wedded, bliss or not

From the Globe and Mail: “A new study has found that most Canadians marry once and only once, and less than 1 per cent walk down the aisle more than twice.” (story)

This was a bit shocking to me although I suppose it makes sense, we are not the divorce-crazed society like our neighbours to the south. If ‘divorce-crazed’ sounds a bit harsh, check out some stats. You may have heard the ‘1 in every 3 fail’ stat or ‘50% fail’ stat but in United States as of May 2005, the divorce rate was 38% per capita. (source).

That indeed is a slightly less ‘staggering’ view and of course if you read the fine print you’ll see some states were not included, this only included one person on behalf of the couple, not counting the couple as 2 people, straight marriages etc.

The Globe article goes on to point out that marriages usually fail for 3 main reasons: age at time of marriage, the length of the marriage and the level of commitment of each partner.

I’ve been married 4 months and a few days now. If I would have taken any of these things to heart when marrying my husband I’d be having a fit-for-Dr. Phil-meltdown and not making my decision based on: who I love, what kind of life I want to lead (and who I want to lead it with) and all kinds of mushy stuff like that.

Still, divorce rates are higher below the 49th than up here. Why is that?

Statistics Canada researchers say that in 2002, about 84 per cent of Canadian families were headed by married couples. (cbc fact sheet). Compare that to the “…U.S. Census Bureau’s newest numbers show that married-couple households — the dominant cohort since the country’s founding — have slipped from nearly 80% in the 1950s to just 50.7% today.” (business week)

I’m not saying that all Americans have poor marriages. I whole-heartedly respect and admire many of my American friends’ families, with two parents or not. I also will never stop loving my family – no matter how crazy they get oh boy…but I digress…

I admire the fact that our Canadian society (as a whole) values this bond. Legally, religiously, socially, openly. (Although hopefully our ‘new’ conservative government won’t try to take away those rights from any of us).

Sometimes you can read stats and spook yourself out of doing things. Sometimes you just have to lead your own life.