Divorce Wasn’t Common Then

My folks dated for six years before they married and according to my dad and there was no nookie in those six years six l-o-n-g years.
 

tbeltrans said:
I have been learning over the years how to be her caretaker, which has included learning from the nurse that would visit her at home to change dressings and drainage bulbs, how to do it myself so the nurse didn't have to be there.

So we have been living up to our vows, have no plans to stop doing that.

Tony
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Bless you, Tony for being her caregiver. I was caregiver for my wife for 12 years until she passed away.
 
My parents got divorced when I was 35. Usually, it's the guy who has the mid-life crisis and wants something more exciting, but this time it was my mother who headed for "greener pastures", which didn't turn out to be all that green after all.

They remarried 2 1/2 years later and we all just sort of pretended that that period of unpleasantness never happened.

As for divorce in the really old days......I'm not sure the "ordinary people" really bothered with getting divorced. The rich ones had to because they were in the limelight. My great-grandfather took off, reportedly to become a Mormon, leaving my great-grandmother with two children and a bun in the oven (my grandmother). When my grandmother was three months old, she married a widower who lived down the street from her sister's house and he raised my grandmother as his own daughter. According to family lore, no divorce was legally obtained.
 
DaveA said:
That's a nice thought if you can confine it to just the two of you.
Not so nice when you think about the children who suffer the consequences or do we tell the kids to start banging away as soon as they're old enough because marriage and commitment are a thing of the past. Grab the most attractive girl or guy, have a good time and cast them aside when someone better comes into view. You are probably correct as to the direction in which life is heading but for sake of our kids, I can't see myself wishing to hurry it along.
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You've saved my entering the fray on this thread, (gasps of relief all round!).
 
In pagan times, a couple went through a ceremony binding them together. A year later, they had the choice of renewing their bond or splitting up. That happened every year. If they decided to split, the children stayed with the mother but the father was responsible for their welfare. There was no shame in a woman having several children, each with a different father.
 
My grandmother divorced from my grandfather before I was born and I ended up with 2 grandfathers on my paternal side when my granny 'married' the second one,and took his name., and had her last child with him...... I got on with grandfathers although none of them particularly keen on kids .
Wasn't until my granny died in the early 80's.and my second granddad long gone, I discovered she wasn't married to the second one, and had never divorced the first one..
 
horseless carriage said:
Well said Marg. Reflecting on my earlier post about my Mother's premature death, what I experienced in the aftermath, as did my siblings, is that my Father couldn't physically go to work, come home, cook a meal, make sure our homework was done, get us off to bed. Get the vacuum out, clean the place, make sure that the dusting was done, sort the soiled washing, prepare the next wash, retrieve the previously dried washing, get it ironed, get himself bathed, fall into bed, get up and start all over again. He gave it a good go mind, but we quickly learned how to change our bed linen weekly, how to sort soiled washing into hot washes, colour fast washes, dark clothing washes. I took it to the launderette, my two small sisters dried and ironed it and our even smaller brother vacuumed, dusted and put away the freshly ironed laundry. In other words, we grew up. All of us took those childhood skills and experiences into our marriages.

Those experiences have taught me that it doesn't happen, someone makes it happen. Why should that someone always be mother? It might sound trivial but I think it's relevant, before I put my underpants in the laundry basket I always check that there's nothing there that would disgust me if I had to sort someone else's laundry. That's what sibling squabbling taught me about: "You did it, you clean it."
Such an attitude goes for everything else.
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You sum up exactly how it was in my childhood home, though I was fortunate enough to be graced with two parents, however, with my dad always working, which included out of town, it was my mom who was always at home with us kids, and being the oldest, the list was long and distinguished as to what I did from day-to-day to help pitch-in and make my moms job a little easier.

I remember it so well... the separating of washables. Mom had three baskets ready and waiting (always) in the laundry room, and she taught us all about sorting.

There was five of us kids, and even my baby siblings were given little jobs and tasks to do, like cleaning up their toys off the floor when they were done playing. As for myself, I was my moms second set of hands, helping with my baby siblings and housework all the time.

I babysat regularly, and even when my mom was home I prepared bottles... homemade baby food and formula in our house, changed diapers, and my mom didn't use Pampers, did laundry (including hanging it on the clothesline), helped with meals, did ironing, shopping, yard-work, and the list went on. Nothing was off the table.

Fast-forward to when I got married, I took all of those life experiences and applied them accordingly in my own home. My husband, having been raised traditionally, entered marriage having never before boiled a pot of water, need alone stripped a bed or washed a load of laundry, but in my eyes that was my job and I took it seriously.

One distinct difference I notice in marriages today, is the women (not all, but many) enter marriage ill-prepared, however, back in the day (back in my day), girls were taught how to do this and how to do that by their moms, grandmas, aunts, older sisters, etc, and IMO that set the stage for a more stable and well-rounded union between husband and wife, with most women being fulltime stay-at-home housewives and mothers at the time.

I could nitter-natter on and on about this, because topics like these are my favourite, but what I see nowadays with young couples, is the holding of each others hands, because neither really or truly knows their place in the marriage, meaning what to do (or how to do it), hence the expectations I hear about today where married women not only expect their husbands to work, but they want their husbands to come home and help with the housework, childcare, cooking, etc, and that's coming from women who are at home all day long (fulltime).

I refer to it as broken values, and it's prevalent today.
 
Aunt Marg said:
Materialism, a trophy (significant other wrapped around arm), money, status.
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A "trophy wife" is most certainly not a modern idea. It has been around for as long as marriage has existed. For most of history a woman's worth was based on her looks, her ability to birth sons, and/or her dowry. Brains optional, usually.

My parents divorced in 1962 when I was a kid, and I was incredibly happy about it. They were an ill-matched couple who married because both had children from a first marriage. In those days people thought, "Oh, you must get married again for the sake of your children! Whatever will they do without a mother (or father, as the case may be)?!?!?"

When my sister divorced her husband in the late '80's, they shared joint custody. They get along better now than when they were married. They never dissed one another, never played guilt/power games over the kids. Now their kids are grown, married, with their own kids, and successful in careers and families. My ex-BIL is one of our best friends and is an integral part of our primary family circle.

I've been with the same spouse for 47 yrs. We're best friends, lovers, and daily companions. No complaints here.
 
Lethe200 said:
A "trophy wife" is most certainly not a modern idea. It has been around for as long as marriage has existed. For most of history a woman's worth was based on her looks, her ability to birth sons, and/or her dowry. Brains optional, usually.

My parents divorced in 1962 when I was a kid, and I was incredibly happy about it. They were an ill-matched couple who married because both had children from a first marriage. In those days people thought, "Oh, you must get married again for the sake of your children! Whatever will they do without a mother (or father, as the case may be)?!?!?"

When my sister divorced her husband in the late '80's, they shared joint custody. They get along better now than when they were married. They never dissed one another, never played guilt/power games over the kids. Now their kids are grown, married, with their own kids, and successful in careers and families. My ex-BIL is one of our best friends and is an integral part of our primary family circle.

I've been with the same spouse for 47 yrs. We're best friends, lovers, and daily companions. No complaints here.
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Wile I agree with your opening, I do believe with all my might that trophy spouses have become the way of the day, whereas with couples in the past, marriage was more real, today most everything is artificial, people included.
 
IMO physical appearance is now the most important factor in choosing a partner for both men and women today. The experts tell us the partner we choose reflects our own self-esteem so in other words, if they are not beautiful to look at, you are a dead-set loser. If this is true, how many good men and women are left on the shelf because they just couldn't measure up?
 
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mellowyellow said:
IMO physical appearance is now the most importance factor in choosing a partner for both men and women today. The experts tell us the partner we choose reflects our own self-esteem so in other words, if they are not beautiful to look at, you are a dead-set loser. If this is true, how many good men and women are left on the shelf because they just couldn't measure up?
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I couldn't agree more.

As for those who didn't measure up, my guess is untold numbers.

Money and looks is everything today.
 
tbeltrans said:
It is a rather odd thing to say marriage vows that include "let no man tear asunder", "in sickness and health", and "unto death do us part" ... and then say "not really" or "I didn't REALLY mean all that" as a divorce commences. The part that I think should be changed is the vows portion. There can be practical reasons to get a divorce and for each situation it is different and difficult for us, on the outside looking in, to judge. So maybe the vows should be something along the lines of "we will give it our best effort...". :)

Tony
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I agree. If a woman is being abused daily - it that the "worst' and she should stay? Also, some men take "unto death do us part" to the extreme.
 
Way back in the late 1930s, my dad divorced his wife. She was an alcoholic. Not only was divorce rare, my dad as a single male parent was not allowed full custody of his kids. Granted my dad was about 19-20, at the time, but there would be no custody question , if he were female. He could only get his kids back when he remarried.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Way back in the late 1930s, my dad divorced his wife. She was an alcoholic. Not only was divorce rare, my dad as a single male parent was not allowed full custody of his kids. Granted my dad was about 19-20, at the time, but there would be no custody question , if he were female. He could only get his kids back when he remarried.
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In the 1930s at least up until WWII our divorce laws favoured the fathers, at least over a wife committing adultery, (so far as who was permitted custody of any children goes), and this probably reflected public opinion on this kind of behaviour.
 


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