The first round of divorces - my children's peers

I had hoped that the trend for divorce might have dried up in the newer generation. My sons and their friends seem to have intact relationships - DS1 and his wife, together for 16 years, married for 13; DS2 and partner together for 19 years, never married but as good as. Good luck to your DS and DD, Grannyknot. It's probably a good thing that they didn't settle down in their 20s.

I realise that the last sentence of my post sounds as if I don't expect young marriages to last and that I may have an avalanche of protests from those of you whose early marriages have been wonderfully successful. I, on the other hand, married at 29 and divorced at 45. There is no predicting the length of a marriage. DS1 played the field (and what a field!) and married at 29; DS2 has been monogamous since he and his partner both turned 21. So, apologies - and no offence meant. I must learn not to make generalisations.

A lot of people did say I did the wrong thing in not having any other girl friends after meeting my future wife at age 11.
As far as we knew we were well suited to each other even though neither of us had dated anybody else so why change?.
Also they said I might have been influenced by the fact her mother was the headmistress of the school.
After all the headmistress of my school did say my future wife was the best so that had got to have been correct.
All I can say we were happily married for 26 years but I would say we were in effect married for 38 years as I tend to think the wedding only rubber stamped the relationship.
Also our marriage did not end in divorce.

Frank

I can't remember where I heard it recently that our personalities are only fully formed at around the mid-thirties, so I suppose it depends on whether people can grow up together or whether they grow at the same pace, or catch up if at different paces - whether or not the marriages last if people do get married young.

In her mid to late teens DD was considered unusual by her peers as her mum n dad were still married.
I understand your sadness GN after having got to know them so well.

GN (why can't I get 'bold' on my ipad?) I do so agree with you.
I married at 22 -peer pressure in those days and it wasn't 'done' to live together- and by my mid thirties, realised that we had both developed into 2 very different people who should never be together.
On the other hand, I have several friends who married in their late teens and are still together 50 years later- I always felt envious that they managed to 'grow up' together.
It therefore bodes well for your 2 to have waited till their 30's.
I do hope they have long and happy marriages.

Same here Reddevil I too feel envious of people who are still together after 50 odd years. Quite a few of my children's friends (mid thirties) are now going through a divorce and yes it is sad, but thank goodness you can put a mistake behind you and hopefully start again. I'm half expecting the same thing happening to them.

I have been with DH for 50 years this year, our marriage is happy but we did live together apart for 16 years. Women are much more independent nowadays and feel confident to cope alone if it is not working.

Wow harrigran lived together apart for 16 years ... thereby hangs a tale, I'm sure.

Grannyknot I don't know whether what you read is true but when I used to do phsychometric testing it was accepted that the personality test were only valid for 18 months - 2years. This is because life happens and changes us all the time.

I think that DH and I have been married happily for so long partly because we have faced many changes and troubles together and worked hard to make things right for our family. When we went back to see a group of old friends after about 8 years away we found them pretty much the same but we had changed a lot.

I was just 21 and DH 24 when we married. We had both had quite a few romances before but knew as soon as we met that we were destined to be together. 45 years now.

We are fortunate that our sons' friends who are married seem to be staying that way.

I was going to be smug about this, but then realised that my son is actually married (in the Ukraine, to a Ukrainian girl who got deported) and although he is happily settled with another girl I suppose he will eventually have to get divorced. Not sure what his legal status is in the UK. On the other hand my daughter's been married for 16 years and shows no sign of splitting up as yet. In fact she's known her husband for 22 years and never shown the slightest interest in anyone else.
Sometimes you just seem to pick the right person. I've been married for 43 years but had never had a boyfriend for more than two weeks previously - not really sure why this one was different.

Not really a tale Grannyknot DH worked away from home for 16 years, returned at weekends and holidays. Meant we always had things to talk about and stopped us from taking each other for granted.

I think divorced parents should be forced to maintain their children.
They should not be the responsibility of the tax payer.
Even though I was widowed I looked after my 2 daughters.

Frank

Harri - a case of absence making the heart grow fonder then. Congratulations in anticipation of that milestone anniversary.

Moved - agree 're weathering the storms. I don't know whether my personality has changed much over the years, but my thinking certainly has, hopefully for the better.

Movealot those do not sound like very useful tests you were using in your job. The ones I used to use would have been much more confident ("reliable") that they were measuring aspects of personality that were fairly stable. People are not, for instance, high on dominance at 20 and low in dominance at 35. It does rather depend on how much research has gone into the test construction.
Personality is not the same as maturity though. We, hopefully, gain in self insight and learn to moderate the extremes of our personalities and work on our weaknesses.
I was still a child when I married the first time at 19.
Natural to feel sad grannyknot - there are a lot of sad things about life. I have been clearing out all my books and papers and that has been full of little sad moments.
I always think it is a mistake to settle down too young - especially these days when if you are 25 your unmarried peers may be living a very free, studenty life. There must be a sense of missing out on freedom and fun that can be harmful to a relationship. On the other hand I know someone in her mid 30s that can't seem to find someone she likes enough to settle down with. All the men she meets are taken/gay/tossers . I think the fun thing is beginning to wear thin.

Jess, my eldest grandson is now approaching 30 and says he is very ready to settle down, as all his friends are married/engaged/having children and he feels too old for the club scene. He has had two long term relationships but they broke down because the women were not ready to settle down. His current girlfriend does not want to share a home with him and suffers from severe depression, so I don't have much hope for their relationship. He has been falling in love since he was four, when he would turn scarlet if a certain nine-year old girl came to his house. He is very envious of his younger brother, who has been with his wife since he was 18 and has two gorgeous little girls.

I was engaged at 17, married at 18 and divorced at 39. I knew the day I got married that I was making a mistake but I was just not brave enough to call it off and hurt my husband to be. My divorce was just putting right something that was wrong. On the other hand, one of my grand-daughters has been with her fiance since they were both 14 - some of you have read their story on my 'Will you vote for...' thread. I do believe they will be together for life.

It is impossible to generalise, although it is often easy to tell which couples are not going to make it, whatever age they are when they marry. I worry when young women want to spend huge amounts on their wedding as though that one day is going to be the most important of their lives. Do they feel let down once the day to day routine of marriage kicks in?

Greatnan Not everyone is good at guessing the potential success or failure of someone else's marriage. in 1998 Mr absent and I had our after-the-wedding party in the pub that was located just across the road from my house and was the place where we met. I found out much later that the landlord had opened a book on how long our marriage would last. Apparently he lost a lot of money and was very cross with me.

Yes, I agree, absent. I have known couples who stayed together for over forty years in spite of apparently being constantly at each other's throats. They were very uncomfortable company, though.

True of course is that sometimes long term, seemingly happy marriages end too for unexpected reasons.

At the time when he was leading a country into major change, the then President of South Africa F.W. de Klerk, suddenly and surprisingly left his wife (his 'university sweetheart') of 40 odd years for the wife of a friend. The timing couldn't have been worse as far as other more important matters he had on his mind went, because he was busy handing over to the ANC and jointly preparing the country for the first democratic elections. I remember seeing a television interview with him (he didn't give many interviews about his personal life but I suppose he thought one would get the Press off his back) - and I was struck by the way he simply said that he was 'powerless in the face of falling irrevocably in love in the old-fashioned way'. All parties concerned were in their mid-sixties at that time. He is still married to that woman, and sadly his first wife was murdered in her home in SA (in a gated community) a few years later.

My friends and even my sister and mother were staggered when I said I could no longer stand to live with my husband. I wasn't deliberately deceptive - it just seemed pointless to worry them and make my husband unhappy when it was still impracticable for us to separate.
My sister did understand when I explained about 'silent screaming' because she had felt the same way about her husband. She said that she and my mother had been appalled when I married him and could not understand what I saw in him. If only they had said so at the time, I might have had the courage to stop the wedding but they thought that because I was a 'clever girl' I must know what I was doing.

Jess they are actually very good personality tests, from the market leader, one of the 2 most recognised and used by most members of the BPS. That is why they caution that life expereince can change our personality. Being tested by a member of the BPS (they will only seel them to members), using the best researched tests available gives them great validity. That is why they are responsible in giving guidance to their customers that the personality can be changed by life expereince. Mine most certainly has.

Which tests were you using?

Slightly off topic here aren't we. I am BPS level 1 and level 2 qualified and my interpretation is that if the things tests are measuring change significantly over time they are not measuring "personality" - they are measuring something else. There are minor shifts in scores over time but not big ones.

I have the same qualification, Jess 1 and 2 in BPS accredited psychometrics at Cambridge Uni, which has a fabulous psychometrics centre. Many occupational and relationship/personality psychometrics are limited in use unless used as part of a battery of tests, repeated over time to account for changing circumstances, mood, purpose of test etc. Psychometrics are so often used inappropriately and can be skewed, especially if you have studied them and know how to answer the lie scales consistently.