No Couple Immune to Threat of Divorce

Published August 22, 1985. Three weeks ago I was speaking to a group in Garden Grove, California about marriage. During my speech I asked if anyone in the audience knew what the present divorce rate is in the United States?

“Fifty percent,” one person stated. Others nodded their heads in agreement.

Fifty percent was a correct response, at least for some areas of the United States. Let me explain.

The current divorce rate in the United States is about forty percent. But that is an average of all the states that report divorce statistics, and not all states report. So, at best, the 40 percent figure is an estimate and an average. Whenever you have an average there will be numbers above it and numbers below it. Plainly stated, there are areas in the United States where the divorce rate is less than 40 percent. Obviously, there are also areas where the divorce rate is higher.

It appears at the present time there are some places in the U. S. where divorce is the norm. More than 50 percent of the married couples divorce. And apparently there are some areas in California where this is now the case.

I told the group about an experience I had while working on my doctoral degree in marriage and family counseling at Florida State University. I took a course titled “The Family in the United States.” It was an excellent class taught by one of the most competent professors in family studies in the country, Dr. Leland J. Axelson.

During the course Dr. Axelson once stated, “No couple in the United States is immune to divorce or marital failure.” That was in 1970. I was quite startled and somewhat taken aback by the statement. Certainly I knew numerous married couples who I would consider “immune form divorce.” After class I took the opportunity to challenge Dr. Axelson on his statement, but he stood his ground. I tried to explain to him about the security of certain types of marriage. He then repeated his original statement with distinct emphasis. “No married couple in the United States is immune to divorce or marital failure.”

I never forgot his statement, nor did I repeat it for another 10 years. I simply did not believe it. But during the following decade I began to be more observant.

I saw Dr. Axelson at the National Council on Family Relations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in October, 1983 and asked him if he remembered his statement and our conversation some 13 years earlier. He said he did. I asked him if he still believed that no couple was immune from divorce. He said, “Yes, even more so now.”

My present observation is that Dr. Axelson was correct. If he was, there is a need for a major alert, attention, concern, preventative measures, and marriage counseling when appropriate. The various costs of divorce are monumental.

The irony of contemporary marriage is not so much that many fail. The irony now appears to be that so many marriages succeed when failure is so common. For those who care, may we all consider the observation of my mentor and professor, Dr. Leland Axelson: “No married couple in the United States is immune to divorce or marital failure.”