Never been divorced and have parents and siblings who are not divorced
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Anonymous
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DH and I are happily married to each other for past 20 years (our first marriage). Our parents and ILs are also not divorced and neither are any of our siblings.
Anyone else here with no divorce in their family? If you are not divorced, are you happily married? If you want to divorce but have not yet taken the leap what is stopping you - kids, money, culture, religious belief etc? |
Anonymous
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Same here. No divorces on either side of the family. I do know that one of DH's sibs is struggling in their marriage, and possibly will divorce after their only child is grown (about 5 more years). We have our ups and downs and I'm on an up right now.
My observation is divorce seems to run in families. I have friends on both sides, ones with none to one divorce and then where it seems almost everyone has done it. |
Anonymous
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No divorce for me, my sister, my parents, or my ILs. However, my sister and I have only been married for 4 and 5 years respectively. Parents and ILs have been married for roughly 30-35 years each.
There's some divorce in my extended family, but I wouldn't say a ton. Dad is one of 4 and only one of his siblings got divorced; she's now seemingly happily married. Mom's brother got divorced, but he's a narcissistic crazy person. |
Anonymous
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No divorces for several generations on my side of the family, and DW and I have been married for over 20 years.
Her side of the family has had lots of drama - divorces, affairs, etc., including her parents, siblings, and others. My parents are very judgmental about this, which is of course, very unfair and hurtful to DW. |
Anonymous
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Been married 17 years - sort of happily. It comes and goes. I had been seriously considering separation and divorce until reading about experiences on DCUM. The marriage isn't perfect, but it sounds a heck of a lot better than the alternative.
The only divorce on either my or my spouse's side is my father's uncle. He remarried and had two kids. We still consider his first wife our aunt. Sadly, my brother and his wife will likely divorce when their youngest starts kindergarten. They went through a rough patch and marriage counseling actually put the nail in the coffin. |
Anonymous
People who are judgmental about other people who divorce are losers. Big losers. Their judginess completely takes away any bonus points for having sucked it up for all those years with the same person. |
Anonymous
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Extended family has 5 out of 19 divorced (one generation up)
This generation, I don't know them all, but on my side I think it is 3 out of 25 divorced, DH's side I'm not sure. I can only think of two that are divorced, but again, I don't know them all that well. Immediate self and siblings (and DH's siblings) 1 divorced out of five. One thing I considered when dating was "are his parents still together?" ... |
Anonymous
So far no one. Closest I get is my husband’s uncle and aunt. I have many uncles and aunts, and he has a few too. Also one of my cousins and his wife divorced. I also have many, many cousins. I wouldn’t be surprised if any of my siblings or ILs did. I think their marriages are doing fine, but some of the couples have personalities and issues that could cause the relationship to change overnight. While growing up my parents argued so much that I joked they should get a divorce. I didn’t mean that, and honestly their marriage is awesome now that they got past all the kids. WE stressed them out, and they argued. Raising a family is hard. Now they don’t argue really, and they enjoy their grandkids, and the simple retired life. Unless there is something major like infidelity, abuse, mental illness with lack of compliance, or just jacka**ery..I feel that couples should try to keep working at it. Dh and I have been so stressed out in our marriage, and we went on vacation just the two of us. We didn’t argue once. Once we had a tense urgent scary communication, but we both understood each other and got through it. So, what we thought was stress in our marriage is honestly just a set of little kids eating away at our patience and energy and communication. |
Anonymous
| None for parents or immediate siblings. DH has a couple of siblings whose spouses had divorced parents. DH's dad married a woman who was divorced then widowed, as a widower. |
Anonymous
| No divorce on DH side, my parents divorced and remarried and started new families. My brother and I are big in 20+ year marriages no divorce. |
Anonymous
Both not big(?) 
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Anonymous
| No divorces on either side. Now that I think about it no divorced aunts/uncles or even cousins for me or DH. One or two relatives have had a spouse die and are remarried but I think that is different. |
Anonymous
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Np here. Maybe this would be an interesting thread for people to continue.
I wanted to add notes about the marriages I worry about. I’m close to their marriages and I could see them working out for 50+ years or divorcing next year: -one man has had embarrassing issues with porn. Not that he watches it only, but that it came to light in an embarrassing way. The concern there is that there could or couldn’t be relationship issues either caused by the fallout, or fundamentally related. -one man and woman seem to not get along without MIL. Or they don’t think they can. I *think* they can but they just believe that the mother is necessary to maintain peace. They could go either way depending on attitudes, fair or unfair fighting, and just realizing that they individually are difficult sometimes...and what?? Do they think some new person is going to accept their quirks any better? They need to work at it for each other. -one woman has a picky, control, take-charge rose in the family. Pushes boundaries, wants things to look just right. Her dh just goes with the flow, but for how long? And her boundary pushing makes everyone worry -one I worry about: the man has so much independence. The wife is supportive of it. And he supports her doing independent stuff too. They do stuff together too, but I worry that the particular independence isn’t healthy. (If it we’re healthy, I wouldnt worry.) He seems to get more of it including missing out on family time / vacation...to do what? Guys just get in trouble with too much freedom. (I say too much. Please don’t knock me, because I didn’t say that it’s a normal amount of freedom). -another man:,Also he says dumb things like complimenting other women, and seems to be concerned with wife’s weight gain. I mean, that’s sometimes just life for women. It’s not that we WANT to carry around a little excess weight. Genes, aging, stress of kids. Accept it buddy, because the last is trying, and she’s not going to be a size 2 on your timetable. I see plenty of people enjoying life, at resorts, having relationships with overweight. Don’t make her feel like an exception. -one more: this dh and wife have mystery issues. Everything is a mystery with them, but I know there are problems. I’m glad he told me, but they hide it WELL. I think kids stress them out so much, and there are l sad pasts that affect both of them. I am rooting for them because they’re so cute and I love them both. |
Anonymous
| With overweight = while overweight |
Anonymous
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I have no divorce on either parents’ side going back as far as anyone knows—until me (and my cousin, if you count that). I was going to stick it out for the kids, despite XDH’s severe emotional issues and ADHD. He left to date other women and find his middle-aged self, or something. His parents separated and then reconciled, and there’s divorce among his aunts and uncles.
After watching other families, I do believe that if there’s a family pattern of divorce, the kids are more likely to divorce (his brother is also divorced and his sister is in marital counseling). There’s some taboo about divorce, I don’t know whether it’s fenerational or family tradition, but once that taboo gets broken, others in the family do it too. |