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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

wild theory, sometimes I have this feeling that divorce is badly seen because

1) people jump between partners too often when free, it's easier but maybe less deep

2) family stability is important, and noble (it's a hard compromise but others complicated things are important and noble)

3) in the past social, family and intimate stability were probably a lot more important than today, so we inherited that perspective, even though today we may care less

ps: saying this I understand perfectly how human relationship, marriage are complex, volatile and how no one wants to rot in a bad relationship. :)

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>ps: saying this I understand perfectly how human relationship, marriage are complex, volatile and how no one wants to rot in a bad relationship. :)

There's a difference between "no one wants to rot in a bad relationship" and "no one wants to put the effort and time to make a relationship work", though.

And while a number of divorces are because of the first, another number is because of the latter.

Now, a question would be "So? Why shouldn't people just jump ship, even if they're just frivolous/bored/have short relationship attention spans/etc?"

And an answer would be, "Well, look at our modern relationship landscape. Does these trends work out well for us? Is yes, then fine..."

> There's a difference between "no one wants to rot in a bad relationship" and "no one wants to put the effort and time to make a relationship work", though.

This is a very timely question. There are a few topics about how easy our lives should be, how much effort is considered normal. And beyond efforts, the skills to know when, what and how to apply them to avoid just struggling 24/7.

There is a certain level of arrogance in looking at how fundamentally important the family unit is for all of human history, and then deciding that this generation knows better than the billions who came before us and that marriage / family / kids is a sham.

And shockingly, depression and anxiety is on the rise, we have a "loneliness epidemic", etc because people can't seem to fill that void.

We could argue that modern technology-oriented cultures are even stretching the social fabric.

I'm nobody but it seems that survival made most mammals social, but we don't owe our survival to the group now, but to a blurry and large system. So why bother with people when I can swipe for all my needs /s

But the thing is, as an ex introvert I can understand, dealing with people is not easy. Just like dealing with love, intimacy, marriage, existence is not easy. But we used to try to find solutions of better quality. Not just "i'm out".

If that were how it worked, we'd expect Utah (the state with the lowest divorce rate) to have very low levels of depression and anxiety compared to the rest of the US. That is not what we see. I don't think it's realistic to say that the alienation of modern society is because we allow divorce.

Not a valid conclusion — you’re not controlling for all other factors that contribute to happiness, such as weather, social environment, local opportunities etc.

Definitely feel free to do all that work if you think there's a case to make. While I agree it's not an exhaustive analysis, I think it's much more rigorous than the comment it was meant to refute.

"There's a difference between "no one wants to rot in a bad relationship" and "no one wants to put the effort and time to make a relationship work", though."

I am not sure, if I understand you right, but you seem to romantize the old version of marriage relationships.

Well, as far as I know, they had only very rarely something to do with love, but rather with violence and domination and "making the relationship work" meant beating the wife to submission. And one of the written duties of a wife were sex, whether they wanted, or not, so basically rape.

And the thought of leaving an abusive partner was considered sin, with real punishment (sometimes torture to death) for making those thoughts real.

It has not been even so long ago, that these laws were abolished in the west. And to my knowledge, they still exist de facto (or even de jure) in many parts of the world.

The only reason I can think of, of "making a relationship work", is when there are already kids, who need stability. Then both adults should get their act together and work it out like responsible, mature people. But in the cases I have witnessed, the children usually were acting more mature, than their parents.

I'm not sure how you made the leap from "lasting relationships require work" ---> "lasting relationships are inherently abusive and rapey".

All relationships require upkeep. If you never make any time for a friend, the friendship deteriorates. You need to make time for each other and show each other that you care.

The fact that you see this as abusive is perhaps revealing why marriage and lasting relationships are at an all time low.

And I do not know, how you made the leap from traditional (forced) marriages I was specifically talking about - to any relationship.

> 3) in the past social, family and intimate stability were probably a lot more important than today

Many past societies did not have atomic families like we do today.

In fact, even couple-marriage is not _that_ old (several thousands of years)? I remember reading about this stuff in "Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", which, while somewhat dated (125 years ago or so?) is quite interesting. Matrilineal societies, group marriage (i.e. being 'married' to all people in a certain category so that if you travel to another village you have people in your 'family' or 'marriage group' there even if you've never met them) and other arrangements.

>In fact, even couple-marriage is not _that_ old (several thousands of years)?

Cities and written language and written laws and such are not that old either...

What was the case in some earlier societies shouldn't be a yardstick...

Even without the social contract. First time I held someone in my arms I had visions of life long companionship. Not everybody is wired this way but it's often programmed deep down inside of us. Marriage is just the social incarnation of that feeling IMO.

Also some people say that a lot of animals have similar emotional/biological needs. It's not just a matter of homo-* history it seems.

I'm not saying that there isn't something biological or authentic to it, but you probably saw a bunch of Disney movies and a bunch of other cultural messaging when you were a child that helped prime you to have this response.

Reminds me of this image:

https://i.redd.it/lr5rfu3paen61.jpg

I always have a big problem with this argument. To me the social protocol take roots in the emotional thus the biological. It's not really propaganda, it's self amplified reflection.

> Even without the social contract. First time I held someone in my arms I had visions of life long companionship

I would assume you were brought up in a modern cultural environment. That means your view of the world, your values, your expectations, your fantasies - are shaped by that upbringing.

So, your feelings are not good evidence that this is "programmed deep down inside of us".

Are you claiming that a desire for companionship with another human being is purely a modern social construct?

That seems a … bizarre opinion. Until industrialization, human relationships were directly tied to survival.

I claimed no such thing...

And, in fact you're making the point even more strongly, in that you seem to identify lifelong, formal, monogamous pairing with the potential for human companionship.

> "Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State"

By Fredrick Engles, known most popularly when associated with his co-author Karl Marx. Who among their many philisophical ideas advocated things such as

- "All history is class warfare"

- Dialectical materialism that proved to be so wrong no one even knows about it anymore.

- Or my personal favorite that the communist revolution would come first to the most capitalist countries, when in fact the only countries that fell to communism were backward feudal societies or those that had communism forced on them by the Soviet Union.

My point if your source of information is Engles then I'd suggest checking out some resources from people haven't been quite so thoroughly eviscerated by actual reality when their ideas were put to any sort of test.

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