COUPLING IS A CONTACT SPORT
Half of marriages or live-in partnerships survive long term. That should not be taken as discouraging. By comparison, small businesses, careers, business partnerships, and animal relationships have a far lower survival rate than marriages. Life is challenging. It’s hard work making a living and partnering. People grow and change and sometimes fail deal-breaking tests that occur years or decades after the wedding. How rare it is that people have a good lifetime relationship with high school friends, both parents, their cousins, their own children, their grandchildren, and friends they meet as adults? What are the odds that a person will live in the same house and be in the same job in 20 years? Sports teams are seldom faithful to the same owner, city, or head coach for 20 years.
Change is inevitable, yet the probability that a first marriage will remain intact (without disruption) for 20 years among women and men 22–44 years of age with a Bachelor’s degree, in the United States between 2006–2010 was 65% for men and 78% for women. And there is a positive correlation between the amount of education and marriages surviving.
When winners lose a job, a small business, or dissolve a business partnership, they go on. The same should happen when a romantic partnership dissolves. Many experienced small business owners know that owning one or more that fail can be a great training ground for a business that finally thrives because of them. It certainly makes one grateful for the successful one! Marriages lost by death or breakups are extremely challenging: legally, financially, and emotionally. Live-in breakups may be easier legally if there are no children or community assets, but emotionally they may be largely the same.
You can get anything you want. So why give up and become celibate or a hermit. Life goes on and so should you. Persistence creates many successes so don’t quit trying too soon.
Disclaimer: Here are some sayings selected from sage to sick to stupid and ‘sometimes’ gender-biased:
Eat, drink and re-marry: marriage is the safest place for women and kids and where men live longer.
Success is a journey, not a destination; marriage is a journey, not a destination.
Go as far as you can see, then you will see farther.
No great marriage ever ended in divorce.
Love may be blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener!
Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
Marry; get a good wife and be happy or get a bad one and become a philosopher.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterward.
When married admit when you are wrong; when you are right shut up.
The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
Marriage looks easy until you try it.
Marriage caused him to lose his bachelor degree and her to get her master degree.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
A divorce is letting go of the life you planned to get the life that is waiting for you.
Marriage is not all heaven nor all hell, more like purgatory.
Trade the admiration of many women for the criticism of one – get married.
Divorce, like construction, always takes longer and costs more than you think!
To get an accurate cost estimate for your divorce, get quotes from three lawyers and add them together.
Divorce is a process, not an event.
There’s a difference between giving up and knowing when you’ve had enough.
Justice doesn’t happen automatically, it needs to be fought for.
I do, I did, I’m done.
I used to be married but I am better now.
I’m really looking forward to never looking back.
She didn’t marry you for your money, she’s divorcing you for it.
Divorces are expensive because they are worth it.
Divorce is the end of an error.
I’m not getting married again, just going to find a woman I don’t like and give her my house.
You don’t know a woman till you’ve met her in court.
Whoever said money can’t buy happiness never paid for a divorce.
