Thursday, May 5, 2011

Talkin' about my generation

What the hell is wrong with us?

Next door to my office lives the girl who does all our configuration management.  She stopped by to talk.  She's going through a divorce, too, and wanted to hear about my experience with custody mediation.  As we talked me mentioned several other people we know our age who are going through all this. 


What is going on with us?  Why can NOBODY seem to make it work? 

3 comments:

  1. Oh, I don't think it's specific to your generation, by any means. Divorce has been on the rise since WW2. Heck, my own family was created out of the ruins of two divorces. And my generation (I'm not quite old enough to be your father, I think) hasn't done so well, either.

    American culture (and Western culture more generally) has become increasingly individualistic, and successful marriages demand a giving of oneself to your spouse, which is a pretty clear conflict. When people get married with the idea of 'what's in it for me?', the marriage is in trouble. Huge numbers of our fellow-citizens really have no clue of what marriage IS anymore. . .

    Actually, to the extent that I've seen anything that relates to your generation, it has seemed to me that lots of folks your age and younger are leery of getting married in the first place, whether because so many of their parents were divorced, or because they're 'commitment-phobic', or just steeped in the radical individualism that we all swim in every day.

    But I'm pretty sure it's not anything unique to your generation; y'all are just at the stage now where your marriages are starting to fail. For my generation, that's been going on for awhile now. . .

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  2. Actually, the divorce rate has been steadily decreasing since the early '80s. However, as Craig mentioned, I would guess that may be due to people either not getting married at all, or getting married later in life.

    It's still so incredibly common. I talk to friends and acquaintances that are Christians and find out they are getting divorced, and it always takes me by surprise. Because people seldom talk about these kinds of serious marriage issues out in the open.

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  3. Actually, FTN, you raise a troubling point -

    Christians these days are divorcing at roughly the same rate as the general population (not sure exactly how the 'Christian' population is being marked off). Which runs my mind to what Nietzsche said (or was it Gandhi?) (or was Gandhi quoting Nietzsche?) about believing in our Redeemer when we Christians looked a little more 'redeemed'. . .

    The Gospel changes us exactly how, again?

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