Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Failing (Second) Marriages?

The other day I was reading a story and one woman in the story expressed the thought that there was no point in getting married a second time because "The statistics on second marriages aren't great." This struck me as a fairly odd statement. To understand why this is, it is kind of like saying, "I don't want to get a driver's license because the statistics on the number of people who drive drunk aren't great. I mean what if that happens to me?" Who says you have to drive drunk? or even drink for that matter?

So when I was reading that story and I came across that statement, I found it to be very odd, because it expressed the sentiment that divorce and separation was inevitable. Essentially this sentiment treats marriage as a random statistical thing that only has a probabilistic outcome independent of anything we choose or do. If this really were the case with our lives then how many people would get driver's licenses, or go to school and get a grade (think about it, half of all students get below average grades).

2 comments:

Serge Le Coz L'Eternel said...

The statistics can vary if we consider the kind of person for example : some categories are more moral than some others and then divorce (or are separated by death from the other) and get married again for some moral reasons.

Quantumleap42 said...

Cartesian, you make a good point. We must consider why most marriages fail and then avoid those things, and most of those things include what kind of person we chose to be.