Why Marriages Fail by Anne Roiphe

In the 1970’s, divorce was relatively uncommon and difficult to happen. There needed to be adultery, abandonment, cruelty, intoxication or some other reason that made it necessary to end the marriage (“Why”). In today’s society, divorce happens every ten to thirteen seconds. Men and women fall in love, get married, and start a family. They make a vow to stay together forever and love each other unconditionally. However, not all marriages make it that far. Divorce occurs for multiple reasons such as financial problems, abuse, addictions, infidelity (cheating), and lack of communication. These factors, along with many others, not only affect the parents, but the children are affected as well.

In the United States of America, family life has been greatly important to the structure and function of society. A large part of this family life is the institution of marriage itself. Over the past few decades, the role and presence of marriage has been transformed. What once was a standard assumption in the home life of Americans has become increasingly less consistent. The Changing Landscape of Love and Marriage by authors Kathleen E. Hull, Ann Meier, and Timothy Ortyl discusses how and why these changes may have taken place on the basis of two primary conclusions. The first of these is the idea that marriage has lost it’s taken-for-granted status, and the second being the fact that both adults and children are experiencing more upheaval in their personal lives than in the past.

     In years past, the American Dream for most young girls’ is to grow up and be married to Prince Charming and to “Live Happily Ever After!” Although this may be expected - it is rarely fulfilled. Marriage is the legal and binding union between a man and woman. Yet when couples marry, they vow to stay by their partner’s side ‘till death do us part.’ Currently that vow seems to have little or no value in today’s society. The current statistics for survival of marriage are quite grim. The divorce rate in the United States is somewhere between 50 percent and a startling 67 percent. (KSL News) One contributing factor the growing epidemic of divorce is the parting of different family

As stated in our text, various factors can bind married couples together, such as economic interdependencies, legal, social and moral constraints, relationship, and amongst other things. In the recent years some of these factors have diminished their strengths. The modern generation sees marriage in a different perspective altogether. Individuals today feel they are stable independently, they do not need to rely on their spouse for emotional or financial support. Many are career driven and soar to conquer their dreams over settling down with a family. Such untraditional views have increased divorce rates.

“Will Your Marriage Last?”, by Aviva Patz, is a cohesive article about marriage and divorce. Aviva Patz is the executive editor of Psychology Today. Patz narrates the story of Ted Huston, a professor at the University of Texas, who followed the lives of 168 couples for 13 years after their wedding date. She was then able to draw conclusions about what makes a couple stay together or end up filing divorce papers. Although marriages and divorce are the themes of this article, it is really about society’s pressure on young people to be perfect.

The majority of people who join together with their significant other through the act of marriage hope and dream that marriage will surround them with infinite love and happiness; unfortunately that is not always the case. In fact, “according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey, 10 percent of Maine women and 11 percent of men in Maine are divorced.”1 Though 10 and 11 percent seem like fairly small percentages, 10 percent of Maine women is approximately 67,831 women, and 11 percent of Maine men is approximately 71,506 men, which truly are not small figures to take into consideration. Since marriages do not always have a happy ending

In Aviva Patz’s “Will Your Marriage Last?” she proposes that marriages can be predicted to either succeed or end in divorce based on certain factors. Based off of a lecture she attended at the American Psychological Association convention in Boston, Patz presents the idea that a marriage’s success can be determined within the first two years and if the relationship shows disillusionment or the “enduring dynamics model.” Patz’s article does not effectively prove her stance on if a marriage can be predicted to last, but rather exemplifies doubt as to if she personally believes in the ideas she offers.

In ‘Till Debt Do Us Part’ by Mary Loftus, she explains just how Americans in a relationship are affected by money in a positive and in a negative way. Well over sixty percent of women and male enter a marriage with some debt, which places tension on the relationship and takes the focus away from future financial goals (99). Concealing your financial transactions can cause legal issues and can be detrimental to your relationship, and can ultimately weaken the relationship (100). Women and men both grumble that the other isn’t doing enough to provide financially, which affects their relationship (101). The idea that men are supposed to work and women are supposed to be housewives like many years ago, can go against the couple if the women earns a lot more and can cause unnecessary hostility (102). Marriage requires effort from both parties, even with the abundance of issues of money, couples should plot their financial lives rather than avoiding it (102).

The following two articles were compared and contrasted to each other. “Why Marriage Makes People Happy” by Phillip Moeller talks about the causes of happiness in marriage. “Most Woman Would Rather Divorce Than Be A Housewife” by Lisa Wade discusses that women would prefer an egalitarian marriage. Both articles state that when social roles are divided into half, women are happy in their marriage. Living arrangements of gender roles in marriages years ago differed from marriages today but in some cases it still lingers in relationships. After completing a survey of the type of ideal relationship women and men

Marriage is a union many Americans hope to enter in their life. While some marriages last a lifetime, some sadly end in divorce. I got the honor to interview a lovely couple who have been married twenty-five years and are still standing strong today.

In the article “WE WANT A DIVORCE” written by SIRS Staff, readers ascertain that divorce rates have proliferated over the past 30 years due to lack of interest in their partner, different beliefs and habits, and financial problems. Declining interest is very problematic because some couples find their relationship was only actualized to escape reality. While losing interest in their partner is troublesome, the lack of commonality in values and customs make it excruciating to live together. Furthermore, the stress of money can diminish the bonds of love and it can terminate the marriage because the power of money becomes stronger than the power of love. Therefore, divorce can manifest when there is a lack of interest in their partner, different

“Americans do not seem to be interested in a reality check on the topics of love and marriage. After all, it seems to be more fun to believe in fairy tales” (Hornblow). There is a large number of Americans who would get married at least once in their lives, without thinking of the importance of a marriage and the possibilities that could happen based on quick decisions. The true meaning to what marriage is, issues involving marriage, which causes the divorce rate to rise in the United States, and the importance of marriage, to what is being done to increase the chance of a happy long-lasting marriage. Marriages in the United States can be seen by the explanation of the effects of not being able to tackle problems, or being able to learn how to work through complex issues of everyday life as a married couple.

“Life is all about moments of impact, and how they change our lives forever, but what if one day you could no longer remember any of them?”-Leo. The Vow is a romantic drama movie that takes place in Toronto and Chicago where the couple and their friends and family live. It is a movie that is based on the real life story of Kim and Krickitt Carpenter; “Kim never regain her lost memories but they are still together today, with two children”- Ebert. It was directed by Michael Sucsy, written by Abby John, Marc S, and Jason K.

Marriage is a commitment of spending the rest of one’s life with someone he or she cherishes deeply. It is the joining of two people in a bond that lasts until death, but in practice is increasingly cut short by divorce/ separation. Most people claim that they want their marriage to last a lifetime, and who wouldn’t? However, over half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce. In 2010, Paul Amato published a statement on divorce in the prestigious Journal of Marriage and Family. He states, “At the end of the 20th century, 43% - 46% of marriages were predicted to end in dissolution.” In the short poem written by Washington Irving “Rip Van Winkle”, Rips relationship with his wife was horrible because of the point of view, characters, and symbolism.

One of the main causes that marriages are not lasting is the change in the roles of woman today. Prior to the 1980’s it was the man’s responsibility to earn money and financially provide for his family, whereas the