The hill got me. Twenty years, almost exactly.

My spouse and I get along much better, now.

Historically Western European's married at 27 -29? Historically speaking, when? In which age in history prior to the '50s were Europeans marrying at that late age? Going back through my Western History college textbook, I can't find any substantiation of EJ Graff's claim of that.

Most Europeans, including western Europeans.. historically speaking married well before their late 20s, especially before the "plague" years she references... the average life expectancy was into the 40s, old age extending beyond that was possible, but rare, especially given the fact that most "western Europeans weren't living the the grand life on the manor with housemaids and nursery maids.. most lived hard scrabbled lives of poverty and the majority of women were not only raising their own children, they didn't have washing machines and diaper services to clean clothing, not to mentioned soiled diapers. They were not only cooking the food, they were raising it and even cleanng the carcasses of wild game and fowl, at times slaughtering them.

Go back far enough and you'll find marriages that took place at the age of 13. There weren't nice clean hospital delivery rooms, no epidurals.. it wasn't anything you'd read about in Jane Austen. For the most part, Americans of European descent aren't the antecedents of the priveleged classes. Their emigre ancestors were the farmers,  mill workers, laundresses, butchers, blacksmiths a variety of tradesmen and women, even criminals. Docters and other professional classes weren't as affluent back then as their modern counterparts are.

As of almost 2 weeks back, I would have been married to my husband for 24 years, he passed away on June 14th from an advanced stage of Burketts-like lymphoma. He would have stood a far better chance of surviving had it been diagnosed in a more timely manner.. as things stand, because he only had medicare due to his disability of being in end stage organ failure, he couldn't get an appointment with a specialist.. I've been told that had he been seeing one, his lymphoma would have easily been diagnosed with the normal tests a person needing a transplant regularly gets, and it would have been caught in a very early stage. Because of the discrimination against the poor, my husband died within three weeks of being diagnosed.

I guess what got me the most about Graff's article,wasn't her incorrect generalizations about the statistical ages of Europeans getting married as much as the fact that her assumption that the people that counted were the elites, theirs was the reality that mattered or to be considered as a measuring point with the modern couples she referenced.

What I've noticed since 2000 is that the neo-left are primarily affluent and far removed from the gritty realities of poverty. Some like Graff are far more interested in promoting a radical agenda and the propaganda required to push it. I've take Social Science classes taught by people like her.. taught out of textbooks that are appallingly classist, bordering on the racist, that pigeonhole and stereotype people into neat little boxes and rationalize segregation of groups of people so as to better to control them. Espouse religious and other bigotry, and rationalize a caste system right out of the middle ages. Machiavelli meets Marx.

Perhaps those broken marriages she referenced broke up because one or both sides of each of those marriages lost track of the fact that any relationship takes alot of hard work. If they were of such long standing, lovng, committed relationships, incompatibility isn't the answer, age isn't I agree with her about that, but the practice of marriage isn't to blame either.

In my nearly 24 years of marriage, we had our ups and downs.. more downs than ups really. We struggled for most of those years financially. We limited ourself to one child because we wanted to provide the most we could for her, meaning opportunities for her education, adequate clothing, access to health care, food. We didn't expect vacations, expensive clothing, expensive restaurants.. we made time for each other to have one "date" per week,, whether it was to  cheap movie, or a walk on the beach, a picnic.. whatever. We tried to understand each other through difficulties.. we weren't always sucessful, sometimes we fought, went to bed not speaking.  Somehow though we always made it through together. I feel fortunate that I was married to a man who shared the same belief in the commitment to one another that marriage requires.

Neither of us were perfect, he could drive me crazy at times because of little things he did.. leaving the toilet seat up, dropping his clothes on the floor. I drove him crazy too I'm sure at times. Somehow though those things didn't become insurmountable obstacles. We dealt with real serious problems, he had a critical health condition, and had to fight to get him medical care. He could make me laugh when I'd be worried or afraid. I know he appreciated that I listened to him when he had worries. We were a team and we loved each other. I wish he were still here now because I wanted to grow old with him.. I certainly didn't expect him to die at the age of 51. He was my best friend, we knew each other so well, understood each other.. sometimes thinking of the same thing at the same time. We were happy with each other.

I've had my share of friends who have divorced. With the exception of one friend who divorced because her husband was physically abusive, the rest grew apart and split up. They lost sight of the fact that a married couple are a team that is supposed to work together through life. Love is more than the fairy tales, and lust is a temporary thing, a chemical reaction. Love requires work, it requires a couple being friends as well as lovers. I've seen too many people completely ignorant these days about what responsibilities that are involved... too many of them were more interested in what was in it for just them, and even now as singles they aren't any happier.

I'm sure Graff's parents probably did marry too young or they fell out of love along the way, perhaps waiting for their children to grow up enough so divorce wouldn't be something they had to deal with as minor children.  I'm sorry if the divorce was troubling for her, my own parents divorced when I was young so I know it can be hard.. but based on her other writings here, I do believe her intent was on propagandizing against marriage. I don't believe marriage is for everyone.. if two people aren't willing or capable of making and keeping the commitment required, they shouldn't contemplate the step. But that doesn't mean that marriiage is wrong or should be eliminated because of some not being willing to take the responsibility seriously.

A quick google will show that Graff is correct. For the average person, marriage had to be delayed until enough property was accumulated to allow the couple to support themselves. The young marriages that we read about in the history books were dynastic and monetary unions, where family wealth was going to support the couple. These marriages tended to be made while young because of the greed of the parents, and the risk of the daughter objecting to a match grew as she got older.

Thinking of the US in the 1950s as indicitive of the "past" is a very dangerous thing to do. This was perhaps the most prosperous period in US history, and also the most egalitarian, meaning that ordinary people with average educations felt economically secure. It has proven to be an anomoly in many ways.

Relying on standard history texts (which tend to track the rulers and upper classes) for wider social history tends to leave huge gaps. Tracking rising and falling average ages of first marriage is one of the major markers for how wealthy a society is.

From one page with medieval marriage ages: The age of marriage

"Marriage statistics indicate that the mean marriage age for the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras was higher than many people realize. Data taken from birthdates of women and marriage certificates reveals mean marriage ages to have been as follows:

1566-1619 27.0 years
1647-1719 29.6 years
1719-1779 26.8 years
1770-1837 25.1 years"

One statistical problem that I am noting with both Graff's original and your response is to conflate average lifespan and average lifespan if you survived childhood. So many children died in infancy that the average lifespan was very short. However, if men made it past puberty and women, their childbearing years, they were quite likely to grow old.

Another problem with trying to compare modern life with the past is that before divorce was legal, couples who couldn't stand each other simply lived apart. Trying to pretend that because there was no divorce, people stayed "married," doesn't fit the reality of the situation.

And I don't get a reading of the Graff article in the Globe as anti-marriage at all.

Having just celebrated year 17, I'm not a fan of this theory. :-)

I read once that the average marriage duration has basically not changed in generations, despite the higher divorce rate we see today. The reason for this is people now live longer.

In other words, divorce is a death substitute.

My partner and I have seen thirty years as a couple. We had many serious near-breakups, at the 7th, 11th, and near 20th years. I don't know exactly what happened after the last, but somehow each of us, in our own ways, came to accept that we were a couple, almost resigned - by then neither of us could imagine living with anyone else, nor did we desire to any longer. The remaining option, it seemed evident, was to separate for good.

I don't have any answers, any fixer-uppers, magic incantations, self-help books, marriage counseling, etc. What we have come to realize in the last ten years is that we had made a spiritual commitment to see it through, to reconcile our differences by each becoming willing to sacrifice something precious to both of us, our view of things, our way of thinking and acting toward each other. In other words, we became willing to sacrifice a significant portion of our individualities to become united around what we most deeply believed in, our core values, to the point of changing our point of view to look ahead in the same direction.

That may sound vague, or woo-wooish, or more of the same "spiritual" talk we all talk about in a more or less superficial way. The real stamp of genuine spiritual commitment is to adopt a spiritual outlook that allows for us to continue "until death do us part." It is not superficial "religion" either, but a religious practice of becoming someone we didn't know (in the surface sense) to become who we now are.

If it's helpful, consider it further, ask questions of just about anyone you know to see if they wonder about these sorts of possibilities, discuss it with your partner, your therapist, your personal trainer. But let whatever it is you have doubts about hang out with others and see what they think. You might be surprised. We certainly were, and continue to be.

Divorce frequency rates (#/thousand or whatever) can be variable while age of divorce clusters.

As to red states and divorce rates, most social-health indicators like teen pregnancy, addiction, suicide, are higher there, as well as in more religious nations (Western, including Japan) generally.

Read this paper by Gregory S. Paul, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, out of the Jesuit school, Creighton University. He details the measures used and the correlations observed.