Myrna Loy said it best in "The Best Years of Our Lives,""We never had any trouble. How many times have I told you I hated you and believed it in my heart? How many times have you said you were sick and tired of me, that we were all washed up? How many times have we had to fall in love all over again?"

Also note that statistics show that couples that live together before marriage have a significantly higher rate of divorce than couples that don't, counter-intuitively.

The statistics I've seen say that couples who stick it out, five years later, are pretty happy, so it's a reason to stick it out.

Natural family planning couples have a divorce rate of less than 5 percent.

I got married in May, and my husband and I were together for sixteen years before that. If it hadn't been for the economy and wanting to have him put on my insurance, we would never have bothered. Neither one of us ever needed a piece of paper to validate our relationship; it's too bad that society still believes otherwise.

Christine,
While it's certainly a more complicated picture, as this Time Magazine article suggests. However, it does quote a recent Penn State sociologist's report that "the half-of-all-marriages-end-badly figure still 'appears to be reasonably accurate'."
-Jim
(Digital Editor)

Article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1989124,00.html

John and Celeste,
The marriage statistic you quote is not true and I wish people would stop throwing it around, especially for our children's sake. The 50% stat is for people who get married young and who do not have a college education. Check the facts.