Reply #134: How do you explain the fact that divorce rates are highest [View All]

[Warren DeMontague]

in "Bible Belt", Red States?

(It's like blaming school shootings on secular humanism or a lack of religion. Funny how so many of them take place in gun-toting, conservative christian communities, isn't it? If that logic held, one would think Marin county would be the hotbed of school violence- but somehow it isn't.)

Maybe when people are told they need to wait until they are married to have sex, they (understandably) marry the first person with whom they feel a deep, abiding lust... out of the need to fulfill what is (much to the bible-thumper crowd's chagrin) a biological imperative. So you have dipshit twentysomethings like Jessica Simpson blathering about how "true love waits" and then eight months after the wedding she has discovered that, sex aside, she has very little in common with the blow-dried goober she has committed to spend her entire life with.

This is not rocket science. When people have more realistic expectations of what marriage entails, when they have spent time in long-term, semi-committed relationships (including co-habitation) previously, then if they WANT to get married- because not everyone should, or has to- I suspect they generally have a more realistic idea of what they are getting into and what it is going to entail.

It is particularly in places where people have these ridiculous fairy-tale notions about things that kids get married too young--- and end up divorcing not long after.