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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

The unsettling thing is how normal your comment makes divorce sound, and how much statistics back that up. As if it's just a thing that is an expected part of life.

People need to stop getting married, or at least not so early. Marriage is a very intensive (and rewarding) commitment that I think most modern people cannot make. Instead, foster relationships that matter for as long as they matter.

I was in a serious relationship from 19-25. These things end because people change a lot in those years. We both graduated and went in different directions. Which I think is perfectly fine. Relationships will change. You can absolutely start new ones. Join pretty much any club that meets in person. Commit time to those who enrich your life, cut loose those who harm it.

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Here's the thing: divorce is much less common in first time marriages than in all other marriages. That is to say, divorce is much more common among those who have divorced already.

While relationships can change, those in them can chose to grow together or to grow apart. Well, it's not always a choice, but the sense of fatalism regarding change isn't necessarily warranted.

The issue is that people end up at age 40 with no ltr, no marriage, and no kids, and end up as fodder for this article. Because it gets a lot harder to find your ltr then; women generally are at the "last chance kid" stage and have been around the block, so LTR steve usually gets a very cold eye unless he sees the light and wants a marriage too.

So if they don't marry and then decide to split up after a long time, how is that really different from the same happening to s married couple? It's not the word "divorce" that makes the breakup painful.

> Marriage is a very intensive (and rewarding) commitment that I think most modern people cannot make.

I just want to nit-pick and put the emphasis on the modern world rather than the modern people ^^.

>Marriage is a very intensive (and rewarding) commitment that I think most modern people cannot make

If we're going to make generalizations about whole generations of people then: I wouldn't call staying in an abusive relationship because of stigma of being divorced to be a positive of the past or a sign of commitment.

This is an American thing. I'm European, 27 and I'm regularly shocked after conversing with people my age on the other continent casually mentioning their 'husband' or 'wife and kids'.

It’s not an American thing. It’s like this everywhere. Poland, England, Germany, uSA, Ireland, Australia. Everywhere.

"Everywhere", meaning the Western developed world.

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