I'm Dr Orion taban and this is psychs Better Living Through psychology and the topic of today's short talk is why most marriages fail so we know that the divorce rate is extremely high in the Western World more than half of marriages end in divorce which should be an absolutely terrifying statistic for any single man in the west now the reasons behind this exorbitant divorce rate are widely debated and hotly contested and there's a good deal validity to a lot of these points especially those that consider the perverse incentives for women who initiate the Lion's Share
of divorces to end their marriages however I have a very simple explanation as to why most marriages fail that cuts to the heart of the issue here it is the reason why most marriages fail is because marriage is inherently a very humble institution and because of its fundamental humility it cannot support all the extra that people are subject to piling on top of that institution like a bridge that collapses when it takes on too much weight marriage is just not designed to support more than what it was built to do and at the end of
the day what a marriage was built to do is to provide a context for people to come together and raise children that's it everything on top of that everything that people are subject to piling on top of marriage the love the romance the exclusivity the duty the religiosity the sacrifice the security the legal status the social consequences the financial incentives is heavier than what the institution of marriage was designed to support and of these many things it is love in the sense of romantic love that is heaviest to Bear the prence of the love marriage
which is a conflation of two very different things the love affair and the domestic partnership is fundamentally to blame for the situation we find ourselves in today marriage wasn't designed to be both a structure for raising children and a container for passion and fulfillment that like just doesn't make sense Lamborghini does not make minivans and love is just one of many additional things with which we are inappropriately subject to burdening marriage we see a similar Trend in contemporary attitudes towards work for instance the function of a job is to provide people with an opportunity to
earn money in exchange for a service that's it everything on top of that is additional weight that the institution of a job was not designed to support a job was not designed to be fulfilling it was not meant to be a source of meaning it was not meant to provide you with an identity and it certainly wasn't designed to be exciting or fun the institution of a job was created to provide people with the opportunity to earn money in exchange for a service anything on top of that is more than the institution was fundamentally designed
to support it is not necessarily a problem when a job that pays well is not fulfilling the problem is expecting fulfillment from a job that pays well do you understand now before I go any further if you're liking what you're hearing please consider sending this episode to someone who might benefit from its message because it's Word of Mouth referrals like this that really helped to make the channel grow you can also hit the super thanks button it's those three little dots in the lower right hand corner and tip me in proportion to the value you
feel you've derived from this episode because it's your donations that make all this happen thank you for your support so work and marriage are humble institutions and for a very long time marriage was basically understood to be a kind of work that is it was two people who joined together to accomplish a specific purpose namely to raise children you didn't have to love the person you were doing this with hell you didn't even have to particularly like them much like it is unnecessary for you to love or even like your co-workers in order to do
your job you don't get to choose your co-workers and for a long time people didn't get to choose their spouses but you kind of found a way to make it work because you know that's your job no one really expects to work at a company where their co-workers are their best friends that is both unrealistic and unnecessary however people have no problem believing that their spouses should not only be their co-parents but also their best friends and their passionate lovers and their coaches and their cheerleaders and their drinking buddies and their therapists and their biggest
fans and their social trophies etc etc etc it should go without saying but no one person can be all those things to anyone else and this is why marriages fail we want it to be more than it is and so we expect our partners to be more than they are one of my favorite authors Kurt Von had an interesting take on this this is from one of his later collections God bless you Dr kavorkian and he writes okay now let's have some fun let's talk about sex let's talk about women Freud said that he didn't
know what women wanted I know what women want they want a whole lot of people to talk to what do they want to talk about they want to talk about everything what do men want they want a lot of Pals and they wish people weren't so mad at them why are so many people getting divorced today it's because most most of us don't have extended families anymore it used to be that when a man and a woman got married the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything and the groom got a
lot more Pals to tell dumb jokes to but most of us if we get married nowadays are just one more person for the other person the groom gets one more pal but it's a woman the woman gets one more person to talk to about everything but it's a man the couple has an argument they may think it's about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever what they're really saying to each other though without realizing it is this you are not enough people end quote that is absolutely correct the reason
why most marriages fail is because you are not enough people you are not supposed to be enough people you are never designed to be enough people and you cannot be enough people irrespective of who you are and who you decide to partner with the idea that one relationship should replace and supersede so many other relationships is a recipe for disaster in my opinion for marriage to be saved it needs to be returned to its essential state which is one of Simplicity and humility this probably isn't going to win me a lot of fans but we
don't even have to conflate marriage with religion indeed the idea that marriage isn't fundamentally a religious institution will would be difficult for many people to consider but that's the fact for example did you know that marriage didn't become a sacrament of the Catholic church until 1563 1563 that's 16 centuries after the birth of Christ however this isn't necessarily surprising if you understand that marriage is fundamentally instrument of social control because it creates stability at the social level not to have a bunch of orphaned directionless children running around and so marriage didn't really become important to
the church until the church itself became an instrument of social power and control and on a personal note I don't put any stock in an organizational rule that applies to the followers but not to the leaders Jesus was not married and he preached that there were no husbands or wives in heaven that is it is an Earthly institution nor are the leaders of his church churches popes priests and the like they're not married the Buddha was single judaism's greatest King Solomon had 500 wives Islam's Muhammad had multiple wives etc etc etc in fact I can't
think of a founder or head of any major religion who was monogamously married but I'm sure that's just a coincidence so marriage got conflated with religion a few hundred years ago then it got confl with love a couple hundred years ago then as vaget observed it became isolated in the nuclear unit after the dissolution of the extended family about 75 years ago and today we're at the end of 50 years of upheaval and uncertainty about culture gender and tradition marriage today is absolutely unrecognizable from Marriage several hundred years ago like it's wild that we still
use the same word for it and I'm afraid that until we collectively isolate and clarify the many conflated ideas that have created this Chimera of an institution the situation will continue to deteriorate to save marriage we need a return to Simplicity a pragmatic open-mindedness or both you may disagree with me but that's my take on it what do you think let me know in the comments below and if you've gotten this far you might as well like this episode And subscribe to this channel you may also consider becoming a channel member a psychonaut with perks
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