No matter who you think you are getting involved with, the truth is, at the core, each of us is a defective (read: sinful) person. The outcome is that each relationship starts with promise and hope and, eventually, devolves into a power struggle or rejection of each other.
My personal view is that when the first statistical spike in divorce occurs at about two years it coincides with the recognition that the person you're married to is not the one you had assumed you were married to (i.e.; the one that had their best foot forward in courtship). For many, this is too much and the dump their mates in search of the mythical kind of love our culture worships but never really achieves. Hollywood promotes the idyllic myth of the ‘perfect true love’ to no end and all of us, to one degree or another, are infected with it.
The second spike occurs about year seven. I believe this is the time when many give up on the second phase of marital delusions: the desire to change their mates into the people they want them to be. The desire to control our world via control of others is terribly strong and has its origin in original sin.
The third factor is culture. Today's American culture is all about shaping women into men and men into women. In culture, law, education and every other route of inculcation, the mindless left and secularists are out to create a genderless utopia where God and the created order are distant memories and self-gratification is the ultimate good. Given factor one and two plus the reality of sin being nothing more than rebellion against God, the outcomes of this philosophy are bleak and hellish. Europe is well down this road and the statistics tell the tale of their eventual cultural suicide and the erasure of their genes from the earth.
So, where to go?
Women from Asia or the former Soviet bloc often have a stronger sense of marriage and family than many younger American women who have imbibed too many cultural values coming out of Washington or Hollywood. That can be a basis for good, but there is something more...
In order to have a happy marriage, one must accept the idea that we are failed humans and frail in our will to do love as we innately perceive love to be. That is the “hole in our hearts” that St. Augustine spoke of and it can only be filled by our creator. It also functions as a mirror to see ourselves more clearly and the fulcrum upon which we seek to change our lives and behaviors - particularly how to love one another.
If both marriage partners have made God (Christ the Savior) the center of their lives, it can function at a high level of love and satisfaction. If not, it's a crap shoot. Even marriages of a generation or two back worked because of basic Christian idealism embedded in the culture. Of course, one can find exceptions in all directions but that is not the point of my post; I believe all men and women need to humble themselves before their Creator to receive the wisdom needed to live our our created order.
That's it in a nutshell. FReep me if you have any questions.
Catholics do family and no divorce pretty well. Well, certain of them, certainly not Kennedy, Pelosi or Sebilious