Posted on 05/06/2014 5:41:56 AM PDT by xzins
Most people believe only half of U.S. marriages make it. But a leading researcher is announcing the true divorce rate is much lower and always has been.
Shaunti Feldhahn received her research training at Harvard. She and her husband Jeff help people with their marriages and relationships through best-selling books like, For Women Only and For Men Only.
This Atlanta-based couple often quoted in their writings and at conferences what they thought was accurate research: that most marriages are unhappy and 50 percent of them end in divorce, even in the Church.
"I didn't know," Feldhahn told CBN News. "I've stood up on stage and said every one of these wrong statistics."
Then eight years ago, she asked assistant Tally Whitehead for specific research on divorce for an article she was writing. After much digging, neither of them could find any real numbers.
That kicked off a personal, years-long crusade to dig through the tremendously complicated, sometimes contradictory research to find the truth. The surprising revelations are revealed in her new book, The Good News About Marriage.
The Real Divorce Rate
"First-time marriages: probably 20 to 25 percent have ended in divorce on average," Feldhahn revealed. "Now, okay, that's still too high, but it's a whole lot better than what people think it is."
Shaunti and Jeff point out the 50 percent figure came from projections of what researchers thought the divorce rate would become as they watched the divorce numbers rising in the 1970s and early 1980s when states around the nation were passing no-fault divorce laws.
"But the divorce rate has been dropping," Feldhahn said. "We've never hit those numbers. We've never gotten close."
And it's even lower among churchgoers, where a couple's chance of divorcing is more likely in the single digits or teens.
Hopelessness = Divorce
As the truth about these much lower divorce rates begins to spread, Feldhahn said she believes it will give people hope, which is often a key ingredient to making marriage last. She said hopelessness itself can actually lead to divorce.
"That sense of futility itself pulls down marriages," Feldhahn said. "And the problem is we have this culture-wide feeling of futility about marriage. It's based on all these discouraging beliefs and many of them just aren't true."
Christian psychotherapist Angel Davis has also written about marriage in her book, The Perfecting Storm. The Athens, Georgia-based therapist agreed with Shaunti Feldhahn's warnings about hopelessness.
"The Bible says hope deferred, it makes a heart sick," Davis said. "And we are so influenced by numbers and by culture."
Jeff Feldhahn said anytime he tells people about his wife's findings about how incorrect the 50 percent divorce rate actually is, they're stunned.
"Their mouth drops open and they're just shocked," he said. "They go, 'I can't believe I believed this all these years. And I've heard it so many times. And I've heard it from the pulpit so many times.'"
Shaunti added, "This is a great chance to stand up and say. 'We were all fooled. Not anymore.'"
Spreading the Good News
To that end, Feldhahn has been working to spread the news to pastors and other leaders as fast as she can. The news is changing Pastor Daniel Floyd's counseling because he had bought into fictional research, he admitted to Feldhahn.
"I told her, 'I've said this. I've taught this,'" the pastor at Lifepoint Church in Fredericksburg, Virginia, recalled.
Floyd said he's sure this news will change a generation of marriage counseling.
"I think it's significant," he said. "And (it) could change the conversation from one that is 'Wow, it's just the way it is, and half of you are going to make it, half of you are not,' and change the conversation to know historically, an overwhelming majority have made it and you can make it."
Psychotherapist Davis said this belief can change lives and marriages.
"We know in psychology that what you believe affects how you feel, and then it leads to action," Davis stated. "So when other people are accomplishing something we think is hopeless, it gives us hope. And then we start feeling different and start acting different."
Feldhahn has more shocking research: four out of five marriages are happy. That number flies in the face of the popular belief that only about 30 percent of marriages are happy.
"Most people think most marriages are just kind of 'eeh'…just kind of rolling along," she said. "And they're shocked when I tell them that the actual average is 80 percent: 80 percent of marriages are happy."
Not knowing the true statistics often leads couples to avoid marriage and just shack up instead.
A Game-Changer?
Feldhahn said that couples who avoid marriage do so based on wrong assumptions.
"Like, 'if I'm just going to get divorced and I'm not going to be happy, why bother getting married, right?' And it's based on a lie," she said. "That feeling is based on a lie."
Pastor Floyd said these new facts can be a game-changer for married couples.
"I think it really helps people in the challenging moments to say, 'If I'll just stick with it, then there's a good chance I'm going to make it the distance,'" he said.
"With hope you feel you can make it through, even though you're in a tough patch," Jeff Feldhahn said.
His wife also pointed to other research that proves most of the unhappily married can turn it around.
"The studies show that if they stay married for five years, that almost 80 percent of those will be happy five years later," she said.
The Good News About Marriage also reveals the divorce rate among those active in their church is 27 to 50 percent lower than among non-churchgoers. Feldhahn's hope is that once people learn the truth that they will spread it far and wide.
"We need to change the paradigm of how we talk about marriage -- from marriage being in trouble and all this discouraging stuff to saying, 'No, wait. Most marriages are strong and happy for a lifetime,'" she told CBN News. "That makes a total difference to a couple who can now say, 'You know what? Most people get through this and we can, too.'"
Good point.
I remember that now that you mention it.
Re point b) — I was reading an article on CNN the other day (clearly targeted at women), and one quote that struck me was, “no matter what your feelings are, they are completely valid.”
Yes...That is what Goebbels meant by “THE BIG LIE”.
(Sorry to break Godwin’s law, but it’s TRUE!)
Indeed. I think it is more like 2-3 percent.
It has always been part of the Marxist Agenda to destroy the most ancient and honorable Institution of Civilization, which is, of course, Marriage and family.
Yes. And we KNOW who that enemy is.
Unsure of the reason for quotations; however, a civil divorce happens before any annulment proceedings take place. So, no, this really has no bearing on the statistics being discussed.
I have two sisters who have married multiple times, while I have remained married only once over the same time period.
I agree, the numbers are skewed in that those who divorce once have a 100 percent divorce rate, and they are more likely to divorce again. So that 50% total divorce rate - per marriage- may be correct, but misleading!
I think the OP is correct in that per person, the divorce rate, or the chance an individual in their first marriage will ever get divorced is much, much lower.
The numbers I have seen are:
85% of people who get married stay married.
15% of people who get married have three or more spouses in their lifetime.
The math just about matches that 50% divorce rate lie that has become so common.
90% of people marry and stay married. (90 marriages and no divorces out of 100 people).
10% of people get married and divorced 10 times each (100 marriages and 100 divorces out of 100 people).
That’s 190 marriages and 100 divorces, which can falsely be taken as that more than a third of marriages end in divorce.
I saw one of these Oprah-esque magazine quizzes asking women if their spouses were “emotionally abusive”.
Question #1 was “is there something wrong in your relationship, but you really can’t define what it is?”
Just how in the hell is a man supposed to go about addressing a problem that no one can even define??
Marriage precedes creation. It’s of God.
Indeed...
It’s also the backbone of the family which is the cornerstone of civilization and society.
Thanks for the morning snark.
LOL!
Those rags are straight from the pit of hell. Same tactic he used in the Garden of Eden. Nothing really changes much.
Question your marriage, think you deserve “more” or “better”, and shouldn’t you have or “feel” this?
What utter nonsense!
There’s a problem here.
“First-time marriages: probably 20 to 25 percent have ended in divorce on average.”
That just counts first-time marriages. There is no reference to them for them rest of the article, so is it *only* about first-time marriages?
If you count multiple marriages, the statistics get really skewed. Take Mickey Rooney, for example. Married eight times. His first, second, and third wife were also married three times; number four was married twice; number five just once; six and seven unknown; and eight twice.
So nine people with at least 16 unique marriages between them.
Yes. They (the left)has been doing this for years. The media simply re-enforces the ideas that marriage is archaic and is bad for women, and ends in divorce; and, we simply can't be monogomous for long periods of time. All that B.S. "Gay" marriage is just the latest attempt to discredit marriage as being a stabilizing force in society, and the best environment to raise children. Everything they do and say about marriage is really about destroying marriage.
Same with the constant images and characters of men as complete dufuses and women as always the strong, reliable characters who have no need for a man at home, nor do their children. Destroying marriage --- increasing reliance on the State.
Yes. I believe that.
Absolutely. It is all by design.
Freepmail little jeremiah
or Responsibility2nd to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list. [ Add keyword moral absolutes to flag FR articles to this ping list ]Good news. I knew it wasn't 50%, one reason was that people who get divorced are more likely to divorce upon re-marrying. But this is even better. Makes you wonder why the idea that marriage so often ends in divorce is promoted. Well, I don't wonder; those leading us into the moral abyss want to destroy marriage and family, so making the public feel hopeless about marriage is vital for their plans.
“I am using WAG estimates to prove a mathematical point, as government statistics do not include all states, every year, for divorce and marriage”
Actually, you are using a SWAG. A WAG (wild ass guess) means you are just pulling a random number out of the air. While a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) means you actually manipulated two numbers that may or not be related to each other to come up with the number used.
Check back on your discussion and I believe you will see that I am correct. Other than that minor issue, it is a well presented discussion.
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