When should a couple get divorced?

[Zues126]

I wish I had more time. I am on my way out of town for work and won't return for a couple of days. I'll try to share a few of my thoughts and see what develops. Thanks for your replies Maybell and Parkema.

I was under the impression that the falling divorce rate was partly due to the falling marriage rate. Less young people getting married at all, and the increase of long term relationships outside of wedlock. Like much of our society was losing faith in marriage altogether. Either way, it still seems much, much too high.

Here's the part I have the hardest time with- The divorce script tends to sort people out into two categories: The good people that do their part to have healthy and fulfilling marriages, and the bad people that are narcissistic and have family of origin issues and are abusive and selfish and we need to escape from. Oddly enough after some time of reflection it seems that everyone's WAS turns out to have been- wait for it- a bad person! And everyone on these forums- you'll never guess- is one of the good people! Wow we are so lucky on these forums that every one of us is so good and we all escaped from all the bad people that left us! I am playing a little, but this is what I've observed from watching hundreds and hundreds of LBS posters.

Personally I find the whole thing very distasteful. To me a marriage means "one and only partner for life". So the idea of comparing a spouse to another partner is really gross. Let me try to compare...hmm...it hits me like if someone lost their child in a car crash and said "THANK GOD JIMMY GOT KILLED IN A CRASH, HE WAS SO AWFUL, NOW I CAN HAVE MORE KIDS THAT AREN'T SUCH BRATS!" No one would say that about losing a kid, I just can't compute how our spouses stopped falling in the same category.

I don't really believe in the 'good people/bad people' thing. I think we're all just human people. I think that we view our WAS's through crap tinted glasses and view our new partners through rose tinted glasses. It is the only explanation that makes sense because it would be improbable beyond reckoning that this is just a 'good guy forum'.

Either way I am put off by it. My XW labeled me a 'bad guy' and threw me in the junk pile and is trying to go through new partners to find her 'good guy' that she knows she deserves. If there were good/bad guys out there I think I'm closer to a bad guy, and apparently in this new narrative that means that no one should be with me because the rules say so. This is fine with me because I don't want to play temporary marriage with a group of people that doesn't see the value in a life partner and would rather play the replaceable game.

Personally I believe that people grow and change, and that there is nearly as much a chance of a bad marriage evolving into a good marriage as there is of aborting it and starting over a new marriage. We talk about all the personal growth going on with our forum members, many posters talk about how they weren't the best spouses but now would do better. Divorce prevents those future seasons to turn and allow improvement. And again, even if it's a simple and fast way to try to avoid real lasting painful problems, I don't think it's a viable overall solution and I think it causes more pain and problems than it prevents.

For what it's worth, I recognize I'm in the minority on this. I also am not suggesting I am somehow right. I acknowledge that I feel very differently about these things than most which is why I appreciate the conversation.