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15 Ways to Predict Divorce
by Anneli Rufus
Anneli Rufus is the author of many books, including Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto and the Nautilus Award-winning Stuck: Why We Don't (or Won't) Move On, and the coauthor of still more, including Weird Europe and The Scavengers' Manifesto. Her books have been translated into numerous languages, including Chinese and Latvian. In 2006, she won a Society of Professional Journalists award for criticism.
How long will your marriage last? Depends on if you smoke, which church you go to, and which state you live in. Anneli Rufus on the shocking statistics.
You can't guarantee the longevity of a marriage, but what you can do is play the odds. Researchers have studied marriage success rates from nearly every conceivable angle, and what they've found is that everything from smoking habits to what state you live in can predict how likely it is that your union will survive. Here are 15 ways to gauge whether your marriage is for the long haul—or on the fast track to Splitsville.
1. If you're a married American, your marriage is between 40 and 50 percent likely to end in divorce.
After peaking at 50 percent in the 1980s, the national divorce rate has dropped steadily, but in the public's mind, that outdated "half of all marriages" figure still sticks—and scares. "Inflated divorce statistics create an ambivalence about marriage," says Tara Parker-Pope, author of For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage. "The bottom line is that modern marriages are getting more and more resilient. With each generation, we're getting a little better about picking mates. A different kind of marriage is emerging in this century."
(Source: David Popenoe, "The Future of Marriage in America," University of Virginia/National Marriage Project/The State of Our Unions, 2007)
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2. If you live in a red state, you're 27 percent more likely to get divorced than if you live in a blue state.
Maybe that's because red-state couples traditionally marry younger—and the younger the partners, the riskier the marriage. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the states with the lowest median age at marriage are Utah, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma.
(Source: National Vital Statistics Report, 2003; cited in The Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America, by Jonathan Miller and Al Gore)
3. If you argue with your spouse about finances once a week, your marriage is 30 percent more likely to end in divorce than if you argue with your spouse about finances less frequently.
Money woes kill marriages. The same study also found that couples with no assets at the beginning of a three-year period are 70 percent more likely to divorce by the end of that period than couples with $10,000 in assets. Most divorce risk factors—such as age and education level—correlate with poverty, says Statistics in Plain English author Timothy Urdan. "Whenever you see an explanation for anything, try to figure out what the explanations are for those explanations."
(Source: Jeffrey Dew, "Bank on It: Thrifty Couples Are the Happiest," University of Virginia/National Marriage Project/The State of Our Unions, 2009)
4. If your parents were divorced, you're at least 40 percent more likely to get divorced than if they weren't. If your parents married others after divorcing, you're 91 percent more likely to get divorced.
This could be because witnessing our parents' divorces reinforces our ambivalence about commitment in a "disposable society," says Divorce Magazine publisher Dan Couvrette. "In most people's minds, it's easier to get a new car than fix the one you've got."
(Source: Nicholas Wolfinger, Understanding the Divorce Cycle, Cambridge University Press, 2005)
5. If only one partner in your marriage is a smoker, you're 75 percent to 91 percent more likely to divorce than smokers who are married to fellow smokers.
"The more similar people are in their values, backgrounds, and life goals, the more likely they are to have a successful marriage," notes Tara Parker-Pope. From age to ethnicity to unhealthy habits, dissimilarities between spouses increase divorce risks.
(Source: Rebecca Kippen, Bruce Chapman and Peng Yu, "What's Love Got to Do With It? Homogamy and Dyadic Approaches to Understanding Marital Instability," Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2009)
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Chittagong
What a relief when not a single one of these criteria relates to you except the IQ one. Seriously what about in the third world
where many births forty years ago and more were not recorded and people just don't know the exact year or date they were born.
Not knowing your birthday is that a factor.
StateoftheInitiative
Note the bibliography for #15.
(Source: Gunnar Andersson, "Divorce-Risk Patterns in Same-Sex Marriages in Norway and Sweden," Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, 2004)
It only pertains to 2 countries, over 6 years ago.
Baddchild
oh boy, you just asking for it by priniting number 15.... if your lucky the average liberal DB reader probably is off their ADD meds so they might not make it to 15 so you won;t have to worry about being called a homophobe or worse. But stats are stats.... No wonder Kagan is not talking about her significant other, percentages say she's be doomed.
DakLak
Why Kagan? She is single and no one has proved otherwise. She wouldn't be the only unmarried Justice to serve on the Supreme Court, David Souter was single when appointed.
bozozozo
well, you know what they say. a woman without a significant other is like a fish without a bicycle.
veryneatmonster
If anything, I expect conservatives DB readers to blow a gasket over #2. Personally, I don't think living in a red or a blue state has anything to do with it: if you get married way too young, you're more likely to get divorced.
Caroline Conway
Actually I read an in-depth article recently that went over a sociological study, and it's true - the states with the highest divorce rates are all red states, and the states with the lowest are all blue states. It went on to discuss the concept of "adults make families" in blue states vs. "families make adults" in red states, where people marry too young, procreate too young because of the heavy push of abstinence and no birth control, and the idea that without education the family can survive and the kids can mature together while the dad works on a blue collar salary. I'm trying to find the link to source it for you, but it was really interesting since it wasn't from a political standpoint, just cultural really, with the socioeconomics of it all.
messageforyou
Did you not read the article carefully? If red states obtained more education and married at a later date, their divorce rates would go down and those rates could be less than the blue states. How do you know that it's abstinence that's the root cause of family breakups when it talks about how cohabitation, a liberal concept is stated to cause increased breakups as well?
DicedPeas
That one surprised me too. It goes against a very strong myth.
As for #6-- If you have a daughter you are more likely to divorce than if you have a son--That's a two ways street. I have witnessed many families with one or more daughters where the mother overly bonds with the daughter(s), and the man of the house is squeezed out. The more of a super ultra uber-fem the mom is, the more likely this is to happen.
From my own experience as a female with two brothers and a mom who was not the beauty queen type, as a teen I was usually shocked by families with several girls. They spent a lot more time taking about their periods than my mom and I did. If one of them had a fight with their boyfriend then they all went into a period of mourning. Picking out clothes for a special occassion could take weeks or months of preparation. They discovery of a new beauty product was cause for giddy celebration.
Usually in these families the dad worked A LOT. I don't know if that was escapism or just trying to earn more money to cover all those weekend shopping excursions.
I have also seen the pattern with young unmarried women with a baby. If the baby is a girl they are more likely to form a three-way bond with grandma than the baby's father.
dreaday19
That's really funny. I am a girl who grew up with all girls, and we didn't have the experience you speak of, although I know my dad would have loved to have a son. Instead, we all became tomboys (in a sense), with Dad coaching sports and everything. Sure, I played with barbies, but also loved my hotwheels set.
Baddchild
#15 didn't suprise me at all... seeing it printed was. All homosexual marriages being more commited and having less divorces than actual marrages is not a myth, it's propaganda.
Beeba9954
What you say makes sense...I had sons, so I never thought of what you are saying...mothers don't seem to mind sons and dad's doing their sports bonding, but husbands probably feel more out of the loop with all women...they bond differently. Actually, all of these make sense, except that the divorce rate is going down...that doesn't really mean anything, because more people are opting not to marry....to be content to live together and have children together...so their success or fairlure isn't being counted.
Cahaba1
Two observations on your statements:
1) You base a lot of your assumptions on anecdotal data;
2) You seem to have an underlying disgust for your own sex.
Different families have different cultures, even within the framework of the dominant culture.
Lavaux
I have no idea what you're talking about. I truck in generalities also, but determinism is crap. For example, are the Arizona law enforcement authorities predetermined to profile Latinos as illegal immigrants? One side says yes, the other, we'll see. We'll see is the only honest answer, and better yet, there's a remedy for that. Same for this article's theme, i.e. stay married and work through your problems. After all, marriage ain't Disney Land.
Texan99
DicedPeas's description rang a lot of bells with me, but my own experience (three of us girls, no boys) was more like dreaday19's: a strong bond with our father, and not much girly-girl-ness. Also, in the case of a young unmarried woman with a baby, we shouldn't be too surprised at the young father's lack of a bond if he and the mother can't even be bothered to marry.
Topshelf
Perhaps the mom bonds with the daughter because the father is an emotionally distant workaholic?
mdubbz3415
you would think that conservatives would be all over this...lets see the high divorce rate would create more revenue and jobs...hmmm call it a union so the southern babtists dont shit a brick and BOOM its all good
nancyj
It's a shame the article didn't focus in on the happiness of the marriage. A marriage fails long before the decision to divorce and a significant percentage of marriages "last" even when one or both partners are miserable or diminished by it.
Plenty of people are still staying together for fear of what family and friends will say, or because they don't want to or can't take the financial hit, or because the partners are simply afraid to go it alone. These realities skew the percentages cited in the article. For example, those previously divorced know they can stand alone and aren't afraid of the "humiliation" of divorce. And perhaps the poor aren't less skilled at choosing a partner or making a marriage last -- maybe they just have less to lose in walking away.
deborama
very good points nancyj! divorce does not always indicate "failure," it can indicate a willingness to change and grow, while staying together can indicate, as you say, more fear of the unknown and the different than anything else...
MrGEAH
Divorce = Failed Marriage.
To pretend otherwise is self-delusion.
kayjay
The point being made is that divorce can make both people happier, while marriage can make both people more miserable. Divorce is absolutely a result of a failed marriage -- but it is the correct result, instead of sustaining a miserable married life.
smgrbg
I typically don't reply to articles -but I would like to state that my parents are divorced and remarried. It does not drive me to divorce my husband, but instead drives me to have a happy open marriage so my children do not experience what I did as a child. Marriage is not a statistic, but instead two people living happily even through bad times, because you can communicate and so much more.
wekjoe
That old 50% or new 40% divorce/marriage stat should be based on how many marriages of last year ended in divorce this year. It is meaningless to give a number of divorces per year when the total pool of divorcing couples got married in all years preceding this one. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
erykah0105
Sorry, Joe, your point fails to make sense. What you are suggesting is the equivalent of saying death rates should only count those people who die each year provided they were born the prior year. The marriage that ends in divorce had to have, by definition, taken place at some point in the past. When (a year or two or twenty-five) is meaningless as far as 50% of them ending in the divorce is concerned. It is absolutely accurate to say that any couple who marries has a coin-flip's chance of divorcing at some point.
wekjoe
No I think you are wrong. Let us compare the total number of deaths per year with the number of births per year. The obits are always longer than the births, so we find that folks are dying much faster than they are being born and the population is thus shrinking. Oh were folks who died this year born in prior years? To compare the number of divorces to marriages per years creates the same illusion. Longitudinal study required to find a divorce rate.
Vance9281
Sorry, erykah, but you are wrong & Joe is basically correct. When the idea that "50% of all marriages end in divorce" got started back around 1980, it was based on a moronic interpretation of census data. Some journalist, who avoided math in high school & college, noted that one year there were 2 million marriages in the US and 1 million divorces. Hence, the logic went, half of all marriages end in divorce. We still take that number as accurate and it is not.
There are two problems with the assertion: (1) all of the divorces happened in the same year but the marriages could have happened at any time in the past, so some of the people had been married for decades; (2) the writer of this article failed to notice that there were about 54 million other marriages intact at the same that did not end in divorce. If the 50% number was correct, then there should have been 27 million divorces that year.
The other thing that stands out in this article is the county in Indiana that has the highest percentage of divorced people, which is given at 19.2%. If the divorce rate is 50% then why is the number of divorced people so low? Because the real divorce rate is not 50%. It is hard to know exactly because not all state report numbers of divorces to the federal government, so this "true" statistic is a poorly formed guess.
Truth of Fiction has a very useful article on the problem of knowing what the real divorce rate is:
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/d/divorce.htm
johnstafford
Interesting, and pretty meaningless, I think, like most statistical surveys, when applied to individual cases.
=Meanwhile, back in the real world, one of the major causes of disharmony (wife vs. husband) in marriages are the "in-laws." Not in all cases, of course, but those "mother-in-law"
jokes resonate for a reason.
=In-laws often conspire, sometimes unknowingly (most in-laws think, for example, that pressuring "the children" to give them grandkids is a good thing), to undermine marriage relationships, especially in the early, tenuous years of married life. It's hard for controlling parents to "cut the cord" even after their son or daughter has married--cell phones and e-mail make their constant intrusion easier than ever.
=But, "in-law" problems don't even make the "top 15"?
Try talking directly with some young married couples,
and you'll be surprised at what they have to say--just make sure that their parents aren't eavesdropping!
MsDite
You can't wreck a happy home, so for the "in-laws" to cause disharmony there would've already been some problems in the marriage. A person can only be coerced and manipulated if they are too weak to stand up and say "It's my life, and I'll do what I think is best for my family." And really, controlling parents tend to be controlling even before their child marries, so if you married a person with controlling parents, and then get pissed about it, well then you shouldn't have been that stupid in the first place.
johnstafford
You're right. But, every marriage, esp. in the early days, has "problems." So, the support (versus the undermining) of the relationship by in-laws can often be crucial.
=The best [and most common] example: when the tearful bride discovers, inevitably, that her "dream guy" isn't perfect--e.g., "How dare you come home drunk after that poker game!"--and calls mom, does she receive empathic counseling & understanding or "I told you he was a bum!"
Chittagong
Lower IQ's means a higher risk of divorce is like saying
stupid people are more likely to split up. What about
men who cohabit with multiple women before they get married
legally surely they are the most likely to divorced.
All these factors are actually trivial in most eastern cultures
the ONLY reason someone can actually divorce
is if one of the partners has a physical sexual relationship
with someone else outside of legal wedlock.
erykah0105
"Lower IQ's means a higher risk of divorce is like saying
stupid people are more likely to split up"
Yes, Chittagong, that's EXACTLY what it's saying. Maybe you're upset because of which group you fit into?
Chittagong
Well never ever been divorced ever, if you are on your fourth it would make sense. People from eastern cultures rarely divorce unless there is
another person involved in a physical relationship with one of the partners
in the marriage. In case ignorant people didn't know.
Marriage is about commitment, fidelity and family, love..there is no real definition, it means something different to everyone.
Edson Ndanguzi
Maybe the issue should be high IQ vs low IQ where one would seek intellectual connection elsewhere. This can definately lead to infidelity
son-of-metis
Re:#4 - Seriously, there's a "Divorce Magazine"? I'm so glad to be single...
Wolf SilverOak
I call bullshit.
My parents are divorced. My dad has been married 4 times. My stepmom twice now. He's always said that if he'd found my stepmom first, he'd never have been married any other time except to HER and her alone.
I have been married for nearly 17 years now. If we were going to get divorced, I'm pretty damn sure it'd have happened by now.
My husband was a smoker. He quit last year. Guess what? Still married.
Know what else? We don't have a lot of money. Never have. Some months we can barely pay our bills, or they get paid late. Guess what? Yep, STILL MARRIED.
Know something else? We live in a Red State. We married in a Red State. We're from Red States. How about that? STILL MARRIED AFTER 17 YEARS.
Know what else? WE argue over finances a few times a week. Gee, we're still married! How about that!
These 'statistics' are full of shit.
dreaday19
Statistics are exactly that - statistics. Many beat the odds, but that's just part of what affects the percentages. Congrats - hope you and your parents are happy.
Cahaba1
Statistics in and of themselves are not oracles or judgments. They're numbers that help identify trends. Statistics tell us what kind of diets make us more likely to develop heart disease. They do not tell us that everyone on those diets will actually do so. The same with seat belts allowing us to diminish the possibility of dying in a car crash, or under-25s being less safe drivers. The fact that seat belts do not save all lives or the fact that some under-25's drive quite safely does not mean that those statistics are inaccurate or have failed.
Congratulations, by the way. It's good to hear of a couple making it these days.
binabik
Wow, defensive much? Statistics like this identify trends, they do not determine an individual's success or failure in marriage. Just like someone can smoke a pack a day for seventy years and never get lung cancer, there are always exceptions to even very strong statistical correlations.
Most of these are not particularly surprising. This article simply identifies stressors that make it more likely for a marriage to fall apart. More likely, not inevitable. Arguing about finances every week might not phase one couple, and in another relationship it may become unbearable. Having twins won't split up most couples, but there is a small percentage of marriages where twins will create more stress then the relationship can bear.
Congrats on 17 years of marriage. The truth is that all relationships and marriages have to wade through crap and difficult times. It's ultimately a testament to the people in the relationship if they can find their way through and remain happy and in love.
ddusa321
Kudos and I agree!
JamesBlunt
You might want to put #11 on your list too. It's called stats and %... this has nothing to do with your marriage. The women is just reporting numbers. Stop taking things so personal.
jrod0906
Dude i second that! LOL. This chic is probably divorced because of the way she thinks. These are probably reasons why her own spouse left her!!! Stupid chic. Hope she get well soon cause this pinch is sick!!!! LOL
jenn28532
you know, i was thinking the exact same thing that you were saying! my husband still smokes is the only difference....and i've been married alost 12 years. and to be competely honest, i am more in love with him now than i was 5 years ago! we have 3 girls so according to this aritcle we should already be divorced times a few
God'schild
I agree with you, these statistics are not on point. I don't know where they get their information from or what they base it on, but it's not realistic. No marriage is perfect and it's not always going to be peaches and cream, but at the end of the day the fact remains the same, you didn't get a divorce, instead you weather the storms and push forward, but they are afraid to say what's real.
newswoman
If you love someone, you love someone and it doesn't change. I must be lucky because neither my husband nor I ever thought of divorce. But then we never had a lot of stress on our marriage, like a handicapped child, too many children or religious differences. To repeat: I think we were lucky.
debbie60435
I agree with you completely! The statistics as well as this whole article are FULL OF SHIT! Who comes up with this stuff, anyway?
DevilsLawyer
Why's it full of shit? They're just statistics and odds, not dictates or predictions of any individual marriage. It looks like neither you nor Wolf understands the concept of statistics all that well.
ctkoseoglu
Dear Wolfsilveroak,
Thanks for your very positive commentaries indeed. I am just divorcing, our court has been lasting for 4 months after 15 years marriage and mostly we have been getting into conflict over some typical lifestyle, approaches and any cases in the life of us or in our home. I really admired your marriage while you lived many times some struggle in your marriage. I m now very sad but not due to end of marriage in fact, sad for my daughter and its further life
aurora1920
If the 50% divorce rate mentioned is arrived at the way I heard it is -- then it's not worth analyzing. I.E. For simplicity, let's say there were 1000 marriages in the U.S.A. in 2009, and 500 divorces in the same year. Unbelievably -- that's called a 50% divorce rate!!! When actually the 500 should be measured against ALL the marriages in past and present. But then, of course one would run into such variables -- how do you count those already divorced, on 2d marriages, etc., etc. So they do a simplistic calculation and come up with nonsense. It is my memory that a true rate is much, much lower. aurora1920
Little Birdy
These statistics make no sense to me. So if you're, say, 100% more like to do x, what does that mean? It's going to happen for sure? If I'm 100% more likely to get a divorce does that mean I will be divorced? What does 167% more likely mean? Are these percentages really significant or do they just seem that way? At what percentage is something an absolute certainty? Say, if I get in a car, driving towards a mountain at 150 mph in a 1966 Mustang (metal dashboard, no seat belt) with no brakes, what is the percentage that I am more likely to be injured than someone driving on a golf cart path in Arizona?
I have no comprehension of how this actually translates. This aside from the fact that if we had all the money paid for these useless, horseshit studies, we could eliminate the national debt.
And another thing, do you have to do a study that demonstrates statistically that people who marry young, are stupid, and have nothing in common are more likely to get divorced than educated, older people? More education means more income, more income more stability, older means mature. Christ almighty. Why does everyone need a study instead of using commons sense?
dreaday19
100% more likely basically means twice as likely. Percentages have a good way of skewing numbers to look huge and confusing.
Say... of a set group of 100 couples (group A), 10 couples get divorced. Of 100 couples in Group B, 20 get divorced.
Because group B has 10 more divorced couples (the same number of divorced couples from group A), couples in Group B are as likely to get divorced as couples in Group A plus another 100% of Group A. Thus 100% more likely.
But as you can see, in my little example, 170 of the 200 couples didn't divorce.
If Group B was 15, it would be 50% more (cause 5 is half of 10)
equation = (B - A)/A = % difference
And yes, commonsense would be a wonderful thing to pay attention to, but for some reason, people like statistics. I guess it 'proves' things.
Little Birdy
So this story is utter bull shit? Sounds like it.
Thanks for the explanation. The percentages standing alone are way more dramatic if you don't know how truly insignificant and useless they are.
And as far as people higher educations staying married, I could count a dozen couples I know who stay together because they have such complex finances that divorce would leave them both worse off.
Picachu
If you are of below average intelligence you are more likely to get divorced - that's is simple the logical extension of - if you are of below average intelligence you were 99% more likely to get married.
Morgan_Midnight
Not necessarily... There have been plenty of studies done which show that child abuse lowers I.Q., especially neglect. Obviously, a person who has gone through child abuse (and are therefore more likely to have a lower I.Q.) will go into every relationship with some serious issues, which will harm the longevity of the relationship.
jenny2006
Ha! That is hilarious. I was wondering the same thing when I read the article. Are they implying people with low iq's get married young? So much for my mom, mother in law, two sisters and sister in law, who all married under 21, and are now happily married professionals ranging from doctors, nurses, the head of advertising for a newspaper. What were we all thinking????? Silly us. We should've just cohabitated for years. Those statistics are much better. Oh wait... maybe not.
Cahaba1
lol!
MsDite
That's great, too funny. I do sometimes kick myself in the ass for being so stupid as to marry my husband...
SunshineRaysinparadise
Isn't there a difference between being slightly above average and being a genius? They forgot to mention that people that have kids out of wedlock are MORE LIKELY to get divorced. It makes sense since they tend to be both selfish and irresponsible or why else would they be in that situation.
ctkoseoglu
:-))))) you re right
Stephanie Marie Folkerth
If you read these statistics and believe in them enough to let it have an effect on your marriage, you're likely to get a divorce. *Rolls eyes*
rohdeo
So... I'm an American woman, living in a red state, who has been divorced and remarried to a previously married man 5 years younger than me. He had a son by his first wife and a daugher with me. His parent had both been divorced before marrying each other. My parents were divorced and my mother remarried 4 times. Thank goodness we don't live in Wayne co. Indiana or we may have been divorced 6 months ago~
Chima Uzo
You all Americans are fucking stupid people, in Africa you hardly hear of Divorce because they respect their culture and also respect the meaning of marriage, in America they say Divorcing is like when you are moving into a new apartment and it is a good thing to move to a new apartment, so there for it is also good to Divorce in American, how can couples marry and after before one year they plan to Divorce,
Sometimes, i wonder if this is a kind of business where Divorce lawyers in America make their living, or is it because their women or men are not satisfied by sex, something is really going on there.... if a marriage they say for better for worst, so why can;t the couples handle the worst part and wait until it is better, simple logical idea,
If two couples are having some kind of problem in their marriage, they should find out what could be the problem and settle it and also avoid the next mistake, simple logic...
I like the comment @DicedPeas, you are really a teacher and need to come out for teaching couples how to last their marriage, i am 24 and single but how come i have a very good idea to a lasting marriage, i am the type that would like to keep my marriage even when it is worst i will console my wife to be patience and assure her that one day it will be better.
If, you are a man and got married, try to satisfy your wife and always be there for her, love her like your brother, wife, sister and mother. Always see if she is happy or not, but when she is not try to find out and figure it out so that next time she won't be in that mood. All this calculation of 50% and 100 million % is not the answer, the answer is how to make it better, people should grab some senses.
newswoman
Don't compare marriage in America to marriage in Africa!! In some places, women are 'sold' into marriage, they have no choice in who they will be married to. Love isn't in the picture in most cases so men don't have any particular feeling for their wives and take a 'second' wife (if Muslim). Women are 'circumcised' which takes away sexual feeling so they will be faithful!!
American mores have their problems, but most of the time, Americans make their own choices, however bad. It seems they are putting off marriage until a later age nowadays and that may be an improvement in marriage stats.
SharnCedar
Good marriages are not built on helpless, fearful dependency. A very good marriage is one in which each person feels free to walk away if they need or want to, but they don't choose to. They choose rather to live and coexist with each other. Because it turns out its comfortable and healthy to live with another person. It also turns out it doesn't much matter who, so you might as well stay with the person you are with (provided no serious issues like drugs or psychotic behaviors).
spowers
65% of an American Lawyer's business was domestic and the majority of them take place because of financial reasons. A couple with child can't make ends meet. She complains, mostly to other men. If one of them is interested in her, bingo, formula for divorce. She leave hubby who pays child support. A new hubby comes in with an income and the financial problems are solved. Of course, there is another simple reason. If the woman walks out on her hubby, she's looking for a new penis. If he walks out on her, he's looking for a new vagina. All other reasons are just excuses....except money....and the lawyer always gets his.
krämchen ♫
But that's like saying you're more likely to die in a fire because you were born. It's only true because death relies on life. If you even the playing field you can see the details that actually make a difference in %.
For example, take into consideration that a person with an above-average IQ is more likely to have a higher-stress (however higher-paying) career -- both factors lead to a higher divorce rate.
Career and status aside ...someone with a high IQ is more likely to suffer from certain types of mental illnesses, which also take tolls on relationships.
Anyway, numbers can be biased. There's always more to the story.
Thank you.
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