It felt pretty clear in the article that he was talking about people who were frustrated, tired, perhaps depressed, not in duress or under threat of harm. Hedging every exception makes the article weaker; I think you can write an article about how going for a walk every day is healthy without having to add a paragraph about how obviously this won't work for paraplegics.

This is great point that demonstrates how to read ethically.

It's pretty clear he'd default to that advice for just about everyone who wasn't in physical danger or being abused in some way.

Totally agree - I'd go so far and say that it can be a dangerous mindset.

It is possible for relationships to be damaging for one or both members. It's easy to say this the mindset of making things work doesn't apply to abusive relationships - but it's not always clear what abuse is. The very mindset that 'divorce is not an option' means that people spend far too long in dangerous situations.

From my experience - I was married for 6 years to someone who, from the same starting position, moved to a very different philosophical viewpoint to me. This evolved over time, but by the end she'd happily tell me my belief system was wrong and immoral, and that she wanted she were married to someone who shared her viewpoint. She even said that in her opinion we shouldn't be married, but that she didn't believe in divorce. She'd never accept that there was anything wrong with what she was doing - she was simply trying to save me - and when I said 'I find what you're saying hurtful' she'd tell me she had no choice but to say it.

I can only imagine how miserable a time she was having, but she saw no choice but to continue in that relationship.

This never seemed like abuse at the time - and I'm certain she didn't mean it as such - but with hindsight she broke down my confidence in myself and in who I was and left me fundamentally doubting whether I was a good person (among other things, like making relationships with friends and family difficult).

Of course, everyone's experience is unique, but when I left that relationship I felt guilty, selfish and like I'd failed. It's only with hindsight that I can say with confidence that it was the best thing for everyone involved, and I'm much happier and healthier some years and plenty of therapy later. The narrative expressed in the article means people stay in awful situations they could be well out of.

We didn't have kids - and I'd definitely have been considering different things if we did (in particular, not wanting those kids to end up with a mother whose world view I fundamentally disagreed with, without my influence), but it may well still have been the right decision.

Yeah, stuff like that is why I'll never date a religious woman again. I did it once, and it was a huge mistake.

Abuse doesn't just take physical forms; there is a such thing as emotional abuse. And where exactly do you draw the line?

Personally, I think if you're fundamentally unhappy in the relationship and the other person doesn't seem to be willing or able to change things to make you happy in the relationship, you're better off getting out. The fact that too many times, people are tied together by finances, is really a tragedy IMO. It's better to be single and alone than to be stuck with someone who's making you miserable.

There’s always exceptions. He doesn’t talk about situations of spousal abuse, because those are houses on fire. You don’t live inside a burning house.

"It takes two to tango" has become a haunting refrain in my family relationships lately. I tell myself I'll be ready when they are, but I'm not sure if they ever will be.

There’s a subtle but critical difference between “I’ll be ready when they are.” and “I’m ready.”

I’m a huge proponent of divorce. I grew up in a dysfunctional household where my parents stayed together. Their relationship was not healthy, nor were the individuals in it. My mother was physically and emotionally abusive. My father was distant and, when present, was focused on placating her. When my own marriage of 16 years ran into problems that were seemingly intractable, I finally realized I did not want similar for myself, my then-wife, or my kids. I spent several years trying to mend things, but I was the only participant. I have no regrets over leaving, it was best for everyone.

As a culture, we are moving away from upholding institutions for their own sake at the cost of individuals who may be harmed by them. I see marriage as no exception.

While it is true that some marriages aren't fixable, my opinion is that people jump way too quickly to the divorce option in our culture. As such, I think that we (as a whole society) need the "try to make it work" message more than we need the "it's ok to not stick around" message.

Maybe your ex-wife was the one who needed to read this article.

It took me a long time to be able to be thankful that my partners didn't perpetually try to fix the structurally unsound relationships in either of my marriages. I can put up with about anything, in a sense. I am grateful they could not.

I spent about 20 years in those two relationships, and it wasn't until I got out that I realized how broken all that was.

>I’m a huge proponent of divorce.

This is such a weird thing to say. It's like saying one is a huge proponent of homicide. But then it turns out that they mean homicide when it's to protect a small child from a murderous predator. By itself the statement is just a bizarre statement of values.

Some marriages are bad, and should never have happened (I'm a proponent of people not going into clearly bad marriages, though many do). More often than not those marriages had two selfish people who will never find happiness. But divorce is no magical solution, and enormous numbers of people who choose that option regret it. Because the grass isn't always greener, and you don't suddenly regain youth, and your life isn't suddenly wonderful and free of obligation, etc. Which is clearly what this article is about, and not about abusive or broken relationships.

There's a bit of a Reddit meme that people post their "my partner forgot to put their yogurt cup in the recycling" and 90% of the replies are some variation of "lawyer up, hit the gym, dump their ass" type commentary, and it's just comical. Misery loves company. Miserable people are like Sirens of greek mythology, and their greatest hope is to encourage others to be as miserable.

>As a culture, we are moving away from upholding institutions for their own sake

Divorce rates are at like a 50-year low so this is a strange statement to make.

>Divorce rates are at like a 50-year low so this is a strange statement to make.

There's a reason divorce rates are low: go check out the statistics for marriage rates. They're really low too. In short, people just aren't getting married as easily as they did decades ago. You can't get divorced if you don't get married in the first place.

>This is such a weird thing to say. It's like saying one is a huge proponent of homicide.

That's because you're being pedantic. Obviously, the OP is advocating divorce for highly troubled marriages, not all marriages. Which marriages are and aren't salvageable is a matter of debate of course, but you could have understood the OP's meaning if you had read the rest of the post.

> There's a reason divorce rates are low:

The ratio of divorces to marriages is lower than any point since the 1970s. Fewer marriages are ending in divorce, and this is all ignoring that divorces are lagging so the effect is even more pronounced.

> Obviously, the OP is advocating divorce for highly troubled marriages

It actually isn't obvious. Stating that you're a proponent of divorce without qualifiers sounds like something that a jaded spinster would say. But regardless this whole sidetrack is in relation to an article that really obviously is talking about marriages falling apart over silly things, not abusive or actually broken relationships, but invariably we get caught up in tut tut exception commentary.

>a lot of very common situations where leaving a marriage is justified

you need to make a much more robust argument than this. In this context, this comes across as "in and out of a marriage, that should be easy, but moving house, think a little harder on it"

it might very well be true as you say that it is common, but ideally should people commonly discover "reasons" to dissolve their marriage? How about treating the period before marriage as boot camp instead of travel, sunsets, wine and roses? I have no end of travel-sunsets-wine-roses soulmates, that's easy.

It would be really very difficult to bootcamp the experience of actually having kids before having kids.

Indeed, it's an important principle that you cannot change another person's mind or make them act a certain way. All you can do is influence and hope for the best.

All you can change is yourself