The Risky Business of Marriage!

   Sometimes I buy a book only to discover it is not at all what I thought it was.  When I was younger, if I started a book, I finished it.  At some point I realized there are too many wonderful books in the world to waste time on disappointing choices.  (I must admit before I go further that some of the books I stuck with before I allowed myself to abandon a disappointing book turned out to be wonderful reads.)  However, even today I do try to give each book a chance, even if it is no more that a skimming rather than truly diving into it.  Recently, I chose one of those books that disappointed me, but I did discover a few good quotes, and one of them inspired this blog.

The Era of Flat-Tops and Back-Combing

    My husband and I married right out of high school.  The odds for success were risky.  Even before our marriage, divorce rates had begun to rise.  By 1965 rates reached for individual couples divorcing to 2.5%, jumping to 3.2 by 1969.  Between 1950 and 1999 the divorce rate doubled from the likely hood of 11 to 23 divorces per 1,000 married women between the ages of 1 and 64.  For two kids ages 17 and 18, it might have seemed that we had stepped into a rapidly ascending elevator going up in the wrong direction.

    Statistics vary from study to study, but there is a degree of consistency about the particular years during which divorces are most likely to occur.  The most common years are 1-2 and 5-8, and within those groups, 2 years stand out...the years 7 and 8.

    My husband and I have long since passed those early danger years and will soon be celebrating another  wedding anniversary ending with a zero.  Where have those years gone?  Which brings me back to the quote that inspired this blog.  When I found the quote, I slipped a book mark in that page.  Later I told my husband, "I have something I want you to read."  I didn't tell him what it was, and he didn't know what the book I was reading contained.  I just handed over the book with the book mark in place and pointed to the quote.  It reads"

 Successful marriage

is leading innovative lives together,

being open, non-programed.

It's a free fall:  how you handle 

each new thing as it comes along.   

    He read it and then said to me, "That's about what we did, isn't it?"  And it was.  He enjoys joking that he married a girl with a cosmetology license who was supposed to work in a beauty shop and put him through college and instead he ended up putting me through Law School.  I counter that his career moves took me to two New England states, Texas, New York City, back to Texas and then two Southern states and then back to Texas.  He counters that rebuttal by reminding me that he brought me home to Kansas in retirement to the 4th generation family farm where I was raised.  (By the way, I never got a job in a beauty shop, but Larry had received a lot of "free" haircuts!)  The quote above ends with these words:

As a drop of oil on the sea,

you must float,

using intellect and compassion

to ride the waves.

    Before all of this starts sounding too romantic and personal, I must quote what the book author shared  immediately before this.  He wrote, "Marriage is not a love affair, it's an ordeal."  I did not show that quote to my husband!

   Today, in 2022, about 50% of married couples eventually divorce, and 60% of second marriages end in divorce.  For third marriages it is 58%.  America has the 5th highest divorce rate in the world.  As for Kansas, we rank 9th among the states at 9.2 %.  The statistics in this paragraph are from World Population Review Website.  The other statistics are from a variety of sources.

    The history of divorce is interesting.  The 1st divorce is believed to date back to 1706 B.C. in Babylon.  The name comes from the Latin term "divortere," meaning to turn differet ways.  The first known divorce in the American Colonies was when Anne Clarke was granted a divorce from her absent and adulterous husband by the Quarter Court of Boston, Massachusetts.  Kansas was more generous that many state courts, for unlike the states where the husband could basically take the children away from their mother in a divorce, Kansas recognized the woman's right to her children as well. 

    In thinking about the challenges of marriage, I should not overlook the shy efforts of our Prairie Bachelor, Isaac Werner, whose courtship efforts never quite got far enough for marriage. 

    Perhaps I should have saved this blog for Valentine's day, but then again, there are many engagements at Christmas!  So, I will close with a final quote from the book:  

When seeking your partner,

if your intuition is a virtuous one,

you will find him or her.  If not,

you'll keep finding the wrong person.

    I am far from the right person to give advice on marriage, and that is not what I have intended to do.  Blame the quote that I stumbled on!  I have no advice to give, but I have told a few couples that our marriage succeeded because there never came a time when both of us at the same time thought a divorce was what we needed.  Sometimes that's all that it takes--one of you who thinks it is worth trying harder to save something worth saving.   Maybe there is something to that old song:  "You've got to give a little, take a little, and let your poor heart break a little--that's the story of, that's the glory of love!"