Divorce and the Internet

"These figures are troubling given the increasing popularity of couples meeting online."

"It suggests that in the early years of marriage couples who meet this way might lack sufficient social capital, or close support networks around them to deal with all the challenges they face."

"Our finding in NO way undermines or diminishes the vital role of online dating. But it does highlight the greater risks and difficulties of getting to know a relative stranger where reliable sources of background information and subsequent social support are less readily available."

Harry Benson, research director, Marriage Foundation, United Kingdom

"For online couples, wider social bonds between families and friends have to form from scratch rather than being well established over years or even decades."

"It is therefore not entirely unsurprising that the input of family, friends or co-workers reduces the risk of making a hasty mistake."

"The fact that the added risk disappears after the first three years of marriage points to the importance of social capital established over the long term through families and friendships and communities."

U.K.-based study

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A new study commissioned by the Marriage Foundation in Britain and prepared by the polling company Savanta ComRes, concludes that spouses who discovered one another through online sources are divorced at a six times higher rate than their contemporaries who met each other through friends and family. Married couples who meet online, according to the report, have a 12 percent higher chance of being divorced within the first three years of their marriage in comparison to two percent who found partners the traditional way, through friends and family.

Researchers polled over two thousand individuals 30 years of age and older, married at least once. Adjusting the data for the decade when couples met, age, gender and occupation, it was still found that divorces were more likely to occur among online daters in their early years of marriage. The data conclude that seventeen percent of married couples meeting online divorced within the first decade, in comparison to ten percent of those for whom conventional dating led to romance and marriage. 

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Social capital and the lack of it through online discoveries was cited as a major factor, defined as the support network of friends and family that could be called upon in times of stress to help a couple deal with unanticipated pressures in their relationship. According to the polling results, eight percent of spouses who had met while at school, and seven percent whose work environment was the place of meeting, had divorced within the first three years.

Once couples manage to hold steady past the initial period of familiarity and coping together with the intention of preserving their marriage through making it work in the early stages of marriage, the background of how they met has far less of an impact, diminishing the rate of divorce occurrences. The divorce rate fell close to 20 percent, irrespective of how they met; through friends and family, at a bar or online.

Another finding carried out by eHarmony and Imperial College Business School found that by the year 2037, most newborns in the United Kingdom will be offspring of parents who had met on the internet. At the present time, studies indicate close to a third of relationships were formed online.

About a third of couples  met online, the study found. (iStock)

"The digital world has streamlined the online dating process -- making it easier to find someone while ensuring that they match your criteria."

"2035 will be an instrumental year for finding love and begin a new era of 21st century dating."

Dr.Paolo Taticchi, teaching fellow, Imperial College London

The Family Unit and Marriage

"A 2018 survey of 1,520 Canadians by the Angus Reid Institute asked 'When two people plan to spend the rest of their lives together, how important is it to you that they legally marry, meaning exchange vows in a public ceremony, whether civil or religious?' Fifty-three per cent said it wasn’t important. According to the pollster, this means a majority of Canadians now think 'marriage is simply not necessary'."
"Evidence that the institution of marriage is in decline hardly counts as news anymore. Marriage rates have been sliding for decades. In 1981, over 60 per cent of Canadians above the age of 15 were married; today that’s fallen to 45 per cent as cohabitating couples and lone parent households rise in step. The fact a majority of Canadians now think legal marriage is obsolete looks to be the logical conclusion of this long-term trend."

"In the U.S., where the relative success of racial groups is an area of intense focus, research by the Brookings Institution points to the 'success sequence' as a key factor in avoiding poverty. This refers to a multi-stage process of finishing high school, getting a job, getting married and then having children. Do these steps in this order and your chances of entering the middle class or higher rise dramatically, regardless of race."
"Recent work by the Institute for Family Studies shows that among Americans aged 28 to 34 who failed to complete the sequence in order, 53 per cent were poor. By comparison, those who followed the traditional path to adulthood had a 90 per cent change of being middle class or above. Marriage is the central aspect of this sequence; and as a defense against poverty it is an option available to all in a way that a college education – another indicator of future success – may not be. (Although children from married homes are more likely to graduate college.) Being married combines 'sex, parenthood, economic cooperation and emotional intimacy into a permanent union', observes Bradford Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist and co-author of the above report. It also makes you happy."
Peter Shawn Taylor, Macleans Magazine

A new poll suggests nearly half of Canadians aren't interested in getting married.  Getty Images

So there's all of that information, data, speculation on marriage, and why the younger generation shrugs its collective shoulder at the venerable institution of marriage, the marriage vows and the marriage covenant as irrelevant to their personal, intimate lives which value more casual relationships or intimate relationships unburdened by society's and religions' compacts and strictures on sexual intimacy and partnerships.

It is not only generational differences that will predict how people will react to the institution of traditional marriage, versus simply living together as in common-law relationships.

Recently, the Institute for Family Studies launched a study and its conclusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that conservatives and liberals regard the institution of marriage and all its traditions differently, with 62 percent of conservatives taking marriage vows, while 29 percent of liberals feel it necessary to, along with 46 percent of 'moderates', neither conservative nor liberal, but somewhere in between. Conservatives were observed to be likelier to marry, even controlling for factors such as age.

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Social scientists have long pointed out the equally obvious, that sharing life with someone else has its bonuses. People managing to live together in harmony, sharing common values and priorities find greater pleasure in life. Within a stable marriage people are generally healthier, and certainly more satisfied with life. That, apart from the fact that with a shared partnership, raising children is easier with two people to share the burden, responsibility and happiness that is generated within an intact family group.

And then there is the purely practical "social insurance" of being able to rely on someone emotionally close to you, when you're depressed, feeling ill, facing poor health outcomes, lose employment, even the elemental sharing of child-centered tasks when one parent is called away, leaving the other to take sole charge temporarily. There is no over-estimating the emotional security in knowing that someone is deeply concerned about your welfare, and is there to prop you up when needed by circumstances. The comfort inherent in knowing love and returning it makes for a happier person.

Conservatives, according to the IFS study simply value marriage more than do moderates or liberals to the point where 80 percent feel marriage is critical to the creation of strong families, whereas among liberals the figure descends to 33 percent who feel similarly. Greater numbers of conservatives commit to marriage simply because they feel marriage is an important part of one's life, and all the more so before children are born.

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This results in 52 percent of conservatives claiming to be completely satisfied with their family lives in comparison to 41 percent of liberals and moderates. The social sciences tend to agree with this generalized conservative tendency to value marriage and practise what they value in greater numbers than their liberal counterparts. Marriage is recognized as vitally critical to individual and societal health altogether. Research has verified that married people tend to live longer, happier and more prosperous lives.

Benefits to children within a family situation where two parents are equally engaged in child care and support, are innumerable and irreplaceable. With the attention of two parents focusing attention and emotional and practical resources on a child's needs, a more structured, healthier situation results, both for the parents and for their offspring. A study of economic mobility concluded that one of the most reliable predictors of income mobility was to grow up within a neighbourhood of majority two-parent families, irrespective of a child being raised by a single parent.

In light of which, the fact that an estimated 40 percent of children are born in the current generation outside marriage to parents who largely feel that it is preferential to bypass marriage, when studies and actual outcomes reflect otherwise, is troubling.

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Stable Intimate Relationships in Marriage

"I think that tendency to just move on and want to start fresh, for many people they don't really reflect on that relationship. So when they start a new partnership, well, they just end up falling into the same old patterns again."
"Although some relationship dynamics may change, you are still the same person, so you likely recreate many of the same patterns with the next partner."
"Just starting a new partnership doesn’t mean things are going to be different. This research shows that chances are, you are going to fall into the same patterns in many aspects of the relationship. Even if things are different, they’re not guaranteed to be better."
"In order for that type of relationship [previously married with children] to end, things had to get pretty bad, to blow up your life, to separate, to figure out the joint custody of children and a new place to live."
"Potentially they had a higher threshold [older, more experience in marriage and parenthood] to start a new partnership because they were a bit more guarded. things were especially good for them when they started a new relationship."
"I know that young adults are incredibly pessimistic about their prospects for lasting love. I spend the whole semester trying to deconstruct that myth."
Matthew Johnson, associate professor of family science, University of Alberta

New romantic relationships tend to take on the familiar patterns of previous, broken relationships once the honeymoon phase is over, according to a new study by a U of A relationship expert. (Photo: Getty Images)

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That advice of venerable vintage holds promise in so many areas of life. And for many, it extends to new intimate relationships. When a marriage fails, the dissolved partners each seek another to form a relationship with in the hopes that the new one will be lasting, a permanent fixture in their lives, satisfying their need for a partner in whose company they can be prepared to face the future alongside, someone who will love them as they themselves love the other in a lasting commitment.

A new study titled "(Eventual) stability and change across partnerships", published in the Journal of Family Psychology, has concluded that on average those who separate from their partners for issues of incompatibility and begin another relationship with high hopes of success ultimately discover themselves to be no further ahead, with yet another attempt that has led to failure.

Data extracted from over 500 German subjects over an eight-year period measured for factors such as the amount of conflict between partners, the level of satisfaction achieved, and the tendency to express thoughts and emotions to one another, used by the research team led by Dr. Johnson with a view to establishing why it is that so many intimate relationships fail. They discovered that using these measures as guidelines, over the course of a year a second relationship reflected conditions similar to the original partnership that failed.

(People have a tendency to repeat themselves, and in so doing situations run along a predictable track. If individuals are not emotionally flexible, capable of compromise, able to communicate with grace and tolerance, they become habitually accustomed to antagonistic perceptions and reactions.}

The study concluded that similar patterns of emotional behaviour lead to pairing with partners similar in personality type, attractiveness and socio-economic status. Which makes sense, since ostensibly the more that people have in common with one another the greater the likelihood that interests will converge and sympathies with them.

Dr. Johnson has a background as a former couple's therapist. He found that the most common outcome was for the second relationship to be more fraught than the previous one, with greater issues leading to conflict, fewer expressions, less satisfaction.

Research participants happened to be German in view of the fact that the data was extracted from the German Family Panel, a huge study of 12,000 individuals that began in 2008. There were no Canadian data since Canada has no comparable collection of data. Statistics Canada no longer tracks divorce rates. Although the vast majority of participants included in the German Family Panel were heterosexual, gay participants were not excluded from the sample used, making it fairly inclusive.

The year 2008 saw Statistics Canada release its last divorce data which envisaged that 43 percent of marriages would end before a couple's 50th wedding anniversary. Marriage at a young age is considered a risk factor for divorce. Still, two-thirds of couples who remain in a marriage find themselves in high-quality relationships through those marriages.

It was found that the decline in relationship success was more prevalent among people who have a tendency toward negative emotions and to hold pessimistic world views; which Dr. Johnson referred to as "neuroticism". And for this group, the partnership sundering was particularly difficult, reinforcing their neuroticism as they were found never to fully rebound in new relationships.

For older people, on the other hand, second relationships saw an improvement. In the final analysis people are not advised to remain within a relationship that causes distress. "I would say the data is increasingly clear -- among couples who get married at least -- lasting love is actually the norm."

(Credit: luizclas / Pexels)

Trivializing Inconstancy

"I think a lot of times people are quite floored when they see a 75-year-old who wants a divorce. In my personal experience, I would say that grey divorces are becoming a lot more prevalent."
"I appears that people are living longer, and there is a shift from the age groups for divorces."
"Maybe initially they believed that this was the right person. And as you grow older, you may grow apart. And so the way they see it is ... I have less in front than there is behind so I need to focus on what's left of my life and really maximizing my happiness."
Diane Isaac, family lawyer, Shulman Law Firm, Toronto

"If we have a 30-year marriage, it's not that we have ten years left, but we may be only halfway through that marriage."
"People are looking at that and saying 'I have a long way to go and do I necessarily want to continue in an unhappy relationship?"
Eva Sachs, Mutual Solutions mediation service

"They weren't in the same position that my mother would have been, who didn't have any financial security outside the family [pre-two-earner families]."
"Millennials are less likely to divorce and there is a trend among millennials now to be more focused around planning their relationships, so writing co-habitation agreements, pre-nuptial agreements."
"And it could be because they are the children of divorce, they've seen a lot."
Marion Korn, co-founder, Mutual Solutions

Once the legal liberalization of divorce laws -- now ancient history -- occurred, divorce rates ratcheted up to the point where at the present time almost fifty percent of marriages over time, with or without children, end in divorce.Those who consider themselves experts in the field have their theories which, for the most part sound trite and superficial. Perhaps the most obvious and realistic explanation is expectations and failures relating to those expectations which are likely fixed within social constructs of everlasting love bypassing that human emotions and intimate relations are complex beyond expectations.

Aided and abetted by emotional immaturity and love that fails to go deep enough to exemplify what love truly is, that one cares about another human being not with the passion of a sexual relationship without context, but a sexual relationship complementing a deep and abiding concern for the well-being of that other and yes, placing that other person's well-being, satisfaction with life and happiness above one's own in that their emotional state is critical to the satisfaction of one's own. Health and happiness flow from a generous, not a selfish love.

That being been said, people will be people. And as such it is beyond the capacity of most people not to place their self-interest first, failing to recognize that their self-interest lies in the fulfillment of sharing a love with someone you plan to live with for the foreseeable future in a mutual engagement of trust, respect, friendship and shared aspirations. Free and open communication and due appreciation of the attributes that the other brings to the relationship is critical to its success. Self-absorption rings the death knell of any marriage.

The 1980s seems to have been the apex of divorce which some researchers believe is now descending in numbers. At the same time a new trend appears to be developing among older married couples who have decided for reasons, obviously, of their own to sunder a marriage of long standing. This may go beyond the old canard of couples hanging in until their children are old enough to manage on their own, then splitting. These are marriages of thirty years' duration and longer. They've been dubbed 'silver splitters' and 'diamond divorcees'.

Boomers in the United States, Australia, India and the United Kingdom are now, it would appear, distinguishing themselves by seeking in greater numbers, to end long-term marriages. In Canada, the median age for divorce rose between 1991 and 2008 for men from 38.3 to 44 years; women from 35.7 to 41 years. According to the Shulman Law firm, its own experience with numbers for the past decade led them to believe that grey divorce is steadily rising. In 2010 clients of 50 and over represented 10% of their business. Now however, that same demographic "constitutes approximately 40 percent".

Although the age group of 60 and over remains the minority of cases they see, that demographic has nearly doubled over the past decade. Divorce experts are linking the rise of elderly divorces to the fact that people are living longer, realizing a gain of about 20 years between 1921 and 2005, where life expectancy rose from 58.8 to 79 years for men and from 50.5 to 82.7 years for women. Older people examining their marriages now discard 'Can I manage on my own?' to adapt to an 'Am I happy?' self query.

'Till Death Do Us Part

"While wedding planners have fashioned an entire industry centered on that 'special day', Canadians themselves appear unconvinced that the day -- or the institution it represents -- is all that special anymore."
Angus Reid Institute report

"You see really significant numbers of people across those age demographics [18 to 34-year-olds] who are not convinced of the importance of marriage, whether it is civil or religious; who are not convinced of its relevance; and who are not convinced its necessity or relevance even when there's a child involved."
"The flattening of that across age demographics -- where you only really see people in the 65-plus age group likely to say that it is important across all those questions -- really stands out. We're now of an age where you see Baby Boomers or Gen-Xers telling their children or their nieces and nephews, 'It's not that important."
Shachi Kurl, executive director, Angus Reid Institute

Vancouver couple Nathaly and Jeff Nairn arrive at the Waterfront station following their wedding on a SkyTrain platform.  (Jennifer Gauthier/ For StarMetro)

How social convention changes over time! The sanctity of the marriage bond is no longer regarded as a 'must-do' for people deciding to spend the rest of their lives together. At least in Canada. Perhaps this is as much a reflection of the fact that divorce is readily attainable and so many marriages end up in separation and divorce, with or without children. Perhaps it's an indication that in such a distracted, busy lifestyle there's little patience for ceremonies that are costly and all too often temporary, and with such short attention spans prevailing in the general population it's just a nuisance factor.

So people, getting on with life, give short shrift to the customs of yore, with their heritage value and religious overtones in societies shifting inexorably away from organized religion. The poll undertaken by the Angus Reid Institute identified patterns reflecting the variant values of defined age groups. Where 18- to 24-year-olds and people over 65 appear to reverse the national trend in clear majorities feeling marriage is "very important", or "somewhat important" in their estimation, to consolidate romantic partnerships.

All women appear, irrespective of which age group they're in, to claim that in their opinion marriage is of least importance in a committed relationship, matching the opinion of men in general. Men over 55 years of age, feel the opposite. And nor do unmarried couples with children feel any different; for they too state that marriage is "not that important" or "not important at all" for a legal marriage to take place in circumstances where children are involved, any more than when there are no children in a conjugal relationship.


Among people between the ages of 35 to 44, that marriage-negative response represents the majority, reversed in the age range over 65 where, perhaps predictably, that age group feel positive about the importance of marriage in a family situation;  upholding a tradition supported by religious advisers advocating for the sanctity of the marriage vows and the stability and legality offered to offspring. Among visible minorities, people are far likelier to regard the institution of marriage as important.

Those differences aside, the aggregate rule the day; the cultural-social importance that marriage was once held to have is negated in Canada where over one-fifth of all couples now live common law, according to Statistics Canada, representing a greater than three times rate than in 1981. In addition, one-person households have become the most common type of households for the first time, surpassing those households of couples with children.

In 1971 among 18- to 34-year-olds who married, there was a 56 percent margin, which has now, since 2011, descended to 22 percent.


This is not a North American phenomenon; there is an observable difference between Canadian and American attitudes to marriage. The Angus Reid poll used questions previously asked by Pew Research in the United States, to enable them to measure the differences. American results indicated a much more robust sense of the importance of marriage to couples intending to spend their lives together; over two-thirds of Americans responded that marriage was important to them, with half claiming it to be "very" important.

And while two thirds of Canadians feel that society does just as well should people cling to priorities other than marriage and children, their American counterparts shared that view by only 50 percent of the population.

Photo, Roy Hsu

Selecting Statistics : Take Your Pick

"Red regions of the country have higher teen pregnancy rates, more shotgun marriages and lower average ages at marriage and first birth."
"Blue family values bristle at restrictions on sexuality, insistence on marriage or the stigmatization of single parents. Their secret, however, is that they encourage their children to simultaneously combine public tolerance with private discipline, and their children then overwhelmingly choose to raise their own children within two-parent families."
Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, "Red Families v.Blue Families", 2010

"Child marriage is happening at an alarming rate across the United States, but available marriage-license data show more parents, judges and clerks in red states than in blue states seem comfortable with this human-rights abuse."
Fraidy Reiss, founder, Unchained at Last nonprofit

"Individual religious conservatism is positively related to individual divorce risk."
American Journal of Sociology 50-state study

There are always statistics that can be handily selected that will advance preferred theories. It isn't that the statistics are not necessarily reliable in demonstrating the reality of issues, it's that there are often complicating issues within the subject that tend to tilt outcomes in one way or another. Which goes a long way to repeating that the devil is in the details.

Take, for example, political ideologies and how they differ, what their premises are and their values and how they're upheld and what the consequences are. Conservatives, for example can be relied upon to cite their foremost value as being one that upholds the status of the traditional, conventional family: "Family values" has sanctity status; a phrase very familiar to voters in particular, most especially during election times.

In the conventional sense, family values are fairly precise; no premarital sex, children only within the sacrament of marriage, and children raised in two-parent families for optimum outcomes. Despite which, conservative areas reflect high rates of teenage pregnancies, divorce and rates of prostitution, whereas liberal areas, while abstaining from insisting on "family values" because they pride themselves on being more "socially progressive", end up with fewer teen births, divorces and prostitution.

Mississippi, Delaware, West Virginia, Alabama and Arkansas high school students self-reported having had sex in responding to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 32 states. Delaware was the only state among them that voted Republican in the last presidential election. Whereas New York, California, Maryland, Nebraska and Connecticut all reported the lowest proportion of high school students who experienced sex encounters, with Nebraska among them having voted Democratic.



In 2015, nine of ten states surveyed with the highest teen birth rates had voted Republican, and nine of the ten states with the lowest teen birth rates had voted Democratic. Liberals boast they are relaxed about strict moral codes while in their personal lives they teach their children the inappropriateness of high school students engaging in sex. On the other hand evangelical students who have sex are unlikelier to use birth control and have a lower rate of abortions.

While averse to pre-marital sex, conservative positions sometimes lead to early marriages, even where the principals are considered to be children. Hundreds of thousands of child marriages take place in the United States. The dozen states ranking with the highest rates of child marriage had all voted Republican in 2015. Divorce too tends to be higher in red states as opposed to blue; Arkansas leading the pack.

A large international survey discovered that Ashley Madison's most numerous group of clients were evangelical Christians. According to a major study from 2013, men in the Houston and Kansas City metro areas were likelier to call on  sex advertisers, while men in San Francisco and Baltimore were less likely to indulge. And then there are Mormons, the ultra-conservative conservatives where Utah stands alone for low teen birthrates, low divorce and low abortion rates.

Utah also has the greatest number of teenagers living at home with their married, biological parents. Interestingly, when Mormonism was founded one of the guiding principles and beliefs was that men were ordained by god to have multiple wives. Due to Federal government pressure, the mainstream Mormon church dropped that major plank in its religion, and now it is the breakaway faction, the Church of Latter-Day Saints that pursues multiple wives in a single marriage with illegal gusto.

Statistical analysis indicates that religious conservatives more commonly divorce in response to early marriages where the partners come from disproportionately poor backgrounds and are poorly educated. It is not, therefore, conservative values themselves that inevitably lead to premarital sex or divorce.

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