Divorce Replaces Death as Marriage Ender

Dr. Neill Neill

I have been married well over 40 years, but not all to the same woman. Yes, I have been divorced twice. If you are thinking, "He must really like being married," you would be right. I do. When a [tag-cat]marriage[/tag-cat] is working, it is the best place on earth. But when it is failing, it can be an incredibly lonely place.

Eileen is my third wife and we have been together 27 years. She was married before. Her first husband has been married twice more, each time to a woman who had been previously married. My first wife married again and my second wife married twice more. Their husbands had all been married before.

Now, turn the clock back 150 years or so.

You meet a couple in their late fifties. Let’s call them "Ed" and "Liz." As you get to know them, you find that they have been married about 7 years. Liz is Ed’s fourth wife, and Ed is Liz’s fifth husband. They seem well-adjusted and happy.

Ed and Liz were together in the 1850s. On the surface the lives of Eileen and me have closely paralleled the lives of Ed and Liz of 150 years ago. Has nothing changed?

One thing has indeed changed. None of Ed’s previous wives went on to marry again, and none of Liz’s previous husbands married again. Why did none of them remarry?

In 1850 the average length of a [tag-tec]marriage[/tag-tec] was between eight and nine years, ending in the death of one of the parties to the marriage. All of Ed and Liz’s previous marriages ended with their partners’ deaths.

It was a rough-and-tumble time without much medical backup. Men died in farming, hunting, mining and industrial accidents. Women died giving birth. Both men and women died of infections and common diseases. Epidemics were common. If Ed were to reach sixty, he would have lived twenty years beyond the life expectancy for a man of his time.

Today in the 20 to 55 age bracket [tag-ice]divorce[/tag-ice] is the predominant way marriages end. People still die; today it’s automobile accidents, heart attacks and cancer. However, it is still only a small minority of marriages end with someone dying.

Four or five hundred years ago in England the words "until death do us part" became a piece of the standard marriage vow. We still say it and mean it when we marry. But today when two young people who can reasonably expect to live another fifty to seventy years get married, the old vow takes on a meaning that was unheard of when the vow was introduced.

Except in the last hundred years, the statistical expectation was not to live a long life with your marriage partner, but to live a few years until one of you died.

The Rise and Fall of the Murder Mystery

The fact that people started to live longer was a factor in the emergence of the murder mystery as a literary genre. The premise is that the spouse won’t just die, and divorce is non-existent or impossible, so he or she has to be helped along. Today if someone in the western world wants to end their marriage, they divorce. The premise for the murder mystery is gone and the genre is dying.

Clearly we are in a significant social transition. Divorce has replaced death as the principal way that marriages end, except for the very old. And even that is changing. However, the transition from death to divorce as the instrument of a marriage ending has not yet fully registered in public consciousness.

Death has been regarded as a spiritual transition for millennia. It is finalized with respect, ritual and a period of mourning. In contrast, divorce is still tainted with moral associations and disrespect. The necessary grieving is denied or kept secret.

As a society we have some distance to go before there is general acceptance of divorce as a respectful social-spiritual transition, accompanied by ritual and mourning.

Psychologist Dr. Neill Neill maintains an active practice on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He focuses on healthy relationships and life after addictions. He is the author of Living with a Functioning Alcoholic - A Woman's Survival Guide. http://drneillneill.com http://neillneill.com

Dr. Neill Neill

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