Reflections on divorce, and our last tutorial

In our last social psychology tute, one of our 'changes' to Australia that we discussed we would like to make is to lower the divorce rate, as it was shocking to hear a statistic that 50% of marriages end in divorce. Of course this has impacted on the rate of people getting married in the first place- would like to marry, would NOT like to be divorced! Our plan was to reduce the divorce rate by making it HARDER to get divorced. This might involve having a minimum of 3 counselling sessions before the legal avenue could be taken. Either that, or make it harder to get married in the first place! It seems so many people have romanticised views of marriage and dont forsee/are not willing to put in the hard work that comes with it. My grandparents have been married for 50 years next year, and when we ask how they made their marriage work they told us grandkids that there had been plenty of times when one or both of them had wanted to leave because it had been too hard. However, they maintained that they didnt leave- they stayed and worked on it, and now their marriage is stronger than ever. As we all know from our psychology/counselling courses: conflict is inevitable. So do we just run away when things get hard? As we also know from Social Psychology, passionate (romantic) love only lasts for 1,2,3 years at the most, so what do married couples anticipate will happen when this wears off? This is where the good old 'birds of a feather flock together' seems sensible. Marry your best friend: someone you respect, who has the same values, goals, dreams, interests, and attitudes of commitment towards marraige and then hopefully you'll have enough to sustain you :)

One more point on Moniques stigma comment: i completely agree. In Australia, divorce has become so normalized that people dont give it much thought. When i was living in Poland, i discovered that divorce was associated with a negative label... it wasnt socially acceptable to have a failed marriage. Consequently the divorce rate in Poland is extremely low! Is this because their marriages are better? doubtful. They have less conflict? Unlikely... so we're left to conclude that perhaps they work at it harder, and that if our society was less accepting of divorce then our divorce rate would be lower as well!