When I was leaving Mormonism, I found a board for exMormons for support. A repeated theme amoung quite a few former member was that the temple marriage ceremony felt to them more like they were marrying the cgurch more than each other, and they felt that the church was constantly in the middle of their marriage between them and their spouse.

I don't recall the ceremony all that well to be able to say that this was how I felt about it, but I did experience feeling that I needed to be more authentic after leaving religion. I no longer needed to have my thoughts and actions filtered through for imagined church approval.

The bulltin board also had posted an article or two of studied which found that the more strict a religion was corresponded with higher divorce rates.

Go on, take the money and run

Not necessarily... at least not for me. 3x loser here. I guess my feelings about marriage are pretty unconventional for being a woman. I think it's an archaic custom that I will never do again, and I'd never encourage it to anybody.

I'd say the surbey samples were pretty small.

My atheist marriage is 42 years old and going strong. This is the first and only marriage for both my wife and myself.

Hypocrisy is their strongest suit. Their Jesus railed against divorce and yet they choose things he never said a word about to get incensed over. Yes, I know Jesus didn't exist.

No surprise…….they probably spend more time worshiping their imaginary friend instead of spending time with each other.

Yup, my insureance guy's first wife left after 7 kids(?) The second after a few years. He's the kind that beleives the wife is subservient to the husband. Gee, I wonder why they left.

Well that certainly explains why Adam and Eve could have used a good marriage counselor…..

How about. Atheists take responsibility seriously. Believers try to pass it on either to the sky fairy or to relatives and partners, and that applies to marriage just like everything else.

• There's a matter of thinking. There are fewer secular people that will eat the gore of another resident of this rock, whether they have two legs-- or four.

Oh I definitely take marriage seriously. That's why I won't do it anymore.

By experience I learned that legal marriage is letting someone else from a long time ago, with archaic notions define what your relationship is or "should be".

Obviously, if I had it to do over again, I never would.

Not surprising when you have that many sins to blame your partner for, whereas as an atheist those same "sins" are just natural everyday behaviour

I am not surprised that divorce rates are highest among Evangelical Protestants. At the same time I cannot agree that atheists take marriage seriously. What I do believe is that the stability of your parents marriage might end up saying a lot about your own marriage as time goes by.