Slim Chance I'm Divorce Material

Perusing through Freakonomics today, I came across a blogpost entitled "Assessing Your Divorce Risk." Sweet. I enjoy doing assessments like this. However, as a person who has never been married, I evaluated my divorce risk with the next best thing I could think of: my "work spouse." My colleague Kristin and I have been sharing an office for a few months now, and prior to that either sat near eachother or worked closely together on major projects. She's the one I commiserate with when major projects take a nose dive, the one I complain to when our employees are acting up, and she's one of the first people I seek out when major organizational news comes up. Kri and I are "married" through our work. At first, when I told her about this assessment and grumbled that I couldn't do the assessment after all because I wasn't married, she jokingly suggested, "Assess our risk!" Knowing this could only result in fun, I proceeded.

Oddly, the relationship factors weren't really taken into account in this survey, so I dismissed my work spouse (Sorry, Kri). As it turns out, as a college-educated female sans children, "wed" after 1980 in my late 20's for 2 years, my risk of being a divorcee is generally low. According to the data, individuals whose backgrounds are similar to mine who have already divorced made up 1% of the sample population. Individuals whose backgrounds are similar to mine who will likely be divorced over the next five years were 10% of the polled.

Naturally, like most other evaluations of this type, I have doubt in the results. Although, I do think it is funny that marriage, divorce, and matchmaking have become such a science in our day and age. Personally, I see divorce as a risk reliant on the attitudes of the individuals involved. Obviously, it's so much more than just that, but fundamentally I see marriage itself as a risk like any other we take in life, and it's up to the individuals involved to go in on it with open minds or act negatively in it.

I hope I don't jinx any of my future marriage(s) by making these statements, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.