00:02Well, certainly we are seeing a trend.
00:04One year of increased divorce statistics may not be a pattern.
00:08It may be an unusual spike.
00:12But certainly we are seeing consistently that people have less faith in marriage as a lifelong
00:18commitment.
00:19You know, we're seeing that across society that there are hopes for it being a lifelong
00:23commitment, but not really an expectation that's going to be true.
00:27So that's a very different mindset.
00:29It doesn't mean people are moving into a relationship with a lack of hope, but it just means there's
00:34a realistic reset of expectations because we know that divorce is very common with about
00:41a third of relationships, a strong third ending in divorce.
00:44We're seeing that of couples who are in a committed partnership, slightly less than 50% are married,
00:51but there's a stronger proportion of people over time who are in de facto relationships,
00:57so rising to about 20%.
00:59So when we look at the statistics, we're seeing people still making strong choices to partner,
01:04but perhaps their choice to marry per se is not necessarily always the first choice.
01:13I mean, certainly marriage rates are about where they were pre-pandemic.
01:17If you put together the statistics that say that a relationship lasts about 9.4 years at the moment
01:25as the point at which people might consider divorce, they're married in their early 30s more commonly.
01:32So at that stage, it can be passed their children.
01:37So people are marrying later and then they're having their children.
01:41If they are having children, they're having them more quickly.
01:44So when you see children emerging out of the primary school years, that point of entering teens,
01:50where you're over the sort of intensity of early childhood, people are able to sort of sit up, take notice.
01:58So those early teen years, people are, if they're struggling, that can be a point of struggling.
02:03I think the other thing is that as we're living longer, that sense of a long stretch into a lifelong
02:10commitment,
02:11people do question, certainly we're seeing a spike in divorces in people over 50.
02:16And so it once would have been if you were 55, 60, 65, you'd be thinking,
02:21I've made my bed and I'm lying in it, and people may not question it at that stage.
02:25The point at which your children leave home can also be another turning point where people start to say,
02:31what have I got here? What's my life like?
02:34And people are making different career choices, different lifestyle choices and different relationship choices.
02:39We still see too few people seeking help. Our own studies say about 50% think of seeking help for
02:47their relationship.
02:48That, you know, really, if you're making a really big decision like that,
02:52I would encourage people to seek a well-trained marriage counsellor, relationship counsellor to assist them.
03:00Many people that I see are entangled in repetitive arguments, boring arguments, where they've also written the script.
03:07I know what you're going to say, you know what I'm going to say, and they conflate that into our
03:11relationship is doomed,
03:12where maybe the content they're arguing over is very workable, but they're sick of the repetitive conflict.
03:19And that's where we can really assist.
03:20I think people are still very drawn to the public declaration.
03:26They're still really drawn to all the romantic trappings around it.
03:30I think it's an important milestone.
03:32Those rituals can be very meaningful, not just for the couple, but for the audience around them.
03:37But the reasons people are putting it off is because they are getting more pragmatic around cost of living,
03:43around trying to get into the housing market.
03:45We see the average cost of a wedding, just the day, can be $40,000.
03:50So people are saying, well, maybe we'll put that off, maybe we'll do that later.
03:55That's a shame because the marriage event doesn't have to be that expensive.
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