“What’s Love Got To Do With It” - Factors and Causes of Divorce?

It takes a lot more than love to keep your marriage vows.

That’s the awful truth. Sad, but it’s the truth that people have to face. But perhaps we have been warned beforehand - by none other than Tina Turner through her shout outs while singing ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’. I’ve always like the song ever since my high school years, but back then, little do I know how much it reflects our real life situation.

Fairy tales may have long polluted our minds with the abundant possibilities of happily ever after, but as we grow up, we know more that it takes more than just love to have a happy ending. Marriage problems can arise from various problems. Factors like a couple’s age, past relationships and bindings, children, family and parents, money as well as developing interest of a partner are taken into the bigger picture of what it takes to get a marriage alive, going and kicking.

According to findings made by Australian researchers with regard to the extent of how can a couple’s age effects a marriage has found out that a couple with a huge age gap is more likely to get divorced. I guess the old ways doesn’t work anymore in this era where we lived in, where women in the olden days married their husband who is way older than they are most of the time. Besides, few other findings by other nations also shown that couples, who got married at a very young age too, find it difficult sticking to their marriage contract.

Some people say, ‘let bygones be bygones’ but I guess not so much in a marriage. Your past matters more now than before. The finding also found that partners who have married more than once are 90% likely to get a divorce than those who are in their first marriage. It doesn’t get any better with partners who had children from their previous marriage. Here’s the shocking truth:-

” …with one-fifth of couples who have children before marriage - either from a previous relation or in the same relationship - having separated compared to 9% of couples without children born before marriage.”

That’s one-fifth ratio! It’s like for every hundred couples, 20 of them are having marriage trouble just because of the children. But here’s the big issue, was it really the children? Or was it just due to the couple’s humungous ego? Since another factor that could damage a marriage is trivial matters on the issue of existing or developing interest. Some people might find it a little funny that because of a hobby of watching football games or playing computer games can lead to divorce. But it happens, and it happens a lot.

Psychologically, an individual parents play an important role too, which I agree because personally I think, most of us, whether we realize it or not put our parents as our closest role models. We might often hear the words ‘oh! If you can do it, why can’t I?’. People with a broken family are more like to face troubles with their own marriage compared to those whose parents did not separate.

Money is always a killer. Well, people could kill one another for money. No wonder, it is one of the main causes of divorce. In a statistic by a country (in south-east asia) alone, where about 70 to 80% of divorce cases are caused by lack of financial responsibilities by either both or one of the partners.

Maybe we should just set some time to evaluate ourselves. We all want a happy ever after kind of marriage, but remember not everyone is perfect, including ourselves. Marriage isn’t simple but it’s worth a journey to take in life. It’s up to you to make it up to the challenge.