Was this supposed to be some kind of insult or something?
No. It's just sad. That is an accurate depiction of what many people believe.
Where in the heck do you live?
Currently I live in Okinawa, Japan. Prior to that I was in North Carolina.
Divorce stats? What happens cpwill is that people jump into marriage before they actually know the person they are marrying. Once they REALLY get to know the person, they discover that they cannot possibly stand that person. You seem to live in a bubble. A make-believe phony la-la fantasy island bubble.
On the contrary. I ended up in a marriage "before I actually knew the person I was marrying". Our early years sucked. They sucked a
lot; both of us spent a lot of time angry or depressed. But we'd made a commitment to each other, and we'd made a commitment to be good parents. We didn't terribly like each other for a while there, didn't frankly respect each other, and quite honestly weren't good to each other, either. We were a low-single-income family with a short relationship prior to marriage, a kid extremely early on, and multiple deployments - all the stats that you hear about how poor conditions cause divorce? We had 'em. That's why the vast majority of my peers have gotten divorced - they had them too. In a bubble? Divorce stats? Have you
seen the divorce stats for Marine Corps Infantry? It's a standing joke - when you reach Staff NCO you get issued a divorce and a giant pickup truck. We had one work-up / deployment I think we lost about a third to a half of our marriages
in just that one tour. My wifes' mother was a single mom, her sister is a single mom, my cousins were all raised by single moms, I couldn't begin to tell you the number of friends I've had that have lost their marriages / had issues with adultery / had kids out of wedlock. I've seen
plenty of the human wreckage of failed or failing marriages. But my wife and I had made a commitment to each other, and we'd made a commitment to be good parents. And so we did.
Turned out, Black Manta is right - relationships require
work. Being a good parent is
work. These things require
sacrifice, they require you to be an adult, suck it up, and sometimes
not do what is fun, not do what feels good, not take the easy way out that is the quick path to a life less richly lived. Life ain't perfect and our relationship never will be. Neither will my relationship with my boys - I argue with the oldest son all the time. I can't think of a single instance where I've thought "My goodness. My son and I argue all the time. Maybe I should put him up for adoption so that we can both be happier." But people have been taught to think this way of their spouses, and that tragic shift to focus on the self has left the self worse off. The split / separated / divorced are more lonely, depressed, and have more difficult lives than those who get and stay married. They are less healthy. They have shorter lives. Their children face greater difficulties in life, and succeed at lower rates.
Happiness -
real happiness - isn't a goal. It's a by-product of doing the right thing. But the boomers thought they could make it their goal (and they have taught their kids the same) and like trying to seize mercury, when you do that, it just squeezes out of your grasp.