Divorce Isn’t Always a Bad Option, Especially in the Military

Torpy’s monologue is an attempt to manufacture controversy.  The military puts a strain on marriages.  It knows that.  It also knows the stability of family life affects troops’ service. The military provides both religious and non-religious methods of family/marriage counseling for those that want it.  Where’s the controversy in that?  Torpy is trying to turn a theme supported by the military as a whole into a diatribe against chaplains and religion.  It’s not only a stretch, it’s a cheap shot.
Other than Torpy’s choice of an unrelated and classless graphic, where’s the controversy?
http://christianfighterpilot.com/blog/2012/01/09/military-divorce-rate-highest-ever-mercyme-teams-with-familylife/

Divorce isn’t sometimes an option, sometimes it seems like the only choice. I recently returned from a deployment overseas to the Horn of Africa. Out of a division of 33 personnel, where 14 were married at the beginning of deployment, 6 of those came home to divorce papers. It was such a wide path of destruction it seemed contagious. 

Counseling is there, but when you’re on a ship 10,000 miles away from your spouse, counseling isn’t the easiest option. Communication with home is difficult at a minimum and sometimes we were restricted in our communications because of operations. 

My wife and I have been married for 14 years. This is my second marriage, because as a younger man, my first marriage ended in divorce less than a year later. Talk about mistakes!

If a couple is okay with an open marriage, then sometimes that can work. But the reason why it is a struggle for people in the military isn’t because military people are “macho and patriarchal”. It’s because we as a species evolved to be outwardly monogamous. Child care throughout much of human history needed two parents to really work and the couples needed to support each other. Sure, there has always been cheating by both genders, but this was with the knowledge that they were hurting the spouse that stayed faithful by taking advantages that the faithful spouse couldn’t. Switching to open marriages attempts to reorganize the entire child care system which often goes against our instincts as a species. 
 
Until recent decades, determining how much support each spouse should get and establishing paternity caused a lot of problems for anyone attempting an open marriage. We are a little better prepared to deal with such issues now, but even in willing polyamorous communities, jealousy is still a problem. It is going to be even more of a problem for spouses who are part of open marriages not because they sought it out but because they felt they needed to in order to be happy in the military. You can not change evolutionary instinct over night and the biological calculus may not work out in your favor. Sometimes open marriages can help, but other times they just create jealously that leads to divorce between two people who would have been happier married.
 
I’m not saying not to try open marriages sometimes. By all means do. But don’t expect them to work out as perfectly as people imagine they would in a perfect world.

But that history is biased to the western perspective and culture. There are several cultures that have successful variations of the nuclear family.

 For example, the Moso people on the Chinese-Tibet border, who are matrilineal, don’t marry, and men/relationships come and go at the choice of the women. The family is inherited through the mother, so there is no need to know exactly who the father is. 
Pawnee inheritance could often go not to their own children, but their sister’s children, because they could be sure those children were at least partially related.

A lot of monogamy stems from patrilineal inheritance, sons take the place of the father, so it was super important to know who the father of the children was, and without DNA tests, the only way to know was to ensure the virginity and faithfulness of the wife.

You need much more proof to say we ‘evolved to be outwardly monogamous’, especially when you look at many of the species we share the most genes with. Chimpanzees are FAR from monogamous, but it’s ok because to my understanding the whole family group cares for the young. 

In the two examples you mention, the lack of knowledge as to paternity resulted in a lack (or great lessening) of support for the child from the father. Perhaps that has worked in a few societies through support from the community as a whole, but these societies are few and far between historically.

It is true that Chimps are not monogamous. I’m not sure so much that it is the community taking care of the chimp babies so much as it is the mother alone. This works for them because chimp children grow up much faster than human babies. Human children take over 15 years before they can really start caring for themselves. The amount of work that it takes to raise a human child means that two parents are often needed just to focus on that one child and that is why monogamy evolved.

I have often heard that the divorce rate started to increase (in the west) when we started marrying for love, instead of for financial or social capital. I’m wondering if anyone here can confirm or deny that with evidence, I’ve never been sure….

It seems to make more sense to me…

By “outwardly monogamous” I mean “monogamous plus cheating”. Sure, cheating has always happened, but this is seen as shameful by the community at large. There are attempts by the society to stop this from happening.

The evidence is that if you look at recorded human history over thousands of years across the entire Earth, most societies are monogamous. I don’t think that is a coincidence. If almost all societies on every continent over thousands of years chose monogamy, that seems to indicate that it is because it has a biological advantage to it.

The divorce rate started to rise when divorce became easier to obtain. For much of history it wasn’t possible to divorce just because you didn’t get along with each other anymore.

I have been a military spouse for 19 years, and married just slightly longer than that. I agree that there is pressure to get married early. We married a whole year early because his delayed enlistment came up sooner than we expected. All I see this article addressing is 1.divorce or 2.open marriage. He seems to be looking only at infidelity as a cause for divorce during or after a deployment. My husband has been gone for 10 months now and I have not been temped to cheat on him. Has our marriage been more difficult this past year? Yes, but that is because I miss my husband, my kids miss their father and I was left holding everything together while my son was almost kicked out of school from behavior problems stemming from this deployment. 

There are more reasons for divorce than not having your sexual partner available to you. Why does he only seem focused on two possible solutions? 

For  powerful men (e.g., kings) it was often possible (find a reason for an annulment) though if the wife’s relatives were also  powerful and opposed it could be problematic (see King John of England).    Marriages did tend to be shorter because there was a fairly good chance that one partner would die young.

I was in the U.S. Navy for many years and made three different overseas deployments aboard three different ships.  I saw many marriages break up.  What I couldn’t understand were the marriages that did not break up.  How did these people work through so many months of separation and still make a go of it.  I envied them.  I was single the entire time and wanted to be married but the lifestyle of being a young sailor aboard deploying ships made it very difficult to even begin a relationship.
 
A bit of a tangent here…
 
I have often heard the statistic that half of all marriages ended in divorce.  So some years back I did a little research.
 
I’m NOT good with statistics, but certainly someone here is and can explain the conundrum that follows.
 
I knew something was wrong with the statistic in the press that said half of all marriages ended in divorce when I noticed that my almanac cites the following statistics for 1993:
 
Birth rate per 1000 = 15.7
Death rate per 1000 = 8.8
 
Marriage rate per 1000 = 9
Divorce rate per 1000 = 4.6
 
Now the ratio of 15.7 to 8.8 (i.e., birth to death) is roughly equivalent to the ratio of 9 to 4.6 (i.e., marriage to divorce).  Treated as divisible fractions, the numeric value for Birth to Death = 1.78; the value for Marriage to Divorce = 1.95.  (A perfect “half” ratio would produce a value of 2.)
 
Now if these figures mean that half of all marriages end in divorce, then it follows that half of all births end in death.  But the last time I checked, all births end in death, eventually.
 
What gives?
 

Uh, these stats measure a specific point in time. If there are twice as many births than deaths it doesn’t mean that half of all people do not die. It means that there is a net population growth because the birth rate is higher than the death rate (also increasing longevity would come into play here). Obviously all those people will eventually die, but for the birth and death rates to be equal it would call for exactly the same number of (mostly) elderly people to die each year as the number of babies born (zero population growth or longevity change).

To what benefit? There’s nothing virtuous about going without something you want, purely because it’s something you want. In your scenario the partner at home is miserable, and the partner away has to deal with the person they love being miserable. Just who comes out of that well?

I believe you are wrong that we evolved to be outwardly monogamous. That’s a just-so story, and could just as easily be explained by culture as biology.

Anyways, I’ve read that most cultures have been based on polygamy, so you are wrong from even a historical point of view.

Again, the historical culture norm for marriage is polygamy, not monogamy, so your entire premise is false. Monogamy is the statistical outlier, so even if your pop evo-psych was true it would be evidence that we evolved to be polygamous, which undermines your point. (I’m monogamous, so I’m not criticizing the idea, just your inaccurate sociology and evolutionary just-so story).

Hi NorDog

So what you’re missing here is that the rates are reflective of the entire population for the given period. For every 1000 people, you can statistically expect 8.8 of them to die that period. For every 1000 people, you can statistically expect 15.7 babies to pop forth that period. The 1000 people encompasses all demographics in the population, of every age (newborns to the very old), every ethnicity in the study, gender, etc.

Something to keep in mind is that there are demographic bulges typically seen at the younger (teen to mid-2os) age ranges – mortality is generally higher for the very young and the old. If health care is good in a region, that bulge carries on with a slower reduction as you go up the age curve than if health care is poor.

In the example you gave, all that is going on is that people are having babies faster than people are dying. Those numbers can switch places. In North America we have the baby boomer bulge, and our birthrate has plummeted overall. One day you might see a death rate twice or three times the birth rate as the baby boomers push into their 80s, and the following generations decide they’re going to hold off on having kids.

I hope I helped and didn’t complicate your understanding.

Here’s a solution to the divorce rate: BAN STRAIGHT MARRIAGE.

Y’all are the only ones ruining marriage, anyway…

Polygamy is dishonest and unfair. We PAIR-BOND for a reason, you know.

Well, the “away” partner CHOSE to be away. Again, for the one at home, buy a vibrator if you really “can’t” go without sex.

Dan, pretty much every society across the globe for all of recorded history has been monogamous. It isn’t just culture. It is either biology or economics producing these results and given the fact that monogamy is the norm even among rich societies, biology seems the likelier candidate.

It is true that there was polygamy for rich men among many cultures, but I’ve seen no evidence that this extended far down the rung below that. Was there really masses of men without wives throught history because all the women were married to the top men? We never read about that.

Not sure what you’re trying to say, but married couples are composed of two individuals. Those people are not the same entity and shouldn’t be treated as such. If a marriage isn’t working and the couple no longer wishes to be legally and emotionally connected to one another, then why not separate and end the relationship? I fail to see how it compares to amputating one’s own arm. Husbands and wives aren’t born attached to one another. They don’t belong to each other, and they don’t own each other. Divorcing is simply two people returning to the state they were in before they married.

Again wmdkitty, your reading comprehension is extremely poor if you think I am advocating for polygamy. A disagreement about HOW the world works is not a disagreement for how the world SHOULD work. Facts don’t change themselves because you don’t like them.

I’m sorry Hibernia, but monogamy was not the norm historically, no matter how many times you say it. The majority of cultures have been polygamous, that’s what is taught in Anthropology 101. Partly this is because there was a lot more women than men in many indigenous populations due to widespread war and violent raiding, and women were treated as prized possessions. Even people who didn’t have more than one wife wanted more than one because it was a sign of prestige. A polygamist society doesn’t require people to have more than one wife, but it is socially accepted. Societies that accept polygamy have dominated history and anthropology, which undermines your “evolved outwardly monogamous” claim.

Even just going back a few thousand years you can see that polygamy was societly acceptable in Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures, as well as open non-monogamous relationships being acceptable in the Egyptian, Greek, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Roman empires, so this should absolutly disprove your claim that we evolved to be outwardly monogamous, unless the vast majority of cultures are doing the opposite of what we evolved to respect. The expectation of “outward monogamy” is a relatively new development in human culture. It a good one and has absolutely helped empowered women, but it has not always been so.

Sorry, but I find “become one flesh” to be inherently creepy. I am my own person, and my body belongs to me. People are not owned by their sexual or romantic partners, and there is nothing magical about the act of marriage that erases an individual’s autonomy.

Who said anything about children? Many married couples have no children, and for them, the decision to divorce may be made simpler by allowing them to make a clean break. Couples with children have additional factors to consider, but the decision to stay in a failed marriage is typically not something that benefits those children.

Sure, there has always been cheating by both genders, but this was with the knowledge that they were hurting the spouse that stayed faithful by taking advantages that the faithful spouse couldn’t.

This strikes me as a very modern idea. Historically, whether they were married to one woman or to multiple women, men weren’t expected to actually be monogamous, let alone pretend to be in order to spare their wives’ feelings. In most societies, men were free to have as much sex as they wanted, whether it was with their wives or with prostitutes, mistresses, or concubines. I’m not aware of societies that punished men for extramarital activity. Since most societies have been partriarchal, only women were expected to be faithful to their husbands, for the very practical goal of ensuring the children’s paternity.

I’m not sure if you are trolling or not, I’ve explained this several times, but I’ll try one more time. I am monogamous, I think polygamy is bad for the well being of women and should not be legal. Again, I am NOT supporting polygamy.

The argument is over this question: have the majority of societies over history been polygamous or monogamous? The original poster says they have been monogamous, and that is due to evolutionary (not cultural) pressure. I think the evidence clearly shown the majority of cultures have not been monogamous, so the claim that monogamy is common because it was selected for by natural selection is not true. You comments would be like if we had a debate over whether slavery was common in the ancient world and you bash me because I say it was, because you think admitting that slavery was common is the same thing as supporting it. It isn’t. I don’t support slavery, but the historical fact is that it has been common. I don’t support polygamy, but the historical fact is that it was common. And that fact undermines the original commentator’s claim about monogamy being the default because of natural selection.

What point? You just keep implying that I support polygamy when I clearly don’t. Or saying that polygamy cant have been common because you don’t like it. Well, I don’t like slavery, that doesn’t mean it never happened.

1: Polygamy, when put into practice, means that only a few men in a given community will have wives. This is damaging to the other men in the community.
2: Women in polygamous marriages — aside from being little more than cleaning service and brood mare — have significantly higher rates of mental illness.

3: Polygamous groups emphasize, without exception, the doctrine of male superiority and female submission. This includes forcing underage “brides” to consummate “marriages” they did not consent to.

Address these points, please.

I’ll try to spell it out again. The original poster made two claims 1:
that we evolved to be monogamous (it isn’t cultural, it is biological), and 2: That monogamy is the way cultures traditional operate. Both are wrong. 1 is suspect because there is no evidence for it, its pop evolutionary psychology and relies on claim 2 being correct, but claim 2 is wrong because historically most cultures have been polygamous, not monogamous.

You keep on jumping in and saying that my facts are wrong because polygamy is bad. No one is disputing that, but that isn’t the argument. We are debating over how common polygamy was, not if it is ethical. I’ve said this at least a half dozen times. Just like slavery was common, but unethical, so polygamy was common, but unethical. So we can’t say we evolved to be monogamous because monogamy is a GOOD but recent cultural development, not something evolved into us over millions of years.

Then you are an exception to the rule – an amputation that was preferable.

The divorce-rate started to climb when it became socially and legally acceptable to divorce. This is hardly surprising, and is a benefit for all involved. None of my Iranian friends have divorced parents — several of them have parents that *should* have been divorced, but when a divorce means, especially for the woman, being a social outcast, it’s not strange that it doesn’t happen.

I’ve got friends in Iran whose parents have separate bedrooms, who’s not had a vacation together for a decade (but plenty by themselves), who tends to avoid being in the same room, and who hasn’t been observed either physically touching or saying anything nice about eachothers for several years, nevertheless they’re still not divorced – because that’d be unacceptable.

Divorce is mostly atleast somewhat traumatic, but it’s not the worst thing possible. A unhappy marriage can be worse than a divorce.

Divorce is painful…for the couple, for the children, for the larger family, for the friends, and for society.  If, in some cases, it is deemed to be the lesser of two evils, then so be it.  But let us not call it good or benign.

I have not expressed opposition to such amputations, but rather to the normalizing of amputations.

Don’t take the bait. Every child around the world has things they have to deal with. Some things are worse than others. Some children have no problem moving every three years. Some children have problems moving out of the only house they’ve ever lived in when they’re grown. Some children have to deal with parents who abandon them. Some children have to deal with only seeing their parent on holidays and every other weekend. Some children have to deal with having one or both parents die. Some children have to deal with bullying. Some children have to deal with having religious nuts for parents. Some children have to deal with abuse. Some children have to deal with neglect.

You are okay. Your son *will* be okay. Time will heal. Ignore Ewan. 

Different strokes for different folks. I don’t understand this arrogant sanctimonious tone you have. Open marriages work for some people and a “lack of self-control” isn’t necessarily a factor. Maybe it’s an understanding that you cannot fulfill every need or desire your partner has and it’s okay if they seek it outside the marriage.

I take it you haven’t heard of the book, “The Monogamy Myth”.

Not even close, but it can certainly help you over the rough spots.

I think it can certainly be benign or even good. Consider a couple married for ten years, slowly drifting apart and falling out of love, but willing to remain friends. Let’s assume they have no children. This situation is common enough. Why on earth should they remain married to each other? The end of their marriage hurts no one. On the contrary, it benefits each of them.

It’s creepy the way you keep using the word “amputate.” It’s as if you do not realize that the people involved consist of two separate individuals. You’re free to hold whatever views you want, but I would never tolerate being treated like someone else’s property, and if my husband started comparing me to one of his limbs, that would not go over well.

Thanks, and you are correct. I am not upset by his comment. I just felt maybe some people did not understand we don’t always have much control. 

I am happy to say my son is doing much better these days/ 

(Moving this up because the box was getting too narrow.)

I don’t know where you’re getting the idea of “property.” As for my wife and I becoming one flesh, I see a demonstration of that every time I see one of our four children.

If that’s how you and your wife view your relationship, that’s up to you. I prefer to be treated as a whole person, not half a person who has been surgically attached to someone else. I find this type of thinking troubling because not only does it not respect the fact that a married couple is composed of two separate individuals, it also seems ripe for abuse. A domineering, controlling husband could easily decide that his wife belongs to him, and that she has no right to her own life or to “amputate” herself from him if she so chooses.