriage (the 1st year is stressful even for couples who'd lived together first!) in a financial hole!

As the marriage progresses, couples often substitute marital happiness for retail therapy. They're forever renovating this & redecorating that- often in a bid to out-do someone else. I remember watching an episode of Oprah in her last season where the subject was families being ripped apart by debt. One couple was living in a high end area. The wife's personal maintenance bills were astronomical: she had a tanning club membership, acrylic nails, regular Botox & Restylane injections, breast implants & these long expensive platinum blond hair extensions. Add to that a tummy tuck, permanent make-up (they can tattoo it on! SCARY!) eyelash extensions & a bunch of other foolishness (she looked like a Barbie from 1986!). The husband too was doing a bunch of stupid things to himself. They had 2 kids & she threw lavish themed birthday parties for them. The guy lost his job, their home was in foreclosure AND the wife alone had accumulated...wait for the number...$150,000 in unsecured credit card debt!!!!!! HOLY CRAP!!!!

The initial superficial preoccupation of this couple led them into world class battles over money. Huh. Seems to my logical Aspie mind that it makes no sense whatsoever to fight over something neither of them had. Makes as much sense as me & my husband fighting over who is going out to the barn to feed the horses (WE HAVE NO BARN & NO HORSES!)

The drastic solution involved moving to a cheaper town in a cheaper state. The couple had to sell off a ton of stuff on Ebay. These people were HOARDERS! The only difference is that the stuff they hoarded was costly & still had the tags on & the house was so large that there was space for the stuff: it was high-end GARBAGE. She had to give up on the high maintenance fakery. They showed her without the get-up & she actually looked much younger & more natural. THe husband was no longer orange. THey got a lot of help & advice & were able to salvage their marriage. This couple was by no means an exception: there have been many such families featured on other shows since.

You're so right about social changes happening far too rapidly for people to adjust. This rapid change & obsession with trendiness is part of what is sinking NT culture & killing (quite literally from stress related ailments) so many over-wrought NTs. This aspect of their culture serves neither NTs nor Aspies. A person barely gets used to their smart phone when the new upgraded one comes out. The pressure on people to own, be, listen to, go to & look like this or that is crushing. Kids are swept up in the cultural nonsense as well. Something's got to give!

When I look at it all, I'm glad we we're Aspies & we were too obtuse to 'get' all these social subtleties & comprehend how these trends all worked so we opted out kind of by default. We're also too un-emotional to get swept off in a euphoric current of shop till you drop. Just the thought of shopping drops us both. Rather than getting dragged off in that crazy current & divorcing each other, we've opted to divorce the culture instead.

 

[Spinning Compass]

Divorce the culture--I like that!

 

[Soup]

It's a lot cheaper than having to hire a cut-throat divorce lawyer!

 

[Geordie]

To be blunt: If we know we are in marriages out of social pressure, and we cannot sustain it, might as well we just do not marry and do not even think of children. Marriage is a responsibility of two individuals and their families (including parents and children) - at least this is what happens in my society - why marry? Be single and happy

But for many other Aspies, who do really want to get married and can withstand social pressure with the other partner, go ahead! Have fun!

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

My thoughts are simple: Back in the day, people fixed things which were broken. These days, people throw it out and buy a new one.

I agree with you there

Also I think as has been said already people who shouldn't be married are married. I personally couldn't stand the thought of marrying someone I couldn't talk to about anything. Or someone I didn't enjoy spending time with. Because honestly there is enough in life to give you a head ache without having some A hole to be married to and make it worse.

Also some very long posts in this thread!!

Also I believe a lot of people get married for "love". You can't build a marriage out of love. At the end of the day a marriage has nothing to do with love because love won't give you honesty, trust, a roof over your head, a plate of food on your dinner table at night. Marriage is about the union of two lives to work together for common goals ... making a life together. The fact that you are in love with this person is just a coincidence. You have to be on the same path or you will part ways eventually. Marriage I think is more a legal formalization of the romantic relationship you have so you have legal standing as a couple in society. And that takes more than just love and attraction. The movie industry has sold women everywhere the idea of a perfect, fantasy, romantic marriage. And in reality it is far far from that. The movie has also sold us the idea we can change the bad boy into our dream husband. Again this is probably not going to happen. I learned that one the hard way but luckily I ended up with a far better man than my ex.

 

[Gomendosi]

It seems that people often mistake lust and infatuation for love, then get married and shack up. Down the track when the hormones are reined back in and the shine wears off it is quickly realised that you married a stranger, someone that farts and picks their belly button and sings off key in the shower, all of those things we find endearing when full to the gills with all the bodies chemicals are suddenly very irritating now the brain is no longer flooded.
Very few animals are monogamous and humans are animals, we pair up because other humans have always told us we should but, it is believed that we actually do have a sort of mating season.

Divorce rates are proportionate to everything else in society; compare pretty much anything from 1950 to today and you see progress in some areas and decline in others, same as in a correlation between 1890 and 1950. To further what HelloDizzy said, people today are samplers who want the next ‘best’ thing available, and as soon as they get it there is a faster, prettier, more compact or bigger, sweeter, different coloured or more sought after version available on the market and so they cast off the one they have to get that one.
I guess divorce rates reflect that commitment levels are on the decline.

 

[Geordie]

I thought divorce is a non-issue. These days, we don't have to commit anything, even love. Perhaps divorce is just a symptom, the bigger issue is we may not be able to cope with the transient relationships these days as we are exposed to more people, as compared in the past. Also, our mind is stimulated by more ideas around the world.

In short, divorce rates climb, but we are also looking at a decrease of length in relationships - which is harder to 'find'.

 

[Spinning Compass]

Several people have brought up the idea of trial marriage or living together as a way to reduce divorce rates. The problem with that is, since the 1960's when it became acceptable to admit to having premarital sex and openly live together without marriage, many, many, many people have done just that. One would expect then, that as time goes by, the divorce rates would start dropping. Obviously, this has not happened; if anything, it seems divorce rates have increased. So there must be other factors involved in divorce rates.

I am not a big fan of divorce but I do think that once a marriage is agreed to be over, that both parties need to make a clean break and get divorced instead of dragging it on and on. For example, I know a young woman I'll call Andrea. Fifteen years ago Andrea married George in an impulsive moment. They lived together maybe a month before they separated. According to the state of Michigan, Andrea and George are still legally married, still husband and wife, even though Andrea moved in with Raymond shortly after she and George separated and has been living with Raymond ever since. What is the problem? Ok, say Andrea gets in a car accident and has injuries so severe that she needs to be put on life support. She cannot speak or otherwise communicate. The prognosis for her recovery is poor. Andrea, being in her 20's, hasn't given a thought as to this possibility, and so she has left no instructions, written or otherwise, as to what to do in this circumstance. Guess who gets to make the decision whether to keep Andrea on life support or pull the plug? Not Raymond. Not Andrea's parents. Not her siblings. GEORGE does. Even though she hasn't seen or heard from him in 15 years, George has the legal right to walk into that hospital room and tell them to terminate life support. The reverse is also true. Andrea may find herself in a position of having to make a life or death decision for a man she hasn't seen in 15 years.

This isn't sentiment. This is the law. Once you are married to each other you have claims on each other that override all other family relationships and unless these claims are formally and legally severed, they are still binding no matter how long it's been since you've been together. When it comes to medical decisions the law does discriminate in favor of married couples. This is one of the reasons that gays want to marry, because if one partner goes into the hospital, the hospital legally cannot tell the other anything about their loved one's situation.

People don't like to think about these things because it's not romantic. There are pros and cons to marriage versus living together and I won't go into them now. But marriage is a legally binding contract and should not be entered into lightly.

 

[Nolan1971]

When my wife and I became serious at 23 we saw each other nearly every day without a single break. This helped to see what it was going to be like later on.
When we got engaged 2yrs later we moved in together which really did not feel like much of a change from being together daily anyway.
Now if you are dating someone and barely ever see each other once a week or less than jumping straight to marriage is going to be a shock. In my case anyway
living out our relationship as though we were married from the start made it much easier for both of us. By the time we got married I had already been a married
man in mind and heart for 7yrs. So moving in together can be a good thing but not for everyone.

 

[Nolan1971]

I thought divorce is a non-issue. These days, we don't have to commit anything, even love. Perhaps divorce is just a symptom, the bigger issue is we may not be able to cope with the transient relationships these days as we are exposed to more people, as compared in the past. Also, our mind is stimulated by more ideas around the world.

In short, divorce rates climb, but we are also looking at a decrease of length in relationships - which is harder to 'find'.

I am old school in my sense of honor and commitment. I treat every relationship family/friends as sacred. Even in high school if I broke up
with a girl I had the b**ls to tell her before I would see anyone else. This attitude may be fading nowadays but not gone.

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

Several people have brought up the idea of trial marriage or living together as a way to reduce divorce rates. The problem with that is, since the 1960's when it became acceptable to admit to having premarital sex and openly live together without marriage, many, many, many people have done just that. One would expect then, that as time goes by, the divorce rates would start dropping. Obviously, this has not happened; if anything, it seems divorce rates have increased. So there must be other factors involved in divorce rates.

I am not a big fan of divorce but I do think that once a marriage is agreed to be over, that both parties need to make a clean break and get divorced instead of dragging it on and on. For example, I know a young woman I'll call Andrea. Fifteen years ago Andrea married George in an impulsive moment. They lived together maybe a month before they separated. According to the state of Michigan, Andrea and George are still legally married, still husband and wife, even though Andrea moved in with Raymond shortly after she and George separated and has been living with Raymond ever since. What is the problem? Ok, say Andrea gets in a car accident and has injuries so severe that she needs to be put on life support. She cannot speak or otherwise communicate. The prognosis for her recovery is poor. Andrea, being in her 20's, hasn't given a thought as to this possibility, and so she has left no instructions, written or otherwise, as to what to do in this circumstance. Guess who gets to make the decision whether to keep Andrea on life support or pull the plug? Not Raymond. Not Andrea's parents. Not her siblings. GEORGE does. Even though she hasn't seen or heard from him in 15 years, George has the legal right to walk into that hospital room and tell them to terminate life support. The reverse is also true. Andrea may find herself in a position of having to make a life or death decision for a man she hasn't seen in 15 years.

This isn't sentiment. This is the law. Once you are married to each other you have claims on each other that override all other family relationships and unless these claims are formally and legally severed, they are still binding no matter how long it's been since you've been together. When it comes to medical decisions the law does discriminate in favor of married couples. This is one of the reasons that gays want to marry, because if one partner goes into the hospital, the hospital legally cannot tell the other anything about their loved one's situation.

People don't like to think about these things because it's not romantic. There are pros and cons to marriage versus living together and I won't go into them now. But marriage is a legally binding contract and should not be entered into lightly.

Not many people think of marriage like this. This is why I am sad for LGBT couples because they can be together for 20 or 30 years and one of them could end up like this and its not their partner that has the decision. It could be the parents who disowned their child years ago over being gay. And therefore the relationship that was important means nothing. A lot of people have a romantic notion of marriage but marriage is really about legalities. Its a legal contract under the law to formalize a relationship and to give said relationship legal standing ... like a contract outlines an agreement between two parties over something like the purchase of a car.

I lived with my husband for 2 years before we married. Though we jumped right in. He moved to the city I was living in and moved in with me. We had worked out an arrangement for if it hadn't worked out but it did so it turned out ok. I would never have married someone who I wasn't already in a marriage like relationship to begin with. Mostly because I want to have seen all his disgusting habits and still love him at the end of the day. And visa versa. But like I have said we are all sold the disney version of marriage which is all about love and romance. Marriage really isn't about that.