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Are you likely to get married twice?

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A couple tries on marriage for size
A couple tries on marriage for size

According to a recent piece on QZ.com, there’s been a rise in the amount of divorces amongst those who are 50 years old and older, particularly within the U.S.

Apparently a lot of the reasons behind it has to do with the people’s changing attitudes and perceptions towards marriage – there’s this increasing perception that people are expected to live longer (because they’re practising much healthier lifestyle choices), and as such, experience more transitions during the course of their lives.

Interestingly enough, the divorce rates are particularly high amongst the baby boomer generation. Perhaps it’s because many of them were expected to marry young?

And in doing so were ill-equipped to juggle both married life and external factors such as having a career as well. 

READ MORE: 9 simple questions to ask your partner for an instantly deeper bond

With the changing face of marriage, many people, following divorce, see the opportunity for a second marriage as both a do-over and a chance to ask for a more equal partnership in marriage.

But while people are seeing a second marriage as a chance to have more individual expression within the marriage, for the younger crowd, it seems as if more people are actually moving away from a monogamous marriage in favour of a more flexible approach to relationships.

Given that older people seem to find more happiness within the parameters of their second marriage, it is understandable why millennials are reluctant to commit themselves to marriage too quickly.

And here in South Africa, the state of marriage is quite dire since the latest stats reveal that half of South African marriages don’t last beyond 10 years.

Still, it’s interesting to see that people who choose to wed for a second time, much later in life, aren’t just getting married for the sake of it, but are actually doing so in pursuit of marrying happiness as a couple with the idea of being happy and healthy as an individual within a monogamous relationship.

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