Marriages aren't supposed to end except in death. It's right there in the vows. They are a serious commitment, and I think many take them lightly without realizing that they are intended to be lifelong.
Marriage is one of a very few things in life humans undertake where they are asked to commit to do something “for life” that they have never done before. And their closest vantage point is likely their parents’ marriage.
I think it’s not so much people take it lightly, as that they have no idea of what they are getting into and what kind of work a modern marriage involves.
It is amazing to me that people can consider entering into a lifelong contract with a partner and not have discussed 5, 10, 20 year goals. Seems like a common sense due diligence thing to do.
More than that - when my now fiancee proposed to me I was completely surprised by it, and literally couldn't process the question for a good couple of minutes. Thankfully she decided to leave me to it for that time and by the time she got back I accepted, but it occurred to me that a proposal is itself the only time you're asked to make a life-changing decision by surprise, and answer it there and then without being able to spend any time considering what the correct decision is.
No, marriage in America is based on Christian theology and by extension so is the legal framework around it, which is why divorce is so difficult. That's factual, not emotional.
Marriage is based on whatever the humans in the marriage want it to be based on. The legal system is constantly evolving in 50 stages. Your understanding of the legal system lacks nuance, probably because you are repeating something you heard a partisan say.
I'm referring to marriage as a legal contract, and legal stuff changes slowly. It was certainly founded on religious principles, which is why homosexuals couldn't marry until recently. I'm not advocating for that state of affairs, nor repeating what some partisan said. Were we to green-field re-do marriage today, divorce would be a whole lot easier and possibly more of an expectation.
>Marriages aren't supposed to end except in death.
Says who? Every country I've lived in has provisions for ending marriages, so clearly it's not the only path.
>It's right there in the vows.
What vows? Nobody in my family is religious, none of us made any claims about being together until death. And even then, lots of religions allow for divorce, even some sects of Christianity...
Do civil unions have the same “benefits” of marriage? If not there should be.
I think the distinction should be socio-cultural: if you don’t accept that this civil union is “till death do us part”, then by definition it shouldn’t be marriage - it’s a civil union. All the same benefits of marriage with none of the cultural components.
Are you religious per chance? Not denigrating, but civil marriages (not sure if right name) don't have any of these vows, for health and sick whatnot.
I am divorced, and got married in my country outside the church. Wether we like it or not, it was literally a contract. An officer of the court was there, read the 'contract' which states our data, the legal parts of it (prenup, how assets were after marriage, etc), and the legal responsibilities. There was nothing there about 'until the end' or the likes.
I'm not sure how it is in other countries, and I am from a very catholic country, but most people don't realize that marriage is the contract that is governed by the government's law and not any vows or whatever the priest says in church. It is a contract and parties to that contract are allowed to change their mind and divorce (break contract).
Fixed term marriages are becoming popular in Australia and other places and have historical precedents. It is likely a lifelong term of marriage may be unrealistic with our comparative ease of survival.
I’d be careful to suggest it has so much to do with “real factors” like relative safety to ease of survival and more with cultural effects. We see this observationally as subsets of the US have lifelong marriage rates in the 90%s, specifically religious communities.
I don’t recall the exact numbers but even just considering how many sexual partners people have can drastically change average likelihood of eventually divorce - with virgin couples above 80% AFAIK (some overlap with religious communities likely). Even a few decades ago when survival was still pretty easy marriage had higher success rates.
The culture probably has a lot more to do with the rate of successful marriages than our safety or lifespan