I am getting older…
That’s no secret

And along this path I am encountering new things that I didnt experience before…
That’s no surpise.

Alcahol seems to have this strange effect the next day now, more specifically the next morning, this horrible thing called a hangover makes me all slow and sore after a night of fun. The older I get the more I experience of life, medical things, family things, generally life experiences to which I was previously oblivious, and now sometimes thankfull for it.

Unfortunatley, aside from my parents, I suddenly am experiencing the horrible issues of divorce, not myself thankfully, my friends and family seem to be venturing into this unfortunate and terrible process of seperation in their lives. I watch from the sides, not sure what to do, not sure even what to say, and totally at a loss as to be able to help.

So now a good friend has been told that he is about to get a divorce, it wasnt his idea you see, it came from left field (where his wife hangs out) and told him it was the case. These things are hard to recover from, almost impossible to retract, change or avoid once they are out there. So this is the start of something that I have seen before and know where its leading to.

My Parents (of course) have divorced, back in my teen years I was told this was happening and back then it was nothing I could not help with or change, it just happened and I got to choose who I lived with after that. My sister told me she had left her husband, my sister-in-law did the same. I am not blaming the women here by the way, it’s just the experience I have had, I think men are too lazy to initiate a divorce or to see the obvious reailties, but marriages change and divorces are all too common

But why is it so? There are so many excuses and reasons thrown around for divorces, but in particular, why so many now days. What has happened to raise divorce rates so high, why do over half of mariages fail? It cant be all the guys fault, it’s not the womens either, is society to blame, longer life spans, fiancial pressure, womens equality… What?

Well i did some research (good old internet) and found that the institution of marriage was born in the 16th century. This was the time of the beginning of the industrial age and the decline in death rates in countries adopting this industrial revolution.

At this time the earth was approaching and close to 1 billion people, of which a third were under 15 years of age leaving around 333 Million potential couples.

So as the Catholic church or society of the time defined and sanctioned marriage, they then issued the marriage licenses to cater for this current population. The world and the institution was issues a set and limited number of marriage licenses to go around as the world was at the time when it all began.

Now we have a population of 6 billion people, still one third are under 15 so that leaves 2 billion potential couples and no where near enough licenses to go around. It therefore stands to reason that we have to share and give up our rights of marriage to let somebody else get hitched, but only for a limited time because there will be more coming alone expecting a turn.

So it’s a good thing (and religion should start to recognise this) that the alternatives to strict marriage like gay and de-facto couples allow for the arrangments to exist without applying strain on the license limits.

So I think we need to make more licenses, release more because there is not enough to go around. Is it like printing more money, it could just be done but it has implications and consequences, is it linked like money to some central index, or is it just stuck in the dark ages unable to be expanded to cater for a growing global population?

So many questions and very few answers, I hope you can help…

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