Divorce is fast becoming a reality that most people face in today’s world. What used to be an institution to be treasured and supposedly last a lifetime, marriages have now become just the opposite of that. Divorce rates are fast climbing up the ladder and there seems to be no looking back.
Many researchers attribute this increased rate to a changing society wherein most of the people have developed a more individualistic attitude and tend to put individual needs before family needs. There are times when individuals enter into a marriage at a very young age and realise that they erred in the decision-making process whereas there are mature adults who get married but find out very late that they cannot cope with the responsibilities a marriage encompasses. Each marriage is different and the factors influencing each marriage will be different. Hence, we will look at the different factors that affect marriage and subsequently lead to divorce.
Reasons for Increase in Divorce Rates
- Changing lifestyles are an important factor for increased divorce rates. Married couples mostly remain engrossed in their daily routine and work consumes more space in their minds than their personal lives. Therefore, either they do not get time to resolve their daily issues or they choose not to talk about it because that’s the easier thing to do. There are also times when couples just expect their partners to understand what they’re feeling without actually spelling it out and keep their feelings tightly shut inside their hearts. Changing lifestyles also encourage cohabitation. Cohabitation is an arrangement wherein couples stay together without getting married. Research indicates that couples who cohabit before marriage have a higher chance of getting divorced than couples who do not cohabit before marriage. Marriage is no longer the central part of people’s lives. Marriage requires that couples understand each others’ expectations from a marriage. Only after you have understood each others’ expectation can you aim to fulfil the same. When the couples fail to spell out what they are looking for in a marriage prior to getting married, they fail to make their marriages work because they do not know what they were looking for in marriage in the first place.
- Research indicates that approximately 70% of the divorces are filed by women. Women no longer want to compromise on a marriage that has been failed by their partner. This is especially true if their partner has cheated on them. Infidelity is one of the major reasons why marriages break. Often, infidelity is one of the contributing factors to an already failing marriage and not the only responsible factor for the marriage breakdown. Research indicates that around 5% of the women admit to cheating on their spouse, whereas 15% of the men admit to cheating on their wives. Feelings of disgust, betrayal and frustration towards a cheating spouse can erode all pleasant memories of a marriage. Most marriages do, in fact, break after a case of infidelity because independent women find little or no reason to stay in such kind of a marriage. They have no reason to compromise, are economically independent and not afraid to explore the path to divorce anymore. Whereas in the past the women were homemakers, the women today play a significant role in running the household and contribute equally to the household income. Women today have good education, understand their rights, and do not opt for pregnancy in the earlier years of their lives. This makes them more independent to kick-start their lives after a divorce.
- Once considered a stigma, divorce has become a common lifestyle in the world today. People tend to divorce and remarry more often than they did a couple of decades ago. This can also partly be attributed to the fact that the life expectancy of people has increased and people are more likely to remarry. In addition, since people in the past used to be more religious, there was a lot of stigma attached to divorce and divorce was considered scandalous. However, as people today are much less religious, the stigma attached to divorce is also far less.
- Certain divorce laws today make divorce much easier than it was in the past. The state benefit system in the
