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Pop Culture

Comedian debunks the popular '50% of marriages end in divorce' myth in viral video

Comedian and writer Alex Falcone explains how this "dumb statistic" is just plain wrong.

@alex_falcone/TikTok

How did we all come to believe this very inaccurate statistic?

We’ve all heard the statistic that “50% of marriages end in divorce” at least once in our adult lives. And considering that many of us probably know a few couples that have gotten divorced (including our own parents) we probably never gave its validity much of a second thought.

But romantics, rejoice! For this cynical statistic is, irrefutably, false. Recently comedian Alex Falcone took to TikTok to debunk this commonly believed myth.

In a now viral video, Falcone begins by saying that “first of all, it’s a dumb thing to measure,” because “until the 1970s, divorce law was very different. So really, it would have been a measurement of what percentage of couples are trapped in bad situations.”

What makes this a “dumb statistic,” Falcone continues, is that it doesn’t consider the duration of any marriage—from “the couple that held hands while the water came in on the Titanic counts exactly the same as someone who got hit by a bus on their honeymoon” to the “overachievers” who are “really good” at getting married and divorced over and over again.

Essentially, “if someone gets divorced five times, they get counted five times,” Falcone says. It’s easy to see how this can set the statistic askew very quickly.

But truly, the biggest Achilles' heel of this truism is that it’s nearly impossible to truly “track every single marriage that's ever happened” to accurately determine how they ended, be it divorce or death…not to mention track the ones that are still going strong.


@alex_falcone Unlearning: No, 50% of marriages don't end in divorce.
♬ original sound - Alex Falcone


Of course, you don’t have to take Falcone’s word for it. Experts have been debunking this myth for years (of course, they haven't done it in nearly as entertaining a way as Falcone). According to the New York Times, the highest the divorce rate has ever been was 41%. Elsewhere there are estimates closer to 23%.

And the United States Census Bureau states that divorce rates have been declining over the past decade. We can thank certain societal shifts for this, like people waiting until later in life to get married, and the rise of long term, non-marital relationships.

In 2021, the rate was just under 7%. Again, no tangible ways of getting an accurate assessment, but certainly nowhere near 50%.

So how did this myth come to be in the first place?

The prevailing theory leads back to post-World War II, when the Baby Boomer generation began marrying and starting families, during which there were projections that divorce rates would eventually get that high. So far, they never have.

Bottom line: statistics aren’t always reliable. This is an especially important thing for couples to remember so as to not invoke some kind of self-fulling prophecy. After all, we are far more well-equipped with knowledge and resources to help strengthen our relationships than ever before. So don’t give up on love just yet!

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Feel free to turn down invitations, it hurts your friends a lot less than you think

New research is great news for people-pleasers.

via Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels

New study shows it's ok to say no to an invite if you don't want to go.

There are many reasons why people feel uncomfortable turning down invites to social events. We crave connection, fear missing out on a good time and assume we’re hurting other people’s feelings by saying no. But sometimes, turning someone down is unavoidable, and saying yes to everything can lead to burnout.

There’s also the problem of attending things just because you feel obligated. Then, you wind up having a bad night when you could have stayed home and watched TV or read a book.

A recent study found that 77% of people confessed to accepting an invitation to an event they didn’t want to attend because they were nervous that they’d upset the person who invited them. The good news is that the same study found that people are a lot less bothered when we say no to them than we assume.

So now you can feel less guilty about avoiding social events you don’t want to attend whether it's a family function, work happy hour a birthday party for some kid that your child hardly knows.

A recent study published by the American Psychological Association experimented on over 2,00 participants to find out how people feel after being rejected.

Researchers discovered that when participants imagined refusing a friend's invitation, they often thought it would immediately harm their relationship. They believed their friend might feel upset, disappointed and hesitant to invite them again. Those who envisioned rejecting the invitation were more inclined to think their friend would dwell on the refusal rather than understanding the decision-making process behind it.

However, researchers found that wasn’t the case.

“Across our experiments, we consistently found that invitees overestimate the negative ramifications that arise in the eyes of inviters following an invitation decline,” Julian Givi, PhD, an assistant professor at West Virginia University, told the American Psychological Association. “People tend to exaggerate the degree to which the person who issued the invitation will focus on the act of the invitee declining the invitation as opposed to the thoughts that passed through their head before they declined.”

The researchers performed a similar study with couples and, once again, found that those who turned down the invite thought their partner would be more upset than they actually were.

​“While there have been times when I have felt a little upset with someone who declined an invitation, our research gives us quite a bit of good reason to predict people overestimate the negative ramifications for our relationships,” Givi said.

Givi also says people should feel okay about declining invitations when busy, to avoid psychological burnout.

“Burnout is a real thing, especially around the holidays when we are often invited to too many events,” he said. “Don't be afraid to turn down invitations here and there. But, keep in mind that spending time with others is how relationships develop, so don't decline every invitation.”

This study should be good news to all the people-pleasers out there who often go to social engagements because they don’t they don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. It’s also great news for those who feel a tremendous sense of guilt every time they turn down an invite.


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Joy

Husband gets hilariously upset after finding out his wife ate Mexican food without him

"I don’t know if you’ll forgive me after I tell you what I did."

@shelbanddyl/TikTok

Husband is utterly devastated when he finds out his wife had Mexican food without him

Some relationship "betrayals" hit right to the core. Like Netflix cheating, where one partner secretly watches the next episode of a show they had been watching with their significant other.

Or perhaps even worse—when one partner eats delicious food without telling their spouse.

This was apparently the sin committed by wife Shelby to her husband Dylan, a married content creator duo better known online as Shelb and Dyl.

And Dylan’s melodramatic reaction to the devastating news that she ate at his favorite Mexican food restaurant—without him— is pure relatable comedy.

“I have a confession,” Shelby sheepishly says in the viral clip. Though wary, Dylan still retorts with, “whatever it is, I love you.”

“...I don’t know if you’ll forgive me after I tell you what I did,” Shelby continues. That’s when Dylan’s eyes go wide,

“How bad could it be?” he asks, growing more concerned.

That’s when Shelby makes her confession that she ate her husband’s favorite cuisine in secret.


First, as with most cases of grief, comes denial..

“No you didn’t” Dylan says, in utter shock and disbelief.

Then come the other stages. Anger (“my belly could be full of Mexican right now!”), bargaining (“I realize I can be a little stingy with our money but MEixnac’s my favorite and you know that”) depression (wailing “aaaaah!” with his head in his hands). And finally…acceptance.

Watch the drama unfold below. If anything, just to hear Dylan say “you’re hurtin’ my heart” in a thick southern accent.

@shelbanddyl He was a little upset 😅 #husbandreacts #couple #mexicanfood #husbandwife #fyp ♬ original sound - Shelby & Dylan

But at least with all the pain she caused, Shelby was kind enough to bring him leftovers. Sadly, that might not be enough to repair the relationship. For when she asks if Dylan can forgive her, he soberly replies “I don’t know if I can.”

Most viewers couldn’t help but empathize with Dylan a bit, saying they would feel the same way if their partner committed such a heinous act.

Despite this little bump in the road, Shelby and Dylan seem to have a pretty wholesome relationship, with plenty of videos showing how much fun they have with one another and making each other laugh.

So it feels safe to say that Dylan will, in fact, be able to forgive…though he may never forget.

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Widow who lost her husband soon after marriage shares valuable lessons about grief

#1: "Moving on" is a fallacy.

Canva

A grieving widow shares lessons on how to live after loss.

True
Prudential

This article originally appeared on 02.14.17


Amelia and Manny made clear plans when they got married.

They planned to travel around the world. They planned what they’d want their family and their futures to look like. It was all so normal and real.

And then something they couldn't have planned for happened: Manny unexpectedly passed away soon after they'd tied the knot.

When the doctor in the emergency room told Amelia that it was time to say goodbye, she was in disbelief. "How do you even do that?" she wondered.

Instead of being a young, happy newlywed, Amelia became a young, grieving widow.

It turned her life upside down. In the months that followed, she could barely wake up and get out of bed, let alone put on clothes and walk to work. Every day felt harder than the last while the world continued on around her.

"I wanted so painfully for everything to just stop," Amelia said in an interview for Prudential's Masterpiece of Love series. "I was so tired. I just wanted it to stop." But it didn't stop. Life kept going and so did she, at times reluctantly.

Amelia has come out on the other side of the most difficult journey she could have imagined, and it's taught her a lot about herself, the grieving process, and how often life doesn't go as planned.

In hopes of helping others, Amelia wrote down eight things she learned about living after loss:

1. "Moving on" is a fallacy. Amelia prefers to call it "moving forward."

"Moving on" implies letting your person go, and that's an unrealistic expectation, Amelia wrote.

"Instead, you simply swim through it until the water clears up a little more, until the profundity of the depth is less terrifying, and until it feels a little easier, because you've gotten good at swimming."

Skydiving helped Amelia to commemorate the six-month anniversary of Manny's passing. "I guess some part of me felt like I could get closer to Manny somehow by stepping into the sky," she said.

2. "Try to remain open to life."

Amelia took a chance and met someone again who turned out to be a wonderful man. Having your heart broken again after loss is a nasty slap in the face, she wrote, but you should not let it shut you down.

"Practice kindness and graciousness when others are kind to you," she said, "and compassion when they aren't. That's a good practice for any relationship,."

3. Hers is not a "success story."

The peaceful person Amelia is today has "clawed, gasped, screamed and survived." She fell in love again and had a child, but those are not successes she can claim. She says that getting to raise her baby has been a wonderful blessing, and new life gives loss slightly more perspective. Every day, as her baby learns, she is reminded that life continues.

4. This is a big one: "Release any hostility or jealousy."

"Friends will get married and have children, celebrate anniversaries and successes, all while you are alone in the dark," she wrote. "They will forget to be sensitive to your heartache, or think that you're 'over it' enough so you won't mind if they gush. They might think that it's easier for you to show up with a smile than it really is. Let that go, too."

People are going to say the wrong things. They will say unbelievably tone-deaf things. It's important to not take hurtful words to heart, as hard as that can be. She advises trying to imagine a time when it will be easier to be happy for others again without feeling heartache yourself. Doing this will be healing.

5. "It will take longer than you expect."

Amelia wrote, "Because it doesn't go away, or stop, and because you don't get over it, that old heartache keeps creeping up long after you thought it should have gotten easier. Be compassionate with yourself. Life is not a round trip voyage; why should your grieving process be? You will get better at navigating the new normal."

6. "Only you know what you're really going through."

Amelia points to how well-meaning people will come out of the woodwork, desperate to tell you about when their somebody died, for three reasons:

One, they want to be helpful. Two, society shuns them from talking about their lost loved one and they want you to be a person whom they can commiserate with. Three, see number one.

Some people will say helpful things. But every grief is different. Every relationship is different. Every person who has passed is different, and every grieving person is different. If you grieve in your own way, you're doing it right.

7. "The right partner will actively keep the memory alive with you."

"Be careful not to get so swept up in escaping your grief that you choose someone who wants you to get over it," she wrote. "Don't you dare let anyone take your grief from you."

The right partner will hold your hand on the anniversaries (if that's what you want), will wish that they could have met your person, and will admire how you still love that person today.

8. And finally: "You can do this."

"There may be times you're pretty sure I'm wrong on this point," she wrote. "That's ok, rest when it's too hard. Find something — anything — and hang on like hell. These peaks and valleys gradually get less steep. It takes a long time, but they do. And there is sunshine again out there somewhere."

As many of us know, life often doesn't go according to plan.

It's still hard for Amelia every single day. But she says it also makes her experience things on a deeper level. Whether it’s raindrops on her skin or the feeling of breath going in and out of her lungs, everything is more vivid.

She says Manny's passing has a lot to do with that; he reminds her that every single day is a gift.

This article originally appeared on 02.14.17

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