We often hear that the divorce rate is rising. Though today’s divorce rate hovers around 50% (although I have heard higher statistics), I’m not quite sure that anything has changed over the years as far as success of marriage.
I attribute the rising divorce rate to the tendency today for an unsuccessful marriage to end in a divorce, instead of the couple remaining in an unhappy, non-functional relationship. Statistically there are more divorces, but that isn’t necessarily an effective statistical gauge on the success of marriage overall.
Is a divorce emotional? Yes. Hard to go through? Yes. Hard to recover from? Absolutely. But it’s not for me to say if the parties are better off one way or the other. Remember, divorce is the state of a marriage, and not the state of one’s life forever. After the hurt and anger and emotion are gone, my clients (and all divorcing parties) want to return to build the next part of their life in happiness.