In this day and age, when two people marry, they are part of a diverse culture, with a multitude of lifestyle options and ways of thinking. As a result of this diversity, marriage partners may grow and change tremendously as they progress through life. After ten years a husband and wife may take a look at one another and say "You're not the person I married; we want totally different things out of life. There's no way we can meet one another's needs as life partners." Though a certain amount of individual differences between husbands and wives is both inevitable and healthy, there is a point at which the differences can interfere with a couple's ability to create a satisfying love relationship.

The last sociological factor I want to discuss is the women's liberation movement. Lifelong marriage, from a historical perspective, evolved out of a social structure in which women were deprived of independence. Until women had a reasonable degree of economic independence, that is, access to jobs that paid more than subsistence wages, marriage was, for most women, not a choice but a necessity. For women, divorce meant going out into the world with no job skills and poor earning power. Under such circumstances, it was easier to remain with a spouse one didn't love than to face the poverty of single womanhood. Men were also trapped by women's lack of independence. If a man no longer wanted to be married to his wife, he could not feel free to leave her without feeling guilty. Marriage was a woman's source of income and identity, and dissolving a marriage was to strip a woman of these necessities.

Though we are a long, way from true equality between men and women, there have been dramatic improvements. Women, on the whole, have considerably more economic independence than they did before the women's liberation movement of the last several decades. Some women make as much or more than their husbands. There are now female CEO’s, we’ve had a female Secretary of State and will likely have a female president in the not too distant future. As a result of this economic freedom, women are much less likely to be forced to marry, or to stay married for economic reasons. Thus, women can terminate unfulfilling marriages. Likewise, more men are deciding to end unhappy marriages, because they know their wives are no longer economically dependent on them, and thus will not be devastated by divorce.

The women's liberation movement also increased the possibility of divorce because it increased the possibility that a husband's and wife's life paths would become incompatible. When women functioned as appendages to their husbands, without their own goals or careers, the question of whether or not a husband's and wife's life paths could remain compatible throughout their lives was a moot point. Women did not think of themselves as having lifetime objectives, other than marriage and children. However, as a result of the women's liberation movement, marriage is now, hopefully, a joining of two evolving human beings, each with individual life goals, careers, and unique destinies to unfold. In such circumstances, it is far more likely that a husband and wife may change in ways that make them unable to remain married without stifling one another's growth and happiness.

I do not mean to imply that feminism precludes the possibility of lifelong marriage; because men and women cannot get along when men are not allowed to be "the head of the household". I firmly believe that some people, staunch feminists included, may decide that lifelong marriage is the option most conducive to their happiness. However, when a high degree of incompatibility develops, the negative aspects of a marriage can grow to outweigh its merits.

There are then, a variety of reasons for divorce. Sometimes marriages fail because the partners lack adequate relationship skills or because one or both parties are unwilling to commit themselves to doing the work that is required to keep a marriage healthy and happy. Some marriages end because the people weren’t healthy enough to make a good choice of a partner in the first place. However, in some cases, mentally healthy, deeply committed people, with solid relationship skills develop serious incompatibilities. If/when this happens, the couple can "work" on their marriage until they are blue in the face and it will not enable them to overcome the "irreconcilable differences“ that develop between them. There are also situations where one person in a marriage develops a mental health problem that the other person has little if any blame or responsibility for.

Given the fact that some marriages will end in divorce through no fault of the parties involved, it is unfair to automatically assign blame to people if they decide to divorce. This is undeserved stigma and it causes unnecessary emotional pain and trauma to divorcing people.