*and you decided that we should give up our city apartment and go and live somewhere back of Nimbin and grow weed, I might have cause for concern too.*

ROFL Pericles, I've never had a desire to grow weed, but I
certainly admit to changing direction in life.

I married my childhood sweetheart and I had her best years :)

But yup, from wearing suits and ties every day, one day I decided that
was not for me. She followed me to the Australian outback, but
country life was not for her. She put up with country life, but to
be happy she needed her shopping centres, manicures and pedicures
and all the rest. Now if a woman is not happy she complains and if
she complains too much, it becomes a drag. So it was time to face
reality, for both of us, for we clearly wanted different things in
life.

So we split on extremely amicable terms, which is easier said then
done. The net result was that it dragged on for years and years,
even though we were meant to have split.

Some things I have learned:

Why does a marriage have to last a lifetime? Life is a journey to
be enjoyed and appreciated every day. If a relationship is fundamentally flawed, why try to force it? Too many have died,
miserable for years, because they tried to force a situation, due
to expectations of others.

People change and grow over time, often at different speeds and
in different directions. My decisions made at 18, are quite different
to those that I would make today.

To be soulmates, one really has to be tuned to the same mental
frequency. If she's on 92am and you are on 96fm, you will talk
past each other.

If people want different things from life, no matter how cute she
was, you have a fundamental problem.

Base your relationship on trust, honesty and communication, without
them you are stuffed.

tbc

Half of all marriages land up in the divorce courts, which is a messy
business alot of the time. Of the half that are left, about half
are really happy, the other half stay together due to habit,
kids, money, fear of the unknown etc. So the odds of a really
happy marriage are less then 1-4, not very good odds.

Last point, if you do happen to find your soulmate, who wants the
same things in life and is on the same mental frequency, count
yourself extremely lucky, for its rare indeed in the real world.

Yabby something you just posted rekindled memories of a couple of things I read that are really important.

"Why does a marriage have to last a lifetime?"

Yes. I was reading a book on family configurations over time (historical to present) and the author made a good point - that when marriage was held up as the ideal state (as I believe it is), the average lifespan was about half what it is now and the odds of dying young and dying rather than being invalided were very high. As a result, fewer people divorced but a greater number of marriages were terminated due to mortality. That is, there were more widowed people about.

The author is of the opinion that divorce serves a functional purpose in terminating unions when people have grown (as in aged) beyond the gains of being together.

Btw - another stats report from the US that I read a long time ago claimed that the 50% of marriages end in divorce thing is a fallacy, in that there is always a pool of intact marriages, but the size of the pool increases at less than the full rate of new marriages. New couples might divorce at 1 year or 2, 4 or 10 or something. For example, say there are 1 million wedded couples and another 100,000 marry in a given year. Maybe 10,000 will divorce; then another year another 10,000 and so on. The pool is increasing nevertheless and the actual divorce rate is not a flat rate of 50% of marriages. (I just made up those figures; have no idea what the real ones are). It's just another slant on it all, but tends to bear out what you (and others) have said.

Con't:

Sorry, I didn't explain this well.

"... the actual divorce rate is not a flat rate of 50% of marriages."

Should have said, "... the actual divorce rate is not a flat rate of 50% of ALL marriages, but it might be close to 50% of new marriages over some span of time beyond one year."

There is still the pool of longstanding unions.

"Adding a small fraction for marriage breakdowns which are never formalised by divorce, we can estimate that about 43 per cent of marriages end in separation within 30 years of the marriage."

http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/fm1/fm35facts.html

Dear Yabby,

You asked, why does a marriage have to last
a lifetime?

It doesn't.

Marriage isn't compulsory of course, and it is
likely to occur less frequently in the future,
but it's a fair bet people will continue to
fall in love and try to find harmony together
just as they always have.

It's about people taking care of themselves by
finding what they need to nurture their souls,
to give life meaning. This might be with another
person, in which case it will help satisfy their
need for intimacy and acceptance (to know and be
known) as well as companionship, sexual fulfilment,
warmth and affection.

If its not with one significant other, they might find
it with a group of friends, in their work, in caring
for others, in listening to or playing music, creating
works of art or enjoying sport...

We're all different with different wants, needs, desires.

Dear Pynch,

Our society is increasingly tolerating a variety of
alternative marriage and family styles. With our
economic and cultural diversity, combined with a
highly developed sense of individualism - in this
environment people tend to make decisions about
marriage, divorce, abortion, child-rearing, and the
like in terms of what they, personally want rather than
in terms of traditional moralities, obligations to
kin, or the other impersonal pressures that previous
generations unquestioningly accepted.

Pursuing their own vision of self-fulfillment, or
responding to the social and economic predicament in which
they find themselves, many people are modifying marriage
and the family system to suit their individual needs.

However, the great majority of people do continue to marry,
and that's something that looks like it's here to stay.

Nearly all of us will love something or someone over
the course of our lives. It's hard to put into words,
it just is - something we feel, in our bodies, hearts
and souls rather than something we rationalise in our
minds.

I'd like to Thank everyone who contributed to this thread.
It's been a learning experience, and
an enjoyable one for me. Human beings have a huge capacity
for love in many forms, from the romantic passionate love
we might feel for a partner to the protective love for a
child or friend to a love of concepts, such as freedom of
knowledge, and things, such as a beautiful painting or
treasured object. All of these enrich us.

May all of you continue to be enriched in your lives ...