Lifespans and Divorce

Via Gray's Cyborg Citizen p144:

Stephanie Coontz, in The Way We Never Were, notes that increased longevity created the potential for marriage to last longer and therefore more marriages to end in divorces. In the nineteenth century the average length of a marriage was 10 years, mainly due to the high mortality rate. Today divorce rates compensate for life expectancies that produce, on the average, 40-year marriages. In essence, divorce has replaced death in terminating many unions.

Changes to humans and the overall techno-social spaces (what Gray would refer to as cyborgian) have consequences that we may not anticipate. They will shake our unconsidered faith in age old foundationals, and open up new horizons, both good and bad.