And He will make your paths straight...(Proverbs 3:6)

[purplmonkeydishwashr]

I know this statistic gets universally quoted, but just how accurate is that number?

I thought it was something like 50% of new marriages end in divorce, so it's not quite as high as it looks.

[Sullyute]

I know this statistic gets universally quoted, but just how accurate is that number?

The CDC has some great statistics on divorce.

The rate of marriage for 2009 was 6.8 per 1000. The rate of divorce was 3.4 per 1000. This is national 44 states and DC. That would put it at 50%.

Utah was 3.7 so a little higher than average.

[Jeff Lebowski]

You can find lots of varying numbers on LDS divorce rates, but most studies show a relatively low rate for temple marriages.

http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/71020

Jason Carroll, assistant professor for the School of Family Life at BYU, said the average rate of divorce in the nation is 50 percent, but he said thinking every relationship has a 50/50 chance of working out is incorrect. There will be certain marriages that have a 90 percent chance and others that will have only a 10 percent chance of divorce, he said.

There are preparations people can make which give them a smaller chance of divorce. People committed to a religious lifestyle who graduate college either before or during marriage, who have no children prior to marriage and who do not live together before marriage have about a 15 percent chance of divorce, Carroll said.

According to a study conducted by Bruce Chadwick, retired BYU professor of sociology, of 6,000 LDS members nationwide, those with a temple marriage have around a 15 to 20 percent chance of divorce, and those who marry in the temple and remain active have about a 5 to 10 percent chance of divorce.

[Indy Coug]

The CDC has some great statistics on divorce.

The rate of marriage for 2009 was 6.8 per 1000. The rate of divorce was 3.4 per 1000. This is national. That would put it at 50%.

That's not the same thing. If the national birth rate was 10 per 1,000 and the national death rate was 5 per 1,000, that wouldn't put infant mortality at 50%.

[Scorcho]

I have only seen one gay-straight marriage last long term. All the others crashed and burned spectacularly.

about 5-6 years I witnessed two marriages dissolve in about a 9 month span, a Gay man and a Lesbian woman (different families). Both were strong active families in our ward. I had no clue beforehand that the Father (Ward Executive Secretary) or the Mother (Primary Teacher at the time) were homosexual.

I tend to think that the Lesbian Woman gathered strength from watching the experience of the Gay man and his family go through the ordeal first.

I felt bad for all parties, but particularly the 8 kids involved, most of whom were too young to understand what was going on. Both families moved out of our ward almost immediately after it happened. While I think it shocked all of us when it happened, I do think our Ward grew and learned from the experience.

[Sullyute]

That's not the same thing. If the national birth rate was 10 per 1,000 and the national death rate was 5 per 1,000, that wouldn't put infant mortality at 50%.

You are right that there is a time element missing. What is the length of the average marriage? Say it is 7 years. Then we would have to look back to what the rate of marriage was 7 years prior and then compare it to the current rate of divorce. Plus this doesn't take into account first marriages verses subsequent marriage or marriages that end because of death. It is not a perfect number but I would guess this is where it comes from.

[Swimmer]

Swimmer, thanks for your personal post. I don't know how open you were with your spouse and family before your eventual divorce, but do you think that his being opening gay (experiencing SSA in mormon parlance) and the wife accepting him for who his is, can or would make a difference?

Honestly I don't know. I know of several men who were very open about this with their wives before they got married, and every one of them is no longer married. Perhaps being open about it may help them deal with it, but the fact that others (in the church) know about his issue, may cause problems for them.

For instance, as soon as the parents of my childrens' friends found out about me, their kids were no longer allowed to play at my house if I was home. There are several other similar issues that arose out of my situation becoming the hot topic of the ward. It will absolutely be a very difficult thing to deal with, and the emotional weight of it all is incredibly difficult to manage.

Hopefully, they are able to deal with it, but I guarantee it will be WAY WAY WAY tougher than either one of them anticipates.

[Clark Addison]

That's not the same thing. If the national birth rate was 10 per 1,000 and the national death rate was 5 per 1,000, that wouldn't put infant mortality at 50%.

Of course it wouldn't. You are misinterpreting the data. It would mean that 50% of people eventually die.

[CardiacCoug]

I tend to agree with UtahDan too -- this will almost certainly end very badly.

But then I think about all the LDS married [musical, artistic] effeminate guys I have known who seem to have been happily married for years and seemingly doing OK and sure seem to me to at least be somewhere on the gay spectrum. A wife of a guy like this told me one time that they don't sleep in the same bed at his request and yet they have 4 kids and a pretty normal family otherwise as far as I can tell.

In any case I also agree with those who say that having any believable data on this topic would be impossible.

[Blueintheface]

I tend to agree with UtahDan too -- this will almost certainly end very badly.

But then I think about all the LDS married [musical, artistic] effeminate guys I have known who seem to have been happily married for years and seemingly doing OK and sure seem to me to at least be somewhere on the gay spectrum. A wife of a guy like this told me one time that they don't sleep in the same bed at his request and yet they have 4 kids and a pretty normal family otherwise as far as I can tell.

In any case I also agree with those who say that having any believable data on this topic would be impossible.

Tough subject to discuss without coming off as completely prejudice but I'm surprised how many married LDS men I meet that I would put on this 'spectrum' (Gender lines are being blurred more and more so it very well could mean that I need to recalibrate rather than assuming same-sex attraction). But, for example, I work with a BYU grad who just got married last month. I have yet to meet his spouse but I'm quite certain he is in the fuchsia section of that spectrum. He socializes with only women in the office (nothing wrong with that ) but the clues are there (topics, interests, etc). I can't help but think that 10 years from now his oblivious wife and his 2 young children will be shocked to learn of their father's change in lifestyle.

Am I terrible for thinking this way? Definitely, but I'm just being honest.

[NorthShoreCoug]

That's not the same thing. If the national birth rate was 10 per 1,000 and the national death rate was 5 per 1,000, that wouldn't put infant mortality at 50%.

If one is going to talk about divorce rates, you have to start with defining what rate you are talking about. As a simple example, I have 9 siblings (born between 1945 and 1965). So between the ten of us, 3 have been divorced. 30% divorce rate, right? But not so fast. Ten years ago, only 1 had been divorced, so that was a 10% divorce rate. And ten years from now, who knows what it will be (we do know that at a minimum, it will be 30%)?

But to complicate it more, one of my older brothers has been married three times, divorced twice. The two sisters who divorced have never remarried. So there have been 12 marriages, and 4 have ended in divorce. So the divorce rate is now 33%, I guess. (just try to calculate the possibilities if Liz Taylor had been in my family...).

Trying to estimate the probability of a random couple that just got married will get divorced at some point in their marriage is fairly difficult as well. Cultural and social changes make it very tenuous to apply historical rates to this couple.

But SullyUte and Indy are right, that is where the 50% comes from, and it is not very useful or accurate, because the populations from which the samples are drawn are so very different.

I've actually looked into this a bit a couple of times for professional reasons, and the best estimates seem to indicate that a random newly-married couple has about a 35 to 40% chance of getting divorced at some point in their lives. I might see if I can find a link later...

[CardiacCoug]

I've actually looked into this a bit a couple of times for professional reasons, and the best estimates seem to indicate that a random newly-married couple has about a 35 to 40% chance of getting divorced at some point in their lives. I might see if I can find a link later...

That sounds right to me.

A very important distinction is obviously divorce rate for a first marriage and divorce rate for a second or third marriage. The same way every test has a much higher pass rate (for medical boards typically 80-90%) for first time test takers than for repeat test takers (typically 40-50%) I would think the same applies to marriages.

[All-American]

Here's another one.

http://www.joshweed.com/2012/06/club...me-out-of.html

EDIT: just saw this link in another thread. Sorry. Feel free to comment or disregard.